email just received - Important Updates to Your CLUB WYNDHAM Plus Program Guidelines

[gottashiner]

That makes sense to me but that would use up some of your guest reservations. However, I think I'll use that idea! Thanks for sharing!!!!

I just got an email that a reservation was cancelled by Wyndham. It had my husband's name on it and there was no overlapping reservation with his name.

 

[CandyLancaster]

I'm guessing they will tell you that is why as a platinum owner you get 15 free guest confirmations per 1M points. You will be required to use your free guest confirmations and you will have to use another one or pay for additional ones if your free ones have all been used to change the name on the reservations if your relatives plans change. Wyndham isn't going to back down or change anything because you or any other owners aren't happy. I have to say I'm really surprised that Wyndham is making all these different changes. They seem to have put some real thought into how to improve things for the bulk of the owners while putting a stop to the mega renters and hindering the point managers in a big way too.

While I don't have to like the changes I do understand why the changes they are instituting have become necessary. They are not just to put a stop to the mega renters and point managers who book up the best reservations in the prime weeks making it hard for the bulk of owners to get stays. It also means that owners who book multiple units and sit on them until "the last minute in case plans change" won't be able to hoard inventory. You can book a stay for yourself and if you want to also book additional units for friends or family you need to have a commitment from them or waste a guest confirmation. It also means no more booking several small units and several big units at the 10 and 13 month windows to be able to cancel and rebook them to get the discount and free upgrades when your discount window hits to make sure you end up with as many units as you want in case you lose one or two in the cancel and rebook process. There are a lot of VIP owners who do that and it ties up a lot of inventory that they have no intention of using. This solution addresses the non VIP owners complaints about VIP owners abuses in manipulating the system in ways Wyndham never intended. Yes I know the sales people are the ones who taught us to do it.

So if Wyndham never intended for us to use that system WHY did they allow/encourage/demand that their sales department push that system?

 

[CandyLancaster]

That was my business plan. Buy a contract, credit pool 3 years points, make reservations and rent them out... the following year I would credit pool one year out and use those points>>>so in my first year of ownership I would make a ton of money and then just break even for the rest of my life... To make money in the second year Id buy more points and do it again

I was aked more than once what my exit plan was... The answer is Im gonna die

Yes, and Wyndham's own sales people pushed us to use their system that in the end they didn't like and then blamed the megarenters. Really?????

 

[Pathways]

So if Wyndham never intended for us to use that system WHY did they allow/encourage/demand that their sales department push that system?

Who really cares at this point? I attended a Wyndham presentation before I bought my first timeshare. I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, but it took very little research to see that the BS they were pushing was no different than sales people from many other business areas. The consumers must educate themselves. And TUG is a GOLD mine of info.

I've never heard of anyone actually forced into a presentation. Pressured yes, forced, no. If fact, most people not only attend of their own free will, they are compensated for their time!

Cancel/Re-book was never in writing. And the fact there are so many people complaining that it may be going away tells us that for the most part the sales weasels were correct, in fact it HAS been available to all and used extensively.

 

[wed100105]

I just got an email that a reservation was cancelled by Wyndham. It had my husband's name on it and there was no overlapping reservation with his name.

When was the reservation booked?

 

[seascapemvy]

Who really cares at this point? I attended a Wyndham presentation before I bought my first timeshare. I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, but it took very little research to see that the BS they were pushing was no different than sales people from many other business areas. The consumers must educate themselves. And TUG is a GOLD mine of info.

I've never heard of anyone actually forced into a presentation. Pressured yes, forced, no. If fact, most people not only attend of their own free will, they are compensated for their time!

Cancel/Re-book was never in writing. And the fact there are so many people complaining that it may be going away tells us that for the most part the sales weasels were correct, in fact it HAS been available to all and used extensively.

As a small owner I understand both sides of the cancel rebook issue. The reason for the lower points for late reservations is so points are used and rooms are full. However if VIP owners always get to use the resorts at a major discount it adds a cost to everyone and costs owners like me more than it should. It also makes it more difficult to get the reservations I want because someone with a million points can use the system and make 2 million points in reservations. However the cause of this is not the VIP owners but Wyndham. They sold people on this and didn't care of what would happen in the long run.

The time is now and they can't expanded fast enough to keep that going and they need to treat everyone equally, especially since their average owner owns about 250,000 points. Is this fare, no. But what option do they have? Think about it. There are only so many points. The vast majority of resorts are sold out and while many points are lost because owners dont use them, the numbers just dont add up anymore.

 

[CandyLancaster]

I understand what you say about being a small owner. That system did affect small owners. I think if Wyndham was going to take away the option of "Cancel/Rebook", they should have given notice to all VIP owners and explained why. It really upsets us that they sold us on this option and now are taking it away. Plus, they are pretending that it was never there in the first place. This heavily affects VIP owners who bought with retirement plans in mind. Many people are devastated over this decision because they made extra income for retirement from this system that they created. We bought more points to be able to split our points evenly at death for our two sons and allow each to maintain Platinum status. We are not sure they will even want to take the points and pay the monthly maintenance fees now.
We expect a class action lawsuit to come from this. There will be a very smart lawyer who will take this on. One person mentioned that Wyndham probably has a small print clause stating that they can change anything anytime. I can just see a lawyer parading owner after owner before a jury where each owner tells the same story about buying points because of "Cancel and Rebook". Wyndham may have to pay large fines for making this idiotic mistake and most likely will not change their practices. However, it will cause a PR nightmare for Wyndham.

 

[CO skier]

We expect a class action lawsuit to come from this. There will be a very smart lawyer who will take this on. One person mentioned that Wyndham probably has a small print clause stating that they can change anything anytime. I can just see a lawyer parading owner after owner before a jury where each owner tells the same story about buying points because of "Cancel and Rebook". Wyndham may have to pay large fines for making this idiotic mistake and most likely will not change their practices. However, it will cause a PR nightmare for Wyndham.

These cases are normally heard only by a judge; there is no jury. Judges take a hardline legal stance based on what is written in the signed contracts and other documents.

Lawyers live for billable hours, and there will be no shortage of them chasing this development. My advice is to retain lawyers only on a contingency basis. When they get to the merger clause in the contract that amounts to, "I did not rely on anything the lying salesmen just told me for this purchase decision", lawyers working on a contingency basis might not be so interested in spending their time on the case.

You can still cancel a reservation. You can still book a reservation. It will be difficult to prove that you lost something.

 

[ronparise]

It wil be easy to say that nothing has changed, except that they added a new feature to the VIP package of benefits. now, not only can you make reservations from available inventory at a discount and get free upgrades (subject to availability) They will search for those upgrades automatically... so you dont have to be on the website all the time looking for one.

 

[seascapemvy]

I understand what you say about being a small owner. That system did affect small owners. I think if Wyndham was going to take away the option of "Cancel/Rebook", they should have given notice to all VIP owners and explained why. It really upsets us that they sold us on this option and now are taking it away. Plus, they are pretending that it was never there in the first place. This heavily affects VIP owners who bought with retirement plans in mind. Many people are devastated over this decision because they made extra income for retirement from this system that they created. We bought more points to be able to split our points evenly at death for our two sons and allow each to maintain Platinum status. We are not sure they will even want to take the points and pay the monthly maintenance fees now.
We expect a class action lawsuit to come from this. There will be a very smart lawyer who will take this on. One person mentioned that Wyndham probably has a small print clause stating that they can change anything anytime. I can just see a lawyer parading owner after owner before a jury where each owner tells the same story about buying points because of "Cancel and Rebook". Wyndham may have to pay large fines for making this idiotic mistake and most likely will not change their practices. However, it will cause a PR nightmare for Wyndham.

I agree with you that this is horrible for VIP owners who were sold something in a sales presentation that Wyndham should have known would eventually turn into a nightmare and was impossible to last. The fact that is lasted this long is a clear sign of the number of points that are lost each year because of non use. I purchased knowing I may lost a 1000 or 2000 points a year because I do not plan to use Wyndham except for 2 or 3 short trips a year. I purchased on ebay and paid practically nothing, so I am happy with my purchase. As for a lawsuit, good luck, I would not pay into one and I doubt a lawyer will take it solely on a contingency fee. If they did, they would settle for practically nothing except something like free housekeeping for a few visits and money for themselves. The key to Wyndham's argument is that all benefits are subject to change and or elimination and that if they sell all the points in a location that it would be impossible to give upgrades or discounted points for reservations because for every point given away it means someone else did not use their points. Everyone should have realized this but fast talking sales reps get consumers to look past reality and believe them.

 

[tschwa2]

I understand what you say about being a small owner. That system did affect small owners. I think if Wyndham was going to take away the option of "Cancel/Rebook", they should have given notice to all VIP owners and explained why. It really upsets us that they sold us on this option and now are taking it away. Plus, they are pretending that it was never there in the first place. This heavily affects VIP owners who bought with retirement plans in mind. Many people are devastated over this decision because they made extra income for retirement from this system that they created. We bought more points to be able to split our points evenly at death for our two sons and allow each to maintain Platinum status. We are not sure they will even want to take the points and pay the monthly maintenance fees now.
We expect a class action lawsuit to come from this. There will be a very smart lawyer who will take this on. One person mentioned that Wyndham probably has a small print clause stating that they can change anything anytime. I can just see a lawyer parading owner after owner before a jury where each owner tells the same story about buying points because of "Cancel and Rebook". Wyndham may have to pay large fines for making this idiotic mistake and most likely will not change their practices. However, it will cause a PR nightmare for Wyndham.

As I mentioned in another thread about suits against Marriott. A few years back Marriott significantly changed their business model and started selling points, significantly changed and scaled back their owner resale and owner rental programs. They also stopped there large bulk deposits of unsold inventory across many resorts and put that inventory into a points trust and held back most of that inventory for points members. Law suits claimed that the deeded week owners were damaged because they bought and in some cases bought again because of the priority exchanges through II with the large chunks of unsold inventory. They were told they could buy a week in Orlando and exchange easily for Hawaii and for years they could until the change. They could buy and Marriott would rent out their week for more than they paid in MF's. They could buy and Marriott would broker a resale regularly netting the owner 50-60% or more than what they originally paid. The judge ruled that none of those benefits were guaranteed and the legacy owner still had all their deeded rights associated with the ownership and Marriott had the right to change their programs to maintain a profitable business. The owner was sold on the program as it existed at the time and benefited under that program. Marriott clearly indicated that aspects of the program were subject to change.

In Wyndham's case there never was a "cancel and rebook benefit". There was cancel. There was book within the discount window and the was upgrades in the upgrade window. Owners were sold on the program and the way the program worked at the time. There was nothing guaranteeing that the program would always work like that. There was no documentation saying that the program was supposed to work like that. Wyndham made a business decision in the way they managed inventory without changing the rules. It did make it so booking and cancelling no longer reliably resulted in discounts and upgrades.

I don't think there is a lawyer who would take the case on a contingency basis. If you found one the first thing he would be looking to do is cut a settlement deal with Wyndham to get his fees paid and then the other half could go to owners. So even if he could get a 3 million dollar settlement. That would mean 1.5 to him and about $2 per wyndham owner and wyndham would have a settlement saying that they aren't admitting any guilt and what they are doing is perfectly legal and then they would raise the program fees to cover any fees they had to pay out and cover their own attorney fees. If on the other hand you want to to cover your lawyer fees which I would imagine would be in the 10's of thousands - best of luck.

 

[markb53]

Sales people will always find a way to sell features. They have done this since the beginning of time. Wyndham didn't create the process of cancel/rebook/upgrade. That is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation. But sales people started selling that feature (loophole) to help them sell the VIP status. VIP status itself is not contracted right. Wyndham can, and has, changed the rules of VIP.
The Credit pool is another example. Nowhere is the documentation or on the old website does it say that you can credit pool your points in future years and use them in the current year. On the old website it said that if you found you wouldn't be able to travel one year you could credit pool your point to be able to use them in the next year. It also said that your ability to use your credit pooled points was based on the amount of points put into the credit pool from the same use year by other members. I have never heard of anyone being denied a booking with points out of the credit pool because there weren't enough deposited by other users. Maybe this is because a huge number of members, including me, simply put all there points in the credit pool every year, so there was always plenty. Or maybe Wyndham decided not to invoke that rule.
Sales people are selling the credit pool feature (loophole) and the cancel/rebook/upgrade feature (loophole). I'm sure there are others I can't think of right now.
I went through a presentation at Bali Hai in Hawaii where the sales person told me I really needed to own an Bali Hai because I would never be able to stay in Bali Hai unless I owned there. Then how you explain that I am staying here. Oh she said, well you certainly can't get the presidential units. Then how am I staying in the 3 BR Presidential. How could you do that. "Do you have a computer I can show I said, It's really easy."
Sales people will tell you anything to make the sale "Damn Lies", "Outright Lies", "Half Truths", and tons of features/loopholes. It is a shame I agree and I wish it wasn't so. And I surely will miss the credit pool, I really will. But I will learn to live without it and work within the system. I'm not VIP so I won't personally miss the cancel/rebook/upgrade. But I can see how for some it will be deal breaker. I suggest that you wait, just a little, and see how everything shakes out. Maybe it there will be more inventory at the 60 day point in the off season at some resort that don't have it showing now. Who knows.

 

[Sandi Bo]

These cases are normally heard only by a judge; there is no jury. Judges take a hardline legal stance based on what is written in the signed contracts and other documents.

Lawyers live for billable hours, and there will be no shortage of them chasing this development. My advice is to retain lawyers only on a contingency basis. When they get to the merger clause in the contract that amounts to, "I did not rely on anything the lying salesmen just told me for this purchase decision", lawyers working on a contingency basis might not be so interested in spending their time on the case.

You can still cancel a reservation. You can still book a reservation. It will be difficult to prove that you lost something.

I would agree with you, only you can't (reliably book or cancel a reservation). Even if you can maneuver through the embarrassingly ineptly designed booking process and actually find something you want to book, it may be phantom inventory that WYN is going to contact you and take back in a few days. We're hearing people can't cancel reservations, there are huge access issues, point balances aren't accurate, etc. So many issues.

I'll miss the cancel/rebook, for sure. But I was surprised to stumble across it in the first place. I remember clarifying, multiple times, with a VC... really? I can cancel and then pick up the same reservation? Oh, you'll help me? You'll do it FOR me? Nice. Then figuring out I could book a 1BR and upgrade it, etc. Wyndham encouraged it, helped us. So, yes, seems pretty crazy they would support the practice so completely and then slam the door shut in our faces.

But, I understand and accept this. What is not acceptable to me is the inability for this new system to do ANYTHING correctly. WYN has a responsibility to their owners and shareholders to properly manage our accounts and the assets of the company. That is not happening.

 

[BellaWyn]

Not only properly manage them but to also provide us with an accurate accounting of our account balances. It's a currency. Surely there must be some legal aspect to the mis-management of that side of the equation.

 

[massvacationer]

So here is my question:

If an owner is using points deeded at a particular resort, and books a few reservations (for example ARP reservations) for the same time period at that resort where they are deeded, does that owner need to use guest reservations at the time of booking ??

My thought is that the owner is not exchanging through the Club Wyndham system, but rather is simply exercising their underlying ownership rights, which are to use their deeded ownership. So, this rule that requires guest reservation when booking, does not apply.

What are folks thoughts on this? And, do the new rules talks about this?

 

[Braindead]

It's becoming clear to all of us that owners have no underlying ownership rights.

Yes the rule applies to you as an owner. ARP makes no difference

 

[raygo123]

So if Wyndham never intended for us to use that system WHY did they allow/encourage/demand that their sales department push that system?

You can only sell what's in your bag

Sent from my RCT6873W42 using Tapatalk

 

[ronparise]

So here is my question:

If an owner is using points deeded at a particular resort, and books a few reservations (for example ARP reservations) for the same time period at that resort where they are deeded, does that owner need to use guest reservations at the time of booking ??

My thought is that the owner is not exchanging through the Club Wyndham system, but rather is simply exercising their underlying ownership rights, which are to use their deeded ownership. So, this rule that requires guest reservation when booking, does not apply.

What are folks thoughts on this? And, do the new rules talks about this?

this make complete sense. There is an exception to the 10 nightly limit rule for ARP reservations I would expect an exception to the guest confirmation rule... but I bet my expectation is wrong

 

[Braindead]

So here is my question:

If an owner is using points deeded at a particular resort, and books a few reservations (for example ARP reservations) for the same time period at that resort where they are deeded, does that owner need to use guest reservations at the time of booking ??

My thought is that the owner is not exchanging through the Club Wyndham system, but rather is simply exercising their underlying ownership rights, which are to use their deeded ownership. So, this rule that requires guest reservation when booking, does not apply.

What are folks thoughts on this? And, do the new rules talks about this?

It's becoming clear to all of us that owners have no underlying ownership rights.

Yes the rule applies to you as an owner. ARP makes no difference

I reread the supplement from April. There is no mention of ARP relating to the new GCs rule. So I assume you need to add GCs even with ARP

 

[raygo123]

I owned a devided interest and never had a problem if I wanted to use my week at my unit.

Sent from my RCT6873W42 using Tapatalk

 

[Cheryl20772]

So here is my question:

If an owner is using points deeded at a particular resort, and books a few reservations (for example ARP reservations) for the same time period at that resort where they are deeded, does that owner need to use guest reservations at the time of booking ??

Might depend on how your contract defines your ownership. For example, a contract can specify that you own specified week converted to specified number of points to be traded in the Wyndham program. Alternatively, the contract might say you own undivided interest (UDI) at the resort in the form of specified points to be traded.