The information on the extra fee came from one of the RCI insiders posting on TUG. I know you only want to beleive what RCI itself wants to release, and you treat that as gospel, but RCI has a history of downplaying the negatives in its changes, and members usually have to figure them out for themselves. I remember way back when you did not want to believe that RCI was renting out spacebank inventory, either. If you do not do anything but follow the RCI Party Line, then you do not get the full picture on what they are up to.
You are really trying to jump from one issue to another without any logical connection. One of the strengths of the Weeks system I have long stated is that its valuation of weeks is dynamic, regularly adjusting for ever changing factors of supply and demand, a superior situation to the rigged and frozen point values in RCI Points. However, that does not mean I am in favor of monkeying around with things like the number of bands, especially when they do it in a manner to reduce the number of trades availible to many members.
Obviously you do support RCI reducing the number of trades availible to many of their members. I do not. That is a big difference between us.
Yes, the information about an extra fee did come from RCI. But it does not necessarily apply to any use of leftover credits. The fee is for
combining creidts. If you trade your 50 credit week, using 40 credits, you have 10 left over. You can use those for another exchange worth 10 without that extra fee, or combine it with other credits and pay the fee. That's where you exagerate - you don't seem to want to accept that they are offering some option without an extra fee.
I am not jumping from topic to topic. You are the one that loves a dynamic system (weeks vs points), but don't like the idea of a published dynamic system. Many of us like the idea of seeing what we have, and perhaps even why we can't trade into what we want. If nothing else, it should provide some answers for those who always seem to want what the rest of us would consider an impossible trade - they will be able to see the numbers and understand why their week won't trade into what they want - or what they need to do to make sure it does (for those that always wait until 4 months out to deposit, on the off chance they might want to use their week).
I have never said RCI didn't rent spacebank inventory - you keep making false attributions toward those who disagree with you. RCI has renter Spacebank weeks since before Cendant was involved, just not as publicly. RCI has reserved that right since at least 1992 when I first joined.
And yes, I do support RCI increasing the number of "bands" even if it means some people cannot get the same trade they always have. If they had kept only 5 or 6 bands, and published those numbers, rather than discussing average maintenance fee per point, we would see discussion about the cheapest maintenance fee for any given band. You yourself have argued that 3 bands, or even 5, are not sufficient, though much of your argument has always been about where resorts fit into those bands.
If RCI were to maintain as few as 6 bands, can you honestly say such a system is fair to those at the tops of their bands? Assuming the "5" band is now broken down to 46-55, and the "6 band to 56-60, can you honestly argue that a 55 should trade the same as a 46? Sure, the owner of the 46 is going to cry foul, but is it truly unfair? I don't think so - it is simply changing the amount you are allowed to trade up for free. And we were never guarenteed the ability to trade up in the first place.
You accuse many of us of being RCI cheerleaders, yet you are the cheerleader for many other systems, including II. Those exchange programs have their own problems, which you seem to ignore. If you want a program that treats all deposits the same, that's great, but don't expect everybody else to follow. We see value in what RCI has to offer - more value that we see in the other exchange companies.
