# Diamond Intro Program - Should I cancel?



## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

All,

I upgraded my sampler package to a new Diamond Intro Package.  Membership expires after 10 years, 7500 points per year, $15K purchase price, $825 MF per year, all sampler points transfer in with 18 month extension on expiration; and they kicked in some extras: 7500 bonus points, 4 day cruise voucher, 3 day hotel stay voucher, $200 food voucher, booked two nights in Miami.

I was feeling pretty good about it until I spent 4 hours reading up on the forums here.  (BTW - This is an awesome resource!)  I have until Wednesday if I want to cancel.  Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not this is a reasonable deal?  I signed up because I liked the idea of having concierge services, and the final cost of $2300 per year is less than I was spending on my own for two weeks a year of travel.  Thoughts?

Thanks!
Chris


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## harveyhaddixfan (Jul 16, 2018)

I think you can do better with another system than $1150 a week. I’d say look at a deeded property in RCI points (This comes with membership $129? and exchange fees $199-239) or a system like Wyndham. DRI continues to raise maintenance fees every year and it’s close to not worth it even for deeded owners. I’m closing on a Wyndham contact right now. Will cost me $840 over 2 years (it’s an every other year contact) and I can get 7-10 days out of that. If it was an every year contract, it would be about $710 a year (minimum program fee paid every year even on EOY contracts.)


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## TUGBrian (Jul 16, 2018)

15k+ $2300 a year would provide you a timeshare in just about any system in the world...and IMO you'd be far happier with a resale purchase in a better system!\

however the fact that you are having 2nd thoughts means you should rescind immediately as you only have a few short days to back out and do your research.


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## clifffaith (Jul 16, 2018)

I own Diamond. I would not buy if I had it to over again. However we love our Worldmark timeshare. Where do you live? Worldmark is awesome for west coast travel from Mexico to Canada.


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

Thanks everyone for the thoughts!

TugBrain - To be clear, it's $15K plus $850 a year for 10 years.  $2300 is the total cost of the purchase price plus 10 years of maintenance divided over ten years.  

clifffaith - I'm in Colorado.  What has made your Worldmark timeshare a better experience than Diamond?


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## tschwa2 (Jul 16, 2018)

I don't think the 7500 will get you 2 weeks of vacation, even if you restrict yourself to a 1 BR.   So after the bonus points wear out you will be left with 1 week of vacation using 7500 points.


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## nuwermj (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> I upgraded my sampler package to a new Diamond Intro Package.  Membership expires after 10 years, 7500 points per year, $15K purchase price, $825 MF per year, ...



This DRI term product is very new. I knew it was in development, but I haven't seen any details. First, a few questions: (1) are there any restrictions  on where the points can be used? Diamond offers about 100 club resorts and another 300 affiliate resorts. Can your term points be used at any and all THE Club locations? (2) How far in advance can you book? (3) Does your package include an Interval International account? (If no, can you open an individual account and exchange your Diamond points that way. (4) are the annual MF fixed for 10 years? Or do they increase each year? If yes, to the latter, what determines the increase? 

Compared to a perpetual points package, this term package sounds good. The price per point for perpetual points is $3.50 - $4.00 each; you paid $2.00. Annual MF fees for 7,500 perpetual points (US Collection) are $1,670 this year (Trust fund assessment plus Club dues); yours are half that, $825.

As others have already pointed out, you can get resale deeds and points in other systems for less money. Does Diamond offer something special that makes this price worthwhile for you?

7,500 points will get you, on average, one two bedroom unit for one week a year. You will need 5,000 points for a one bedroom unit. There is, of course, some variation for season and location.


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## clifffaith (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> Thanks everyone for the thoughts!
> 
> TugBrain - To be clear, it's $15K plus $850 a year for 10 years.  $2300 is the total cost of the purchase price plus 10 years of maintenance divided over ten years.
> 
> clifffaith - I'm in Colorado.  What has made your Worldmark timeshare a better experience than Diamond?



Aside from being way less expensive to both procure and pay the maintenance fees on, the Diamond resorts are sort of few and far between for us in Los Angeles. And every June you have to save your darn Diamond points manually, or start to lose portions of them. With Worldmark all that is automatic and you can easily see points from last year (always zero for us because we use the heck out of our ownership), this year (also usually zero for the same reason!), and available to borrow from next year (also very often zero, and we have 44,000 points). We do use Diamond almost every year for Hawaii and Sedona/Santa Fe/Scottsdale, but have already returned half of our 50,000 point account to them. And every year we have the discussion, is this the year we give the rest of Diamond back? And note that the "give it back" is actually pay them $250 per contract to return. There is NO resale value for Diamond.


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

@nuwermj - Answers:
1. No unusual restrictions.  I have the same access as anyone in the US Collection.
2. 13 month advance booking for US Collection, 10 months for non-US Collection.
3. Yes, it includes an II account.
4. I don't think the MF is fixed, and I can't find the guidance for MF cost increases.  I'll keep looking.

So I read up on the resale deeds and checked redweek.  It looks like I could get a 5000 point and a 7500 point RTU for almost no cash upfront and $2250 a month in combined MF.  So over 10 years that would be about the same cost as what I signed up for.  (Minus the extras, which are worth about $4K if I were to try to buy them myself.)  If I were to go that route, I'd get a lot more points per year. But as I understand it, I'd lose out on the ability to stay in locations outside of those collections.  Is that right?  How significant is that?


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

@clifffaith - Good information, thanks!  Do you find the properties are as nice on Worldmark?  Do you have access to properties in Asia and the Caribbean with them?  Do they offer anything similar to the experience of a lifetime trips?


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

@nuwermj - And to follow up, I'd like to have the planning portion taken care of for me.  Diamond showed me some 5-7 day trips in the 4000 point range where all the activities are already booked and included.  I don't care so much where I travel as long as it's new, so I was thinking I'd do a trip like that once a year and find something within the 60 day half off window for the other week.  Are there other timeshare offers that might be better suited to that than Diamond?


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## youppi (Jul 16, 2018)

Hi,
Tag people with an @ in front of their name to alert them like this @Kyndig or do a reply on their post to alert them.


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

Thanks @youppi !

@nuwermj - Forgot to tag you in my response!
@clifffaith - Forgot you too!


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## clifffaith (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> @clifffaith - Good information, thanks!  Do you find the properties are as nice on Worldmark?  Do you have access to properties in Asia and the Caribbean with them?  Do they offer anything similar to the experience of a lifetime trips?



Diamond resorts, managed by Diamond are generally fancier than Worldmark. If you want fancy buy Marriott, Hilton anything other than Diamond. Anything other than staying at a resort that they tell you you can use your points for is not a good value.To put it bluntly, Diamond salespeople are the scum of the earth and will tell you ANYTHING to get you to buy. Then every time you visit a resort they'll want you to suffer through another arm twisting, confusing sales presentation and you'll learn everything they told you last time was bullshit, and proceed to feed you new lies. I'd advise staying well clear of them. Hang around here and find out about buying good properties at resale rather than retail.


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## DanZale2000 (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> - And to follow up, I'd like to have the planning portion taken care of for me.  Diamond showed me some 5-7 day trips in the 4000 point range where all the activities are already booked and included.



The Diamond Escorted Tours are points plus cash. For example, the 7-night Scotland tour is 4,285 Points plus $3,428 per person. I'd rather use the all cash Roads Scholar, there are many more choices and much less expensive.  https://www.roadscholar.org/


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## Kyndig (Jul 16, 2018)

DanZale2000 said:


> The Diamond Escorted Tours are points plus cash. For example, the 7-night Scotland tour is 4,285 Points plus $3,428 per person. I'd rather use the all cash Roads Scholar, there are many more choices and mush less expensive.  https://www.roadscholar.org/



Damn.  And should I assume the same is true for the two week 10,000 point Diamond member guided journey's?  

I was thinking about keeping the package because the bonus trip is valuable enough to me (7 day cruise + 4 days in Orlando) that I've been discounting the total cost of the package by about $4k.  But that's an enormous omission from the Diamond sales staff that completely blows up the value proposition.  What else did they forget to tell me?  Ugh.  If I rescind, am I on the hook to reimburse the freebies they gave me?  Like the $200 meal voucher?  Or the $75 they gave me for lunch?


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## nuwermj (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> - Answers:
> 1. No unusual restrictions.  I have the same access as anyone in the US Collection.
> 2. 13 month advance booking for US Collection, 10 months for non-US Collection.
> 3. Yes, it includes an II account.
> 4. I don't think the MF is fixed, and I can't find the guidance for MF cost increases.  I'll keep looking.



Thank for this.




Kyndig said:


> So I read up on the resale deeds and checked redweek.  It looks like I could get a 5000 point and a 7500 point RTU for almost no cash upfront and $2250 a month in combined MF.  So over 10 years that would be about the same cost as what I signed up for.  (Minus the extras, which are worth about $4K if I were to try to buy them myself.)  If I were to go that route, I'd get a lot more points per year. But as I understand it, I'd lose out on the ability to stay in locations outside of those collections.  Is that right?  How significant is that?



Something's wrong with the MF figure. Nevertheless, I would not suggest Diamond resale. As you note, the restrictions are very significant. 

My view is that timeshares can be a good value as a way to get resort accommodations. I'm not convinced all the other travel benefits, including Escorted Tours, are a good value. I hope your decision works out.


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## DRIless (Jul 16, 2018)

Kyndig said:


> *TugBrain* - To be clear, it's $15K plus $850 a year for 10 years.  $2300 is the total cost of the purchase price plus 10 years of maintenance divided over ten years.


 Ha


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## izzymail (Jul 17, 2018)

My assumption based on experience is that they lied to you about many other things. The low maintenance fees, for one. Get out while you can! In the unlikely event you have remorse for cancelling you can always go buy it again. Once your money goes hard, you are locked in for 10 years.

Btw, I'm a happy Worldmark resale owner!


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