Seeing some newcomers unintentionally have point balance in both the current and next year, I thought that HGVC website could have a function to do saving of remaining points prior to confirming next year's reservation. HGVC can earn two fees for saving and reservation at one time. I believe it is quite a natural way of service to owners. But I suspect that HGVC does not want to increase "saved" points. Or maybe it is too complicated for their IT team. Any ideas to improve our website experiences?
I don't think HGVC wants anyone to lose their points.
They DO email you a reminder around October/November, if I recall, telling you if you have points that are going to expire, and that you should save them.
However, since I've only been in the situation twice in 12+ years, I may not be remembering correctly. Let's say I have 2017 points (and it's now October). I have 2018 points. If I make a reservation for 2018 year, I think the online system will draw 2018 points and not 2017 points. So I suppose I could see a feature where the system (online anyway) would "save" the 2017 points into 2018 and then book the 2018 reservation you're looking for.
However:
There are stipulations on saved points, as far as what you can do with them, etc. Plus, once you save points in to next year, it makes it very difficult (the agents on the phone accused me of "gaming" the system and said they cannot tell you which reservations used saved points) to determine if your 2018 booking was made with 2017 points that were saved vs. "regular" 2018 points. This makes a huge difference when having to cancel or jockey around reservations. (This is why I now have to use the lovely spreadsheet method to determine which bucket everything came from). Had I not saved any points, it would be much easier.
I guess I'm 50/50 on this one.
If everything goes as planned, then possibly would be better to pull in the 2017 points for 2018 bookings rather than having this big pot you have to save and then if your plans change, it makes point bucket figuring out quite difficult (and if you cancel a reservation that was booked either partially or fully with saved points, and it's "next" year, you lose those points).
hmmm.