Current Purchase of Minimum DC Points to Join

[rthib]

m61
I thought about joining just the DC points alone but I was advised there was little use in that as I would not have access to the Marriott inventory that is not showing up on II now. I have a number of weeks deposited with II so I need to keep my membership there until I use them up, so no real fee savings at this point from just joining, needed to buy DC points.

Can say this is wrong.
We enrolled and were able to make a reservation with points and there was nothing showing up in II.

If you bought points because you do not feel you have enough for enrollment that is fine. But buying a few points because it will allow you to access the supposedly hidden inventory is not a good idea in my opinion, because so far I am not seeing anything hidden from me.

 

[m61376]

I would tend to agree. One thing that I don't understand is why a 1000 point package? What can you really get with 1000 points in the system? It seems like a lot of money for what may equate to a couple days tacked on to the end of an existing stay. I guess one could get an off season 5 nighter (Mon through Fri) with those points or an off beach HHI. Anything prime though really isn't going to do much. I guess the 1000 points perhaps removed the skim factor, though the price is high for something that we should have gotten for free.

I get the sense from this thread and others that the salespeople are pushing the smaller point packages to legacy week owners to somehow give them better access to trust inventory. The half truth to this is that, yes, the newly purchased points will have direct access to trust inventory before it is put into the exchange pool - BUT- and this is the big "but" that they fail to mention- the legacy points will still only be able to access inventory in the exchange pool and buying 1000 points doesn't "supercharge" those legacy points or give them any better access.

I can understand it if people are buying to offset the skim or perhaps be able to reserve at higher point resorts, but I am reading a lot of posts like this one where I get the sense that people are buying feeling it will upgrade their existing ownership and give them access with their legacy points to inventory that they otherwise have no access or limited access to. That's where the salespeople are doing a great job of misleading people.

Cobra1950 seems to have bought the 1000 points to get more value from his legacy points from his Plat. Plus ski weeks, not because he wanted more points to reserve. In fact, even with the skim he should be able to reserve the regular Plat. ski weeks that he stated he wants; alternately, I wonder if he checked if he could simply reserve a week in the Plat. season with his Plat. Plus week, which some of the properties allow. I may be wrong, but I think he, like many others, feel that somehow those 1000 points enhance the value of their legacy points- a common misconception which the salespeople seem to be generating.

 

[MikeZ]

Just sat through a presentation at Waiohai,and that IS what they are selling. Nice guy, decent presentation, but the main focus for him was to sell me extra points to "unlock the potential" of the trust points. He wasn't as blatant as some of the other salespeople I have encountered in calling legacy points "useless", but his only possibility for selling us extra weeks was to use this ploy. With over 13,000 points that I'm having trouble using now, that made no sense!

The couple we are traveling with got the same exact pitch-add points so you can be part of the Trust....both misrepresented the potential to combine with legacy points, but did not outright lie. It was a close line, though!

 

[m61376]

Just sat through a presentation at Waiohai,and that IS what they are selling. Nice guy, decent presentation, but the main focus for him was to sell me extra points to "unlock the potential" of the trust points. He wasn't as blatant as some of the other salespeople I have encountered in calling legacy points "useless", but his only possibility for selling us extra weeks was to use this ploy. With over 13,000 points that I'm having trouble using now, that made no sense!

The couple we are traveling with got the same exact pitch-add points so you can be part of the Trust....both misrepresented the potential to combine with legacy points, but did not outright lie. It was a close line, though!

The problem is is that most owners do not belong to Tug and do not even know what questions to ask, and when the very nice salesperson tells them that buying trust points will enable you to get hard to reserve reservations, most people accept the inference that it puts all their points in a different category and are inclined to spend the extra money to secure their prior investment. After all, what's another 10 grand if you've already sunk 50-100 grand (and in some cases even more) and you want to make sure you're an integral player in the new program? They're successfully blurring the line between fact and fiction, and given the sales statistics it appears they are doing a good job of it.

Other than to compensate for the skim, why else would people be buying 1000 point packages like they are? As Dioxide posted above, there isn't much real use from 1000 points. Clearly, the average customer is being duped at least somewhat into believing that buying the small points package will somehow magically transform their current ownership and make them part of the wave of the future.

 

[kds4]

I get the sense from this thread and others that the salespeople are pushing the smaller point packages to legacy week owners to somehow give them better access to trust inventory. The half truth to this is that, yes, the newly purchased points will have direct access to trust inventory before it is put into the exchange pool - BUT- and this is the big "but" that they fail to mention- the legacy points will still only be able to access inventory in the exchange pool and buying 1000 points doesn't "supercharge" those legacy points or give them any better access.

I can understand it if people are buying to offset the skim or perhaps be able to reserve at higher point resorts, but I am reading a lot of posts like this one where I get the sense that people are buying feeling it will upgrade their existing ownership and give them access with their legacy points to inventory that they otherwise have no access or limited access to. That's where the salespeople are doing a great job of misleading people.

Cobra1950 seems to have bought the 1000 points to get more value from his legacy points from his Plat. Plus ski weeks, not because he wanted more points to reserve. In fact, even with the skim he should be able to reserve the regular Plat. ski weeks that he stated he wants; alternately, I wonder if he checked if he could simply reserve a week in the Plat. season with his Plat. Plus week, which some of the properties allow. I may be wrong, but I think he, like many others, feel that somehow those 1000 points enhance the value of their legacy points- a common misconception which the salespeople seem to be generating.

As an enrolled owner of an external resale week, we chose to buy our 1,000 point package based on the following sales pitch/line of reasoning.

We want to go to X property during X week. Based upon the ability of other points owners to stay here a night, there a night (instead of for a full week at a time), our enrolled week/legacy points cannot secure a full week at the property we want to stay at during the time period we want to stay. It can only get Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. However, those nights that are not available to us with our legacy points, are available as trust point inventory. Except, unless we own/rent trust points, we can't fill in the missing nights to complete our several consecutive night's stay.

We bought our points to be able to fill in the gaps with our enrolled week reservations, whenever they should occur, wherever they should occur, not knowing the future state of the points rental market, not knowing how much higher trust point purchase prices will rise between now and the potential eventuality where we will need said trust points to complete a reservation. We consider it an insurance policy, nothing more. We may never need it. We may never use it. We understand that, and accept it.

 

[csalter2]

As an enrolled owner of an external resale week, we chose to buy our 1,000 point package based on the following sales pitch/line of reasoning.

We want to go to X property during X week. Based upon the ability of other points owners to stay here a night, there a night (instead of for a full week at a time), our enrolled week/legacy points cannot secure a full week at the property we want to stay at during the time period we want to stay. It can only get Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. However, those nights that are not available to us with our legacy points, are available as trust point inventory. Except, unless we own/rent trust points, we can't fill in the missing nights to complete our several consecutive night's stay.

We bought our points to be able to fill in the gaps with our enrolled week reservations, whenever they should occur, wherever they should occur, not knowing the future state of the points rental market, not knowing how much higher trust point purchase prices will rise between now and the potential eventuality where we will need said trust points to complete a reservation. We consider it an insurance policy, nothing more. We may never need it. We may never use it. We understand that, and accept it.

I understand this, but I don't like it at all. So bsaically you may need trust points to fill in the gaps. Now I have been in support of the DC program for legacy owners who joined. However, this to me is ridiculous and really just seems to be a way just make more money.

 

[kds4]

I understand this, but I don't like it at all. So bsaically you may need trust points to fill in the gaps. Now I have been in support of the DC program for legacy owners who joined. However, this to me is ridiculous and really just seems to be a way just make more money.

That is what we were told. "Based on the ability of DC points owners to pick and choose night by night how they use their points, (and correspondingly consume inventory), you could find yourselves in a situation where a multi-consecutive nights stay that you want is not available without ownership of trust inventory points (to 'fill in the blanks')."

The potential for this occurring made sense to us, and was the reason (read slight sense of coersion) that we bought what we did when we did.

 

[m61376]

I wonder if they also explained that, but having the 2 buckets for reservations, the likelihood is that you will either be short or have excess in one or the either or both buckets, so it just makes everything a bit more convoluted and wasteful; of course, that just means you're pushed either to buy more points or to let points lie fallow- either way, good for Marriott, but bad for the consumer.