Bali Hai points on eBay

[troy12n]

Use Bonnet Creek as an example. What cost less per night?
1. Using CWA points on a 2 or 3 bd deluxe unit
2. Paying for 2 or 3 hotel rooms. Remember you have to find a Hotel close by of equal quality with a Security Checkpoint to access the property, several free amenities & inside access to the rooms

I’ll choose to use the cost of the MFs on CWA points every time

And a kitchen... you will be lucky to get a mini fridge and microwave in most Orlando hotels. Nothing approaching a full kitchen.

 

[dgalati]

And a kitchen... you will be lucky to get a mini fridge and microwave in most Orlando hotels. Nothing approaching a full kitchen.

The hotel room also doesn't have a separate bedroom. This can be a problem if your spouse likes to sleep in and you like to get up at 5 am. I get up early and have coffee and read the news which is impossible to do in a studio or hotel room.

 

[troy12n]

There's a couple more 1 million point PR contracts on Ebay right now, one at Clearwater, and one at Smokey Mountain Lodge

 

[VAlegacy]

There's a couple more 1 million point PR contracts on Ebay right now, one at Clearwater, and one at Smokey Mountain Lodge

Wondering how high the Clearwater will go for. Already over $12k

 

[dgalati]

Wondering how high the Clearwater will go for. Already over $12k

Look at all the bidders feed back. 78 bids a couple bidders one bidder has a 2 feed back the other has a 0 feed back. Looks fishy to me.

 

[cbyrne1174]

Wondering how high the Clearwater will go for. Already over $12k

Why are Clearwater points so insanely expensive? Is it because I live in Tampa that I take Clearwater beach for granted since I can drive there anytime I want? To me, Panama City beach has water that is WAY prettier and you have a much nicer view since it's guaranteed ocean front . I like the modern look of the Clearwater presidential units, but paying $220/night for a 1 bedroom PR unit for 39,000 points is my cap.

 

[troy12n]

Why are Clearwater points so insanely expensive? Is it because I live in Tampa that I take Clearwater beach for granted since I can drive there anytime I want? To me, Panama City beach has water that is WAY prettier and you have a much nicer view since it's guaranteed ocean front . I like the modern look of the Clearwater presidential units, but paying $220/night for a 1 bedroom PR unit for 39,000 points is my cap.

I don't know, i've lived in Tampa/St. Pete my whole life except when away for college, and I'm not big on the beach, I'm with you, we take it for granted. I would prefer Ft. Desoto's beaches or even Pass-A-Grille/St.Pete beach over Clearwater. But I, personally, don't like the vibe of the Panhandle. I've never been to any of those resorts, or Clearwater, because when I want to go on vacation, I want "different"... not what I can drive 20 minutes to.

Look at all the bidders feed back. 78 bids a couple bidders one bidder has a 2 feed back the other has a 0 feed back. Looks fishy to me.

I'm not in the market, but was wondering why it was so high too. Perhaps shill bidders? I would much rather have Bali Hai with lower MF and (i'm assuming) Outrigger membership attached.

I'm curious what Smokey Lodge MF are, I don't see them listed in the spreadsheet...

 

[dgalati]

I don't know, i've lived in Tampa/St. Pete my whole life except when away for college, and I'm not big on the beach, I'm with you, we take it for granted. I would prefer Ft. Desoto's beaches or even Pass-A-Grille/St.Pete beach over Clearwater. But I, personally, don't like the vibe of the Panhandle. I've never been to any of those resorts, or Clearwater, because when I want to go on vacation, I want "different"... not what I can drive 20 minutes to.



I'm not in the market, but was wondering why it was so high too. Perhaps shill bidders? I would much rather have Bali Hai with lower MF and (i'm assuming) Outrigger membership attached.

I'm curious what Smokey Lodge MF are, I don't see them listed in the spreadsheet...

Seems high according to this 1 million point listing at yearly maintanace fees of $8190


Item specifics

Property Address:	1424 Old Knoxville Highway	Zip/Postal Code:	37876
State/Province:	TENNESSEE	City:	SEVIERVILLE
Seller State of Residence:	Florida	Points:	1,000,000 ANNUAL WYNDHAM POINTS
Maintenance Fees (dollars):	8190	Resort Name:	WYNDHAM GREAT SMOKIES LODGE
	See Map Portions of this page and links may be provided by third party content providers such as MapQuest.com, and they are solely responsible for such content.

 

[Jan M.]

People who live up North or not anywhere near a beach love Clearwater. You can get cheap flights into Tampa so that makes it a desirable vacation destination too. People want to own there to have ARP. In the winter and early spring months you'd likely need that ARP to get what you want if you want more than just a couple of nights in a one bedroom. Whoever is the current high bidder is clearly a rookie bidder to be driving the price up like that with early bids.

 

[dgalati]

People who live up North or not anywhere near a beach love Clearwater. You can get cheap flights into Tampa so that makes it a desirable vacation destination too. People want to own there to have ARP. In the winter and early spring months you'd likely need that ARP to get what you want if you want more than just a couple of nights in a one bedroom. Whoever is the current high bidder is clearly a rookie bidder to be driving the price up like that with early bids.

That is what I call shill bidding. It works great to run up the price. Watched it play out numerous times on Ebay. Most auctions like this are relisted or offered to the 2nd or 3rd bidder. Watch and learn rookies.

 

[meetseti]

I didn't bid on the Bali Hai contract, but I'm looking to add a large block of points and this could've been a good fit. I plan to visit Kauai frequently, for several weeks at a time, so the ARP could come in handy. If Wyndham ever limited resale points to their home resort, I'd be fine. And the MF are low.

My target price has been free or extremely cheap. I can do that with CWA and certain others, but I'm not seeing it with Bali Hai. So I'm weighing options:

• Bite the bullet and get Bali Hai, despite the acquisition cost. Let it pay for itself over several years in lower MF.
• Stick to cheap or free. Grab what I can for now, and swap it out when a cheap/free Bali Hai contract comes along. Recognize this may never happen or could be years down the road.
• Aim for other low MF locations, like Grand Desert — likely not free but cheaper than Bali Hai, although they lack ARP/home resort advantages for me.

What am I missing? Which would you choose?

 

[chapjim]

I don't know, i've lived in Tampa/St. Pete my whole life except when away for college, and I'm not big on the beach, I'm with you, we take it for granted. I would prefer Ft. Desoto's beaches or even Pass-A-Grille/St.Pete beach over Clearwater. But I, personally, don't like the vibe of the Panhandle. I've never been to any of those resorts, or Clearwater, because when I want to go on vacation, I want "different"... not what I can drive 20 minutes to.



I'm not in the market, but was wondering why it was so high too. Perhaps shill bidders? I would much rather have Bali Hai with lower MF and (i'm assuming) Outrigger membership attached.

I'm curious what Smokey Lodge MF are, I don't see them listed in the spreadsheet...

There's a lot not to like about the bidding pattern. Big bucks bids by inexperienced bidders makes one wonder.

On the other hand, seller has good feedback and his other listings are very normal looking.

Question: Let's assume there are shills bidding and one of the shills wins! The seller can do whatever he wants about the winning bid amount but eBay will want its final value fee. How can the shill be certain someone else wins?

 

[Jan M.]

I didn't bid on the Bali Hai contract, but I'm looking to add a large block of points and this could've been a good fit. I plan to visit Kauai frequently, for several weeks at a time, so the ARP could come in handy. If Wyndham ever limited resale points to their home resort, I'd be fine. And the MF are low.

My target price has been free or extremely cheap. I can do that with CWA and certain others, but I'm not seeing it with Bali Hai. So I'm weighing options:

• Bite the bullet and get Bali Hai, despite the acquisition cost. Let it pay for itself over several years in lower MF.
• Stick to cheap or free. Grab what I can for now, and swap it out when a cheap/free Bali Hai contract comes along. Recognize this may never happen.
• Aim for other low MF locations, like Grand Desert — likely not free but cheaper than Bali Hai, although they lack ARP/home resort advantages for me.

What am I missing? Which would you choose?

Unless something's changed I thought there is no Hawaii inventory in CWA. There's no advantage to paying the high maintenance fees of CWA points if you won't get ARP, advance reservation priority, in Hawaii.

Be very careful not to be lured in by cheap or free. When the maintenance fees are high after a few years it won't be cheaper than paying more to have something with lower maintenance fees.

Royal Gardens in Honolulu has 2021 maintenance fees of $5.27 per thousand points before the program fee is added and Waikiki Beach Walk is $5.29. Both are considerably lower than CWA's $6.61. Grand Desert in Vegas is $4.97 for buildings 1 and 2 or $5.07 for building 3. You can usually find decent deals on points at Grand Desert.

Just to give you an idea towards the end of 2020 here on TUG I gave away a 308,000 point every other year, even years, at Waikiki Beach Walk. The other person paid the closing costs of $225 through LT Transfers and the Wyndham transfer fee of $299. I have a 308,000 annual at Grand Desert that I plan to get rid of later this year that he has first dibs on with the same deal of paying the costs.

So it cost him $524 for the closing cost and transfer fee. Based on the 2021 maintenance fees for both CWA and WBW it's a saving of $1.32 per thousand points. For 308,000 points thats $406.56 per year calculated on an annual contract. On my building 3 Grand Desert that is an annual saving of $474.32 just for 2021. If I owned in buildings 1 and 2 it would be $505.12 cheaper than owing the same amount of CWA points. And that's just for one year! That's why it doesn't take long for something with lower maintenance fees to pay for itself. If you know you'll be able to find what you want at 10 months or less when points are points then maintenance fees are very important because you pay them for as long as you own and they make your vacations cost either less or more than what it costs other people.

Right now we're on a stay that I used 295,760 points to book and with our maintenance fees cost us $1599.93. If we only had CWA points it would have cost us $2150.18. That's a difference of $550.24. I can find plenty of better ways to spend that difference on than paying maintenance fees. That would more than pay for our flights and rental car for a Vegas vacation I'm thinking of for my husband's birthday.

 

[bnoble]

My target price has been free or extremely cheap.

In general, deeds that are free have higher than average MFs. Deeds with lower than average MFs usually have an acquisition cost. If you have a time horizon of even a half-dozen or more years, most of those acquisition costs will be repaid and then some.

 

[Jan M.]

Another point to bring up for people who are in their 30s, 40s and 50s is planning for the long term. The difference in maintenance fees may not seem like a big deal when you only own maybe 154,000 points. Based on my calculations for Grand Desert and Waikiki Beach Walk compared to CWA on 154k it's $252.56-$203.28 for 2021. Not a huge amount. However what you should consider is that over the years you'll have more vacation time, may need larger units as your family grows and eventually be retired. Which means you'll very likely want and need more points. That's when maintenance fees really start to matter. Also your income will, hopefully, grow too so you'll be able to afford more points and the vacations those points will allow you to take.

If someone had told us back in 2002 when we first bought that we'd ever own as many points as we do or travel as much as we do there is absolutely no way whatsoever we would have believed them. That would have been so far beyond even our wildest dreams. But here we are now. By May 31st we'll be home a total of only 35 nights out of 164 nights in 2021. After mid July I don't anticipate being home all that much for the rest of 2021 either.

 

[meetseti]

Unless something's changed I thought there is no Hawaii inventory in CWA. There's no advantage to paying the high maintenance fees of CWA points if you won't get ARP, advance reservation priority, in Hawaii.

Thanks so much for the info!

Within just the past couple of weeks, Wyndham has added some Hawaii resorts to CWA — Ka Eo Kai, KBV, Makai Club + Cottages, Shearwater and Mauna Loa. I don't know how much CWA inventory they have there. All of these except Mauna Loa are on Kauai, which works well for me.

Going for lower MF totally makes sense. So does keeping acquisition costs low, and your examples do both. For Bali Hai, so far I haven't found deals like that, although maybe they'll come along if I keep looking long enough.

 

[meetseti]

When I initially posted about this eBay sale, I expected responses along these lines: "Some bozo paid $10,000 for a resale contract? What were they thinking?"

Instead, it's been more like "Hmm, seems like a pretty good deal!" That was a surprise to me.

 

[troy12n]

That would more than pay for our flights and rental car for a Vegas vacation I'm thinking of for my husband's birthday.

Just in case you didn't know this... a public service message for EVERYONE out there.

The rental car companies are VERY short on cars right now. ESPECIALLY in high demand places like Florida, Vegas, California.

People are reporting spending HUNDREDS of dollars, PER DAY for a car. If they can even get one.

My company has a rental agreement with fixed rates and other perks at ALL Enterprise locations, so I am unaffected, but I witnessed several people MELTING DOWN when they were told they had to pay $600 per day for a Toyota Camry the other day. I've seen reports by others saying they had a valid reservation, but when they got there, the location had NO cars on the lot.

Get your reservations in NOW, pay NOW if you can get a decent rate.

Last year when there was ZERO demand for rental cars, all of the companies sold of a good percentage of their fleets and they have NOT been replaced yet. That's what is causing this.

 

[Jan M.]

Just in case you didn't know this... a public service message for EVERYONE out there.

The rental car companies are VERY short on cars right now. ESPECIALLY in high demand places like Florida, Vegas, California.

People are reporting spending HUNDREDS of dollars, PER DAY for a car. If they can even get one.

My company has a rental agreement with fixed rates and other perks at ALL Enterprise locations, so I am unaffected, but I witnessed several people MELTING DOWN when they were told they had to pay $600 per day for a Toyota Camry the other day. I've seen reports by others saying they had a valid reservation, but when they got there, the location had NO cars on the lot.

Get your reservations in NOW, pay NOW if you can get a decent rate.

Last year when there was ZERO demand for rental cars, all of the companies sold of a good percentage of their fleets and they have NOT been replaced yet. That's what is causing this.

For $600 we could easily Uber or Lyft anywhere we wanted to go for our entire stay.

Last September/October we paid $800 something for a 39 day rental in Vegas and had a Hyundai Santa Fe. That's more than we've ever paid per week for a rental car but we got by far the best possible rate thanks to Autoslash price tracker.

If the Vegas trip is on for this Fall I guess we better plan on driving. I've thought about where we might stay on the way there and back so I'd better stop just entertaining myself with thinking about it and actually come up with a solid plan. Not that I won't change it several times when other options open up. Lol, it drives DH crazy. We say with him it's not a long drive; just a short putt.

 

[troy12n]

It would be nice if we had one night stays back by then too...

 

[dgalati]

I didn't bid on the Bali Hai contract, but I'm looking to add a large block of points and this could've been a good fit. I plan to visit Kauai frequently, for several weeks at a time, so the ARP could come in handy. If Wyndham ever limited resale points to their home resort, I'd be fine. And the MF are low.

My target price has been free or extremely cheap. I can do that with CWA and certain others, but I'm not seeing it with Bali Hai. So I'm weighing options:

• Bite the bullet and get Bali Hai, despite the acquisition cost. Let it pay for itself over several years in lower MF.
• Stick to cheap or free. Grab what I can for now, and swap it out when a cheap/free Bali Hai contract comes along. Recognize this may never happen or could be years down the road.
• Aim for other low MF locations, like Grand Desert — likely not free but cheaper than Bali Hai, although they lack ARP/home resort advantages for me.

What am I missing? Which would you choose?

Myself I like cheap or free and grab rentals that are cheaper then using my own points. I do own a resale Canterbury deed with a low maintenance fee. You are also correct on fearing Wyndham can change rules that may affect your strategy. I may suggest one more option and the key benefits.
* Rent from a VIP owner without the sunk cost of buying Bali Hai
*Renting comes without the worry of having enough House keeping Credits
*Renting can be less then paying maintenance fees if you book in the 60 day discount window and the VIP passes along the 50% discount and free room upgrades.

 

[dgalati]

Just in case you didn't know this... a public service message for EVERYONE out there.

The rental car companies are VERY short on cars right now. ESPECIALLY in high demand places like Florida, Vegas, California.

People are reporting spending HUNDREDS of dollars, PER DAY for a car. If they can even get one.

My company has a rental agreement with fixed rates and other perks at ALL Enterprise locations, so I am unaffected, but I witnessed several people MELTING DOWN when they were told they had to pay $600 per day for a Toyota Camry the other day. I've seen reports by others saying they had a valid reservation, but when they got there, the location had NO cars on the lot.

Get your reservations in NOW, pay NOW if you can get a decent rate.

Last year when there was ZERO demand for rental cars, all of the companies sold of a good percentage of their fleets and they have NOT been replaced yet. That's what is causing this.

COSTCO rental car rates are the cheapest I have found. Book now pay at time of pickup with no cancellation fees. If rate drops you can re book and cancel the original reservation at no cost( Sound familiar?). I was in Scottsdale a few weeks back for spring training and booked a intermediate size car through Costco 2 months earlier at $180 total with taxes and fees for 4 days. When I picked up car representative said it was a bargain at the rate I was paying. The weekend before he was renting cars at $180 a day. Costco also lets you add a second driver for free. You can also book off airport site to not pay the higher taxes and fees that come with a airport rental car. This Scottsdale reservation would have been $365 at Phoenix airport but was able to book a Budget 1 mile from the Worldmark Scottsdale resort. Lyft was $20 each way to airport. I would suggest becoming a Budget Fast Break member also to bypass the busy airport car rental counters. Fast Break members have all paper work waiting just pickup and pull out of lot. It also prevents the up selling these counter agents use at time of rental

 

[troy12n]

COSTCO rental car rates are the cheapest I have found. Book now pay at time of pickup with no cancellation fees. If rate drops you can re book and cancel the original reservation at no cost( Sound familiar?). I was in Scottsdale a few weeks back for spring training and booked a intermediate size car through Costco 2 months earlier at $180 total with taxes and fees for 4 days. When I picked up car representative said it was a bargain at the rate I was paying. The weekend before he was renting cars at $180 a day. Costco also lets you add a second driver for free. You can also book off airport site to not pay the higher taxes and fees that come with a airport rental car. This Scottsdale reservation would have been $365 at Phoenix airport but was able to book a Budget 1 mile from the Worldmark Scottsdale resort. Lyft was $20 each way to airport. I would suggest becoming a Budget Fast Break member also to bypass the busy airport car rental counters. Fast Break members have all paper work waiting just pickup and pull out of lot. It also prevents the up selling these counter agents use at time of rental

My company has a rental agreement with Enterprise. So I pay the same price all 50 states and territories, including airports, with free insurance, unlimited miles and roadside assistance. Depending on car or SUV option I choose, I pay between $28-35/day. Period. No demand pricing nonsense. So if I am able to make a reservation, I will have a car. I'm also Emerald Club and get upgrades, but right now they aren't honoring those because they are so short of vehicles.

The companies are so short of vehicles right now, people are really getting screwed.


I'm a Costco member too, and my rates are cheaper, i'm also not sure they are fixed rate, and do fluctuate some based on demand. But in general it should be better than most right now. The important part is if possible, pay ahead of time.

 

[troy12n]

I've been lurking on these and can't believe how high that Clearwater one is going. But looks like the current high bid is a shill bidder

 

[meetseti]

* Rent from a VIP owner without the sunk cost of buying Bali Hai
*Renting comes without the worry of having enough House keeping Credits
*Renting can be less then paying maintenance fees if you book in the 60 day discount window and the VIP passes along the 50% discount and free room upgrades.

This is a reasonable suggestion. I'm not sure it would work in my situation. I need to travel to Kauai at specific times, for several weeks at a time, to help work on my son's property. If I wait for the discount window, nothing may be available. If I rent points to book months in advance, presumably I'd pay full MF and possibly more. It's doubtful anyone would want to rent far in advance at a loss.

During the pandemic, it's hard to gauge what the demand will be for Kauai in "normal" times.