RCI fees

[clfieguth]

I booked one week at the Grandview in Las Vegas and was charged $385 CDN, which in US dollars is comprised of $199 USD exchange fee, plus a points protect fee of about $60 USD or so. (back in 2007 when we signed up it was $79 USD), . RCI have now come up with points protect fee plus if you want them to call you back with regard to an available week we are told that we have to join the Platinum Membership which has grown from $49 a year a few years ago to where is is about $120 annually (I believe this is a CDN dollar figure). If my calculations are correct, the annual maintenance fee plus the $385 CDN works out to be about $125 per day for a 2 weeks, or slightly under $100 CDN per day based on a 6 week vacation.

What is going on? is the time share industry purposely pricing the owners so that they can force them out in order for some big resort chain to buy them out? I just don't get it!

I cancelled the week at the Grandview and, at this point I am so upset that I am planning to tell the resorts to cancel, refuse to pay or tell them to take their time shares back.

I encourage thoughts and ideas suggested course(s) of action.

Thanks

 

[DeniseM]

I cancelled the week at the Grandview and, at this point I am so upset that I am planning to tell the resorts to cancel, refuse to pay or tell them to take their time shares back.

RCI and the resorts are completely separate entities, so the RCI fees don't have anything to do with your resorts.

If you stop making your resort payments/maintenance fees, the resorts will try to get you to pay, by turning you over to collections - it won't be pretty.

You don't have to pay for all those additional fees at RCI - I don't. I just put in an ongoing search (which is like waitlisting) as early as possible and wait for the exchange I want to come in. You need to put your request in as early as possible.

 

[moonstone]

We have been members of RCI since the very early '80's and yes their fees have gone up a lot. Our first "Extra Vacation" was $99.(US) for a week in the early 90's. We had a 3 bedroom townhouse that slept 12 for that! My parents, who came with us, kept asking if we were sure the rate wasn't per night.

We have a week that is floating time and I book our home resort when we want to go to avoid exchange fees for it. We also own RCI Points and I recently discovered that I can book up to 10 days for 1 exchange fee. So we can go away for 20 days with 2 exchange fees.

I have complained to RCI numerous times about the treatment (poor exchange rate for Canadians & slow to keep up with current exchange rates) of their Canadian members. We are Florida condo (non-timeshare) owners, have a Bank of America bank account, and our timeshares are in the USA, but RCI will not let me pay their US rates! Grrr!

With a bit of planning you can avoid paying unnecessary or extra fees to RCI.


~Diane

 

[echino]

RCI has a separate fee structure for Canadians, and their fees are much higher than US fees converted using today's exchange rate. For example, exchange fee us USD $239, which is equal to CAD ~$299 at today's exchange rate. However, RCI charges Canadians CAD $359, which is 20% higher than the converted US fee. Because of that, RCI membership is not a good deal for Canadians at all.

I get a free II Gold membership with my Hyatt week, and they charge the same exchange fees to US and Canadian members, and those fees are much lower than RCI.