# DRI offer to Monarch Grand owner



## Hugh (Mar 23, 2014)

Went to a Diamond Resort sales event for Pacific Monarch timeshare owners.
Very good presentation, not very much pressure to convert to Diamond Resorts.  But the bottom line is they wanted over $7.50/point and expected someone with a 2b+2ba unit to buy an additional 7500 points.  Over $56K!
Plus we would be depositing our 2b+2ba unit into their system in exchange for about 8000 points. 

Here are the concerns about points:
1) you have to use them within their system (or course) which despite the "thousands" of units, is a limiting factor considering you can find excellent opportunities with sites such as VBRO or Airbnb, etc

2) you still have to pay Diamond Resort the maintenance fee every year which is always going to go up.

3) Diamond does have extra services to book airplane tickets, hotels, events, etc.  But you know you are paying more than you can find elsewhere because Diamond is the middleman for those transactions.

4) as with airline mileage-points, you are at risk that the points needed to obtain a reservation is going to go up. You will then have to buy more points for such a situation.  

5) you will have a hard time selling you points to break even.  I suppose you could try to buy points on the secondary market, but you'll have to scrutinize the bylaws about that.

6) if you already have a desirable unit that can rent easily for profit, then do so on TUG, Redweek, Craigslist, Ebay, etc.  You will not get a profit from depositing the week into a system such as this.  At best, you'll get the equivalent.

7) points are not deeded (as far as we understand).  Points are the timeshare industry's invention equivalent of the bitcoin!  Matter of fact, if you had large sums of illegal money, timeshare points may be a great deal for you !!

8) like bitcoins, points can be created underhandedly-fraudulantly by the company with little supervision or detection.  A deeded property may also be fraudulently sold in excess to what is physically permitted as was the story with Glen Ivy.  In both cases that causes even more difficulty in reserving a desired property.  But it seems more difficult to detect or trace the selling of fraudulent points than selling of fraudulent deeds.  Deeds will be registered with the County Recorder... points are more ephemeral.


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## RuralEngineer (Mar 23, 2014)

Hugh said:


> ... wanted over $7.50/point ...



you should be able negotiate a much lower cost / point.  I have owned since 1998.  I find DRI much more valuable now then I did in 1998, 2001, 2005, or 2008.  I am now using all of my benefits with them and it is working for me.

There is no need for a 2nd home anymore.


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## Bill4728 (Mar 23, 2014)

Hugh said:


> Went to a Diamond Resort sales event for Pacific Monarch timeshare owners.
> Very good presentation, not very much pressure to convert to Diamond Resorts.  But the bottom line is they wanted over $7.50/point and expected someone with a 2b+2ba unit to buy an additional 7500 points.  Over $56K!
> Plus we would be depositing our 2b+2ba unit into their system in exchange for about 8000 points.


We are MGV owners and have not even considered any kind of convertion to DRI. We just keep using our ownership as we always have. The only nice thing about DRI is the DRI points trading in II is way better ( at least for now) than trading our reserved MGV weeks. 


> 5) you will have a hard time selling you points to break even.  I suppose you could try to buy points on the secondary market, but you'll have to scrutinize the bylaws about that.


The points are being given away so there is no way to even break even. 
Buying resale points ( since they basically are free) can be a good deal but you'll be buying points in one of the DRI collections not points for general use in "THE CLUB" 



> 7) points are not deeded (as far as we understand).  Points are the timeshare industry's invention equivalent of the bitcoin!  Matter of fact, if you had large sums of illegal money, timeshare points may be a great deal for you !!
> 
> 8) like bitcoins, points can be created underhandedly-fraudulantly by the company with little supervision or detection.  A deeded property may also be fraudulently sold in excess to what is physically permitted as was the story with Glen Ivy.  In both cases that causes even more difficulty in reserving a desired property.  But it seems more difficult to detect or trace the selling of fraudulent points than selling of fraudulent deeds.  Deeds will be registered with the County Recorder... points are more ephemeral.


Points are backed by deeded weeks at the resorts under DRI management. There should be no way for them to oversell their points. BUT there is no way to regulate them adding resorts and adding points from these new resorts. 

There is an old thread about this somewhere on TUG about a point based TS developer buying a very undesirable resort which will have little demand. Then assigning that resort significant points in their system. There is almost no control disallowing the developer doing this.


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