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New Vidanta Limitations for RCI Exchanges

Eric B

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This has been added to the text regarding Grand Luxxe Nuevo Vallarta in RCI (RB71):

VIDANTA owners can only confirm back to a VIDANTA resort equal to or less than the product or property acquired; Reservations that violate this rule will be cancelled (Example: Mayan Palace Owner can confirm the same or Sea Garden, they cannot confirm Grand Mayan).

The same warning is present for the lower level units in RCI. The higher level Grand Luxxe units in RCI still have the limitations preventing Vidanta owners from reserving them through RCI Platinum; they had been removed from the system for about a week, so I thought they might be changing those in some way that would avoid continuing to offend Vidanta owners.

In my opinion, this continues a very short-sighted attempt by Vida Vacations to incentivize buying their product because a rational person (i.e., you, the reader) should realize that they can continue to exchange into whatever level at Vidanta they want to only so long as they do not own anything with them. Love the resorts the hotel side of the house runs, but I find the self-defeating limitations on exchanges put in place by the sales side of the house annoying and insulting and would not recommend that anyone buy in with them so long as those limitations continue. We own at a high enough level that the RB71 limitation doesn't affect us, but the RCI Platinum exchange limitation does and eliminates a great deal of the value present in RCI Platinum when we paid for that level of membership with RCI. I understand that the idea is to limit the ability of Vidanta owners to exchange back into Vidanta using less expensive timeshares or into higher levels they don't own, but this also acts as a major red flag on the disadvantages of ownership (along with the discriminatory room assignment practices for declining sales presentations at check in).

Bottom line: If either RCI or Vidanta representatives read this, it might be worth reconsidering these measures because they create disincentives for people to either invest in the higher level of RCI membership or ownership with Vidanta. It would be better to consider the whole picture rather than the limited goals of portions of the organization and avoid offending your best customers and scaring off potential customers.
 

travs2

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Nothing new here for VIDANTA. They have been “offending” their best customers for years......ever since we bought into their schemes in 1988. They are very short sighted that is for sure.
 

PamMo

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Eric, this is one of those posts that I "liked" for you bringing this to our attention, NOT for what Vidanta is doing. The resorts are so nice, but their rules twist and turn so often it's hard to keep up.
 

T-Dot-Traveller

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Eric, this is one of those posts that I "liked" for you bringing this to our attention, NOT for what Vidanta is doing. The resorts are so nice, but their rules twist and turn so often it's hard to keep up.

They had a similar “owner” rule once before (10 + years ago) - when they were expanding Grand Mayan .- Mayan Palace owners were not allowed to use RCI to book Grand Mayan .

I only know this from reading TUG legacy threads . It was during the period when the 1 in xx rule for exchanging into Grupo Mayan through RCI bounced around from 1 in 3 to as high as 1 in 5 .

...”rules twist and turn.” ...
 
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Eric B

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Eric, this is one of those posts that I "liked" for you bringing this to our attention, NOT for what Vidanta is doing. The resorts are so nice, but their rules twist and turn so often it's hard to keep up.

Agreed, Pam. There was an earlier thread I seem to remember in which someone said they were unable to exchange into Grand Luxxe via SFX using a different timeshare because they were a Mayan Palace owner, though they had been exchanging in for years before going the same route. I'm not sure if they've done anything like this with II, but I haven't seen similar restrictions on the ones they have in Registry or Third Home.

I can understand RCI allowing restrictions on developer bulk deposits, but it seems wrong to me to place these restrictions on owner/member deposits-I looked to see if the same restrictions were on both of the resort IDs for a couple of resorts where they have separate ones for the two types of deposits.

...”rules twist and turn.” ...

That is my major complaint about Vidanta. Having policies in place that are durable and predictable would be much better than arbitrarily changing them and annoying the customer unnecessarily.
 

richontug

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Agreed, Pam. There was an earlier thread I seem to remember in which someone said they were unable to exchange into Grand Luxxe via SFX using a different timeshare because they were a Mayan Palace owner, though they had been exchanging in for years before going the same route. I'm not sure if they've done anything like this with II, but I haven't seen similar restrictions on the ones they have in Registry or Third Home.

I can understand RCI allowing restrictions on developer bulk deposits, but it seems wrong to me to place these restrictions on owner/member deposits-I looked to see if the same restrictions were on both of the resort IDs for a couple of resorts where they have separate ones for the two types of deposits.



That is my major complaint about Vidanta. Having policies in place that are durable and predictable would be much better than arbitrarily changing them and annoying the customer unnecessarily.
Hi Eric,

I am the person now unable to get a Grand Luxxe. Still true, but I did get a Grand Mayan for 11/20.
 

Eric B

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Thanks, @richontug. Thought it was you, but I couldn't find the old thread. According to @T-Dot-Traveller they've done this before and then relaxed the rules again. It sure would be nice if they shared their long-term plans.
 
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