Quick Question about RCI Portal

[lilpooh108]

I won't have time to call until later today, but since I just paid for an ongoing search I might as well ask...

My husband appears to be the lead on our Wyndham account, and only his name shows up for the online login (where it says Welcome XXXX!).

My name is on the deed as well, and when I've called Wyndham before they were willing to speak to me as an owner.

In clicking through to the RCI Portal, only his name shows up for the member info.

Does that mean my name is actually on the RCI account, even if it doesn't show up in the online interface? If anyone has this same situation, I'd appreciate a response to avoid having to call.

Thanks!

 

[Myxdvz]

Glad to see you have an RCI account. I STILL don't have one!

 

[ronparise]

Check the Wyndham account to see if you are listed as an owner. You can go part way through the process of making a reservation. At the point where it asks "who is the traveler". You will have three choices. 1) The owner (it will probably have your husbands name here) 2) another owner and 3) guest.

Click on "other" owner. You should see your name here. Assuming you do , you should be on the RCI account too.

Don't forget to cancel the reservation process

 

[lilpooh108]

Check the Wyndham account to see if you are listed as an owner. You can go part way through the process of making a reservation. At the point where it asks "who is the traveler". You will have three choices. 1) The owner (it will probably have your husbands name here) 2) another owner and 3) guest.

Click on "other" owner. You should see your name here. Assuming you do , you should be on the RCI account too.

Don't forget to cancel the reservation process

Thanks Ron, that worked (and I saw my name).

For an ongoing search, I did not see a similar drop down tab where I could select my name rather than my husband's. Do you know if that's necessary for an RCI exchange through the Wyndham Portal?

 

[lilpooh108]

Glad to see you have an RCI account. I STILL don't have one!

I had to ask a few different people because something was wrong with my account.

 

[ronparise]

Thanks Ron, that worked (and I saw my name).

For an ongoing search, I did not see a similar drop down tab where I could select my name rather than my husband's. Do you know if that's necessary for an RCI exchange through the Wyndham Portal?

I cant say for sure, but my wyndham account is like yours. My name is on the website pages, (Welcome Ronald J Parise) and my wife is "another owner". The associated RCI account has my name on the site. (I dont see my wifes name) . But I did deposit a week (not wyndham) to our rci account recently and the letter they sent confirming the deposit was addressed to both of us.

 

[lilpooh108]

I cant say for sure, but my wyndham account is like yours. My name is on the website pages, (Welcome Ronald J Parise) and my wife is "another owner". The associated RCI account has my name on the site. (I dont see my wifes name) . But I did deposit a week (not wyndham) to our rci account recently and the letter they sent confirming the deposit was addressed to both of us.

Thanks Ron. My concern arose out of the discrepancy between the RCI/Wyndham account v. our DVC account. When I click through to RCI with our DVC, it shows both our names. When I click through to RCI with Wyndham, it's only my husband's.

I called RCI earlier today and the agent confirmed that my name was on the account but I forgot to ask the ongoing search question.

On a side note---all of the Wyndham reps I've spoken to have been very very polite & nice (not all were helpful, but that's another issue). In comparison, the RCI agent sounded quite irritated and even DVC agents (the call center ones who are not Orlando-based) are not very nice at all. So far, pretty impressed with how Wyndham handled the research on my account in order to figure out the problems.

 

[Myxdvz]

I had to ask a few different people because something was wrong with my account.

I just saw that you just had your Member # last week (6/19), so am very impressed that you already have a corresponding RCI account setup. Most people I talk to say that the RCI setup takes a while, even 4-6 weeks.

I don't really understand why they don't consistently do this. It takes 4-6 weeks to transfer, and when they finally have you in the system, they don't check if RCI is setup? It's like no one QA's the actual transfer and it's up to the member to check if everything (points, MFs, RCI) has been setup correctly.

This is probably the only problem I have with Wyndham to date. Plus taking off the online reservation system at 10:45pm CST. For a night owl like me who does most reservations at night, it is frustrating.

 

[markb53]

This is probably the only problem I have with Wyndham to date. Plus taking off the online reservation system at 10:45pm CST. For a night owl like me who does most reservations at night, it is frustrating.

How about us people on the west coast were reservation system closes at 8:45pm

 

[NHTraveler]

How about us people on the west coast were reservation system closes at 8:45pm

I'm surprised Wyndham's site isn't available 24/7. I don't know the logistics, but you would think the IT department could figure it out. :annoyed:

 

[markb53]

I'm surprised Wyndham's site isn't available 24/7. I don't know the logistics, but you would think the IT department could figure it out. :annoyed:

The voyager project was rumored to address that. But it got shelved.

 

[comicbookman]

The people who answer the phones are almost always very pleasant. Unfortunately they are not always well trained. The do try to help. The reservation system is still doing some kind of nightly update/reconcile routine. It is pretty creaky. Personally I believe that Voyager was shelved for one of 2 reasons. Either it did not work, or it worked to well and would allow owners like us to more easily exploit the system loopholes. Either way as an IT professional, I would find the Wyndham reservation system embarrassing if I worked for them.

 

[Myxdvz]

I have another question....

I logged in today and noticed that I was FINALLY able to get to the RCI Portal (sing the Search and Book on RCI button).

I can do a Search and see Last Calls etc.

However, if I try and do an on-going search, it is charing me $199.

So, I thought maybe it's because I have no points on deposit. So I go back to Wyndham and click "Request RCI Deposit"... but I'm stuck because it tells me I am NOT affiliated with an exchange company? Huh? You just allowed me to Search and book thru RCI?

What am I missing?

I called VC *again* and they told me this time that I don't have an RCI # so they will create a new one for me (what where they doing the last 3 times I called)? It will take 3-4 weeks to get that number....

Crap!

lilpooh - I was curious why you had to put $ down when you put your ongoing search. Are you in the same spot? Or did you not have points to deposit?

Am I misunderstanding the process? I thought if you put 27,000 points on deposit, you can Start an On-going search and only pay when you book a room?

 

[lilpooh108]

I have another question....

I logged in today and noticed that I was FINALLY able to get to the RCI Portal (sing the Search and Book on RCI button).

I can do a Search and see Last Calls etc.

However, if I try and do an on-going search, it is charing me $199.

So, I thought maybe it's because I have no points on deposit. So I go back to Wyndham and click "Request RCI Deposit"... but I'm stuck because it tells me I am NOT affiliated with an exchange company? Huh? You just allowed me to Search and book thru RCI?

What am I missing?

I called VC *again* and they told me this time that I don't have an RCI # so they will create a new one for me (what where they doing the last 3 times I called)? It will take 3-4 weeks to get that number....

Crap!

lilpooh - I was curious why you had to put $ down when you put your ongoing search. Are you in the same spot? Or did you not have points to deposit?

Am I misunderstanding the process? I thought if you put 27,000 points on deposit, you can Start an On-going search and only pay when you book a room?

I'm sure others have more knowledge than I do on this, but for a separate RCI account that we have, you "must" pay $199 for an ongoing search which then automatically holds a week for you if they find what you need. When I logged in through Wyndham, the system rules appear the same so I paid it without question.

It's free to repeatedly do the search yourself. If you're looking for Disney (which is my guess), then you should pay for the ongoing search.

 

[bnoble]

However, if I try and do an on-going search, it is charing me $199.

This is true both for the stand-alone RCI accounts, as well as the Wyndham/RCI portals. Think of it as a refundable deposit. If the desired exchange is matched, you can use the deposit to pay for the exchange fee. If you cancel your ongoing search, the deposit can be refunded. True, RCI gets the interest on the $200 in the meantime, but in the current economic climate, that's probably not worth even a millisecond's thought.

It's also the case that (for now, at least) you can have as many searches running as you like with only one exchange fee on deposit.

 

[Myxdvz]

This is true both for the stand-alone RCI accounts, as well as the Wyndham/RCI portals. Think of it as a refundable deposit. If the desired exchange is matched, you can use the deposit to pay for the exchange fee. If you cancel your ongoing search, the deposit can be refunded. True, RCI gets the interest on the $200 in the meantime, but in the current economic climate, that's probably not worth even a millisecond's thought.

It's also the case that (for now, at least) you can have as many searches running as you like with only one exchange fee on deposit.

So I must have misunderstood this then. I thought there was a way to run/start an on-going search without putting $ out of pocket.

So what is the purpose of the 27K points deposit again?

 

[Free2Roam]

So what is the purpose of the 27K points deposit again?

In order to book an exchange you need enough points in your account for the exchange (min 27k is for each deposit transaction from Wyndham to RCI).

In order to place an ongoing search or book an exchange you need to pay the exchange fee. If you cancel the ongoing search your exchange fee is refunded.

 

[paxsarah]

In order to book an exchange you need enough points in your account for the exchange (min 27k is for each deposit transaction from Wyndham to RCI).

In order to place an ongoing search or book an exchange you need to pay the exchange fee. If you cancel the ongoing search your exchange fee is refunded.

This. Every RCI exchange via the Wyndham portal has two components: X number of points, and a $199 exchange fee. The points are essentially the "week" you're exchanging, and the fee is the cost of doing business with RCI (instead of keeping the points within Wyndham). When you set up an ongoing search, you're essentially saying, "If this week were available right now, I'd make the exchange on the spot," and RCI takes the $199 at the time the search is set up in order to lock in that exchange when it becomes available.

 

[paxsarah]

Also, this:

I thought if you put 27,000 points on deposit, you can Start an On-going search and only pay when you book a room?

I'm not sure how it works in practice at this point (because, previously the only way to set up an ongoing search was to call RCI, and it's only recently that we can set up our own ongoing searches online), but the original story with the portal is that if you're a non-VIP (like me), you need to have deposited the full number of points in advance of an exchange, and it takes about a day (I'm guessing overnight) for the points to show up in RCI after requesting the deposit from Wyndham. VIPs, on the other hand, can see an exchange, say "I want it!" and deposit after the fact.

And so, if you've got 27K deposited and you see an exchange you want that costs 126K, you'll have to deposit an additional 99K and hope that the exchange you want is still available the next day. When an ongoing search is involved, I would think it shouldn't even let you start it if you have insufficient points for a week you're requesting, but if it does - I'd be extremely concerned that it wouldn't catch the week you want if you don't have enough points predeposited. Which is an overly wordy way of saying, 27K is not enough, I'd research how many points you'd need for the week you want, and deposit it all, then set up the search.

 

[pnkrockprincess]

Which department do I call and harass about my RCI account? Should I call RCI or Wyndham?

ETA: Let me be clearer, I have a new Wyndham account (which I was able to gain access to by calling every day until they got it set up) and I would like to do the same for the RCI account, but I'm not sure who I should contact? Any suggestions?

 

[paxsarah]

I'm pretty sure when I conducted my campaign of harassment, I called Wyndham owner services. I may have talked to someone at RCI once, but it was multiple calls to Wyndham that did it.

 

[Myxdvz]

I've been calling the VCs, but after getting tired of their constant "Oh, I don't know why you're not setup yet, let me request one expedited" ... I got referred to a supervisor from Owner Care... who again, can just make a notation to expedite your request.


I still don't understand how I can Search and Book RCI, and start an on-going search... but NOT be able to deposit any points, thereby making any of my searches kinda moot