Use Year Realignment

[Fido Chuckwagon]

All my contracts have a January Use Year. I know Wyndham typically does use year realignments if I were to buy another contract with a different use year. Hypothetical:

1. I win an auction right now with an April Use Year;
2. The contract transfer completes, let’s call it March or April of 2025.
3. Wyndham “realigns” it and makes it a January use year.

Do I get January 2025 points, or am I not getting any points until January of 2026?

 

[geist1223]

I do not have an answer but knowing Wyndumb and how they treat people do not expect Points until January 2026.

 

[Sandy VDH]

buy one with the same use year to avoid the guessing.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

buy one with the same use year to avoid the guessing.

Unfortunately I’m the winning bid right now. DIdn’t notice the April use year until after I bid and didn’t expect it to go for so cheap (I’ll probably still lose the auction though).

 

[Floridaman76]

You have an almost zero chance Wyndham will realign your use year if you are already a January use year.

They may, but probably wont realign your use year from something else to January if you buy a resale that is either Jan or different than your current one.

Who knows what will happen to your points if they do this. But if your existing contract is already January, you have nothing to fear as far as alignment goes. The question is, will you get this use year's points. And honestly none of us can say.

I would not be surprised if eventaully Wyndham just re-does everyone's use year to January.

 

[CO skier]

All my contracts have a January Use Year. I know Wyndham typically does use year realignments if I were to buy another contract with a different use year. Hypothetical:

1. I win an auction right now with an April Use Year;
2. The contract transfer completes, let’s call it March or April of 2025.
3. Wyndham “realigns” it and makes it a January use year.

Do I get January 2025 points, or am I not getting any points until January of 2026?

You would get the April Use Year points 9 months late in January, 2026 (and 9 months late, in January, every use year after that).

 

[Floridaman76]

You would get the April Use Year points 9 months late in January, 2026 (and 9 months late, in January, every use year after that).

I don't think that's exactly true. What I think they will do is change the April contract to January. And in CY2026, everything will be fine going forward, but the question is, whether or not he would get 2025's points. If they do the transfer now, the transfer should finish at some point around April or May, and that's within the 6 month "window" they seem to be moving points (for Jan use years) and only 1 month into what would have been a April UY.

I think if they don't give them 2025 use year points, he has a valid argument to them to fix it. But honestly nobody knows.

 

[CO skier]

I think if they don't give them 2025 use year points, he has a valid argument to them to fix it. But honestly nobody knows.

He would lose the "argument" because he is receiving the April, 2025 Use Year Points in January, 2026 -- 9 months later than before, but with an extra 9 months to use them versus before.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

. I hope I get outbid. I’m sure i will, it’s a Bali Hai contract and my current high bid is $1 and the closing costs are only $199 lol.

 

[Floridaman76]

Honestly all the uncertainty just reinforces my reasoning behind buying resale with the same use year to avoid these issues. That's the best guidance.

OP, be sure and let us know how it ends up

 

[Floridaman76]

Can't you just withdraw your bid?

Also, those MF seem high, even if it includes program fee

 

[CO skier]

. I hope I get outbid. I’m sure i will, it’s a Bali Hai contract and my current high bid is $1 and the closing costs are only $199 lol.

I do not know why it is so difficult for people to understand. The contract transfers to you in March or April and realigned with your January Use Year. You pay maintenance fees on the April Use Year points after the transfer -- 8 or 9 months worth until the end of 2025 -- then receive the full Use Year of points in January, 2026 to use until December 31, 2026. How did you not come out 3-4 months worth of maintenance fees ahead?

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

I do not know why it is so difficult for people to understand. The contract transfers to you in March or April and realigned with your January Use Year. You pay maintenance fees on the April Use Year points after the transfer -- 8 or 9 months worth -- then receive the full Use Year of points in January, 2026. How did you not come out 3-4 months of maintenance fees ahead?

I’m having a tough time conceptualizing that as coming out ahead. I’m paying 8 or 9 months of maintenance fees in 2025 for what are effectively January 2026 use year points, which I will also pay a full 12 months of dues for. I guess in the grand scheme of things it’s not the end of the world, but it does turn a decent deal into a pretty mediocre one.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Can't you just withdraw your bid?

Also, those MF seem high, even if it includes program fee

Too late to withdraw the bid, the auction ends at midnight. MF seem about right to me if you subtract out the program fee.

 

[paxsarah]

I don't think that's exactly true. What I think they will do is change the April contract to January. And in CY2026, everything will be fine going forward, but the question is, whether or not he would get 2025's points. If they do the transfer now, the transfer should finish at some point around April or May, and that's within the 6 month "window" they seem to be moving points (for Jan use years) and only 1 month into what would have been a April UY.

I think if they don't give them 2025 use year points, he has a valid argument to them to fix it. But honestly nobody knows.

The April contract’s “2025” points are the use year that ends 3/31/2025. If the contract doesn’t transfer until after April 1, the 2025 points are already gone. When it does transfer, the 2026 points starting 4/1/2025 will get pushed forward to a 2026 January use year.

Now, if the contract transfers by 3/31/2025, they’d have an argument that those current-year 2025 points should get realigned to January and expire 12/31/2025 - but we all know how Wyndham is about transferring points to a buyer near the end of a use year.

 

[Fido Chuckwagon]

Hurray, someone outbid me by a quarter!

 

[Pink_Warrior]

April 2025 UY ends on March 31, 2026 so they will push your points to January as those would also end December 31, 2026.

 

[Floridaman76]

This brings up an interesting question that I had always assumed I knew the answer to, but maybe I didn't.

This was my assumption. Using 2024 as an example.

2024 use years
January UY: 1/1/2024-12/31/2024
April UY: 4/1/2024-3/31/2025
July UY: 7/1/2024-6/30/2025
October UY: 10/1/2024-9/30/2025

Is this not accurate?

Or is it something like this?

"2024" Use Years
April UY: 4/1/2023-3/31/2024
July UY: 7/1/2023-6/30/2024
October UY: 10/1/2023-9/30/2024
January UY: 1/1/2024-12/31/2024

I had assumed that every use year that begins in a calendar year is considered part of "that" calendar year's use year.

So, using the OP's scenario, a January and April use year's points all started in the same calendar year (2025), and realignment would shift his points backward 4 months, not forward 8 months, and since his use year was realigned, he, in practice would not get any additional use out of those points, since he would have received them in ~May, and his use year expires at the end of December anyway (~7 actual months of use).

Someone claimed that an April contract that was realigned to January (2025) in approximately May (which is inside the 6 month window) would not get their points until January 2026, which seems outrageous to me that Wyndham thinks it would be acceptable for someone to pay for 7 months of MF on points they don't have access to. I get it if it's a few months, maybe even up to 6 months, but outside that, that's absurd.

If anything, this is another example of Wyndham's lack of transparency and documentation on an issue. And seemingly changing or inconsistently applying rules depending on which way thw wind is blowing at the time.

 

[dioxide45]

Great question that it would be good to have a definitive answer on.

Someone claimed that an April contract that was realigned to January (2025) in approximately May (which is inside the 6 month window) would not get their points until January 2026, which seems outrageous to me that Wyndham thinks it would be acceptable for someone to pay for 7 months of MF on points they don't have access to.

Thus my problem with monthly billing. It is perhaps the biggest thing I hate about our Wyndham ownership. Why should timing of a sale hurt one party and help another. I did a transfer late in the year. I had to pay an extra 2 months of maintenance fees in November and December 2023 for 2024 points. This was a Jan-Dec contract.

I suppose I could have worked reimbursement into the deal, but I was getting them for free. It did effectively add a few hundred dollars. So, they weren't necessarily free points anymore. Had it been annual billing, then I would have just paid fees that were probably due sometime in January 2024 for all of 2024 and the seller would have already paid the full year of 2023 fees the prior January.

 

[Danlop88]

Hurray, someone outbid me by a quarter!

Lucky , I saw that 127k on eBay

 

[CO skier]

I’m having a tough time conceptualizing that as coming out ahead. I’m paying 8 or 9 months of maintenance fees in 2025 for what are effectively January 2026 use year points, which I will also pay a full 12 months of dues for. I guess in the grand scheme of things it’s not the end of the world, but it does turn a decent deal into a pretty mediocre one.

Let us try an example. Say you own a 105k January Use Year and you purchase a 105k April Use Year that transfers to you sometime in April, 2025 (roughly the timing for the transfer of that Bali Hai contract). In 2025, you would pay 12 months of dues for the 105k January Use Year plus 8 months (May-Dec) dues for the 105k April Use Year that is now aligned with your January Use Year. On January 1, 2026 you will receive 210k points to use, but paid only 12 months + 8 months of dues (20 months, not 24 months) on the total 210k points. You came out 4 months ahead. In 2026 you pay 12 months of dues on 210k points and receive the 210k points on January 1, 2027, etc. every year after that.

 

[paxsarah]

As I’ve always understood it, it’s the end date of the use year that defines it as 2024, 2025, etc. That makes January-December the latest possible use year for a given calendar year, and when multiple use years are involved in an account, contracts are realigned to the latest use year among them.

 

[paxsarah]

I just searched a bit more, and it’s codified in the Fairshare Vacation Plan trust agreement that governs the points program. Note that the use years are defined by end date and the order in which they’re listed:

 

[Sandy VDH]

I didn't think real estate transaction were binding on ebay. Sure you might get a hit to your rating, but you are not obligated.

 

[Floridaman76]

I just searched a bit more, and it’s codified in the Fairshare Vacation Plan trust agreement that governs the points program. Note that the use years are defined by end date and the order in which they’re listed:
View attachment 102192

Ok, thank you, I learned something today. My initial assumptions were in fact, wrong.