I read through this post and wanted to respond to the following:
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It's been proven through the years that there was a, relatively small (at least by percent of total owners) group of owners that had accumulated, in some cases tens of millions of points and were using a fraction of that for personal use, and renting out the rest. They were making quite a bit of money doing it too. Actual income, not just "offsetting maintenance fees" which is the common lie used by them. At any rate, a few years ago Wyndham somehow found out that one specific owner, had something on the order of 50+ reservations at Gacier Canyon during the Thanksgiving week. Owners complained about this, and other instances (like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Bike Week at Daytona, etc) that they were having trouble getting reservations for their families because these so called Mega Renters were in many cases monopolizing bookings for self profit. You may not know this, but until recently, if they were a VIP, they could use their resale points and get VIP privilages (upgrades, perks, etc) with those resale points as well.
Your comment about helping resale value for timeshares is a moot point because we all know by now timeshares do and always will have near zero value when we try to get rid of them... we at least want to be able to utilize them as they have been sold to us, while we can. Not compete with owners who think they are Donald Trump selling their timeshare on the black market to scrupulous families looking to save a buck but have no skin in the game..."
So somebody somehow acquired tens of millions of points equivalent to 50 plus super high prime time timeshares at magnificent resorts and is using all of them to reserve Thanksgiving week (which you apparently believe is a highest demand week) at a single resort. Obviously, they must be reserving through the resort's Owner Services, and must be keeping that Owner Services rep on the phone for hours on end. And then that person would call Owner Services and get a guest certificate more than fifty times for the people to whom he rented units.
It apparently took a while, but as you say, "Wyndham somehow found out
'. What geniuses they must be to be so perceptive.
I personally believe that implementing that strategy, even if it were not stopped by the resort Owner Services, would result in your making even less money than a McDonald's burger flipper. Hence, I find it rather difficult to believe. If the maintenance fee you pay would be exceeded by that much rental positive cash flow (so that the Mega Renter would allegedly earn, as you say, "quite a bit of money"), the points would be worth megabucks so somehow acquiring the equivalent of 50 plus units would cost a fortune. Indeed, how would you even go about acquiring that many? Timeshares Wanted ads on TUG? Nobody would let those extremely valuable points go on ebay for cheap, for example. Especially since the supply and demand situation would NOT be in the buyer's favor in trying to shake loose even units not presently up for sale..
Hence, the return on investment percentage given that initial outlay would never be worthwhile. And I'm sure it wouldn't be so easy to rent out fifty units when you're not the main office of a resort family and your ads won't appear in booking.com, hotels.com, etc. but instead in Redweek or Craigslist. Indeed, given the supply and demand situation in trying to rent out that many units, do you really think you can get top dollar for each unit? Or would you have to advertise them even on Redweek for the lowest weekly rental price, perhaps not even as high as the maintenance fee?
And then, when you ultimately want to sell those tens of millions of points, good luck on trying to get anywhere near what you paid for them (as you point out).
It sounds like something timeshare owners tell each other to whip each other into a frenzy about renters. But appears to be a fantasy to me.