Diamond Resorts bait and switch

[hydro]

For the past 2 years, Diamond Resorts has been promoting the use of points for "all-inclusive travel", meaning that their points can be used to get reimbursed for airline tickets and rental cars booked thru Diamond, as well as for lodging. In looking thru past contracts, I discovered that this "benefit" was available in 2013 for all membership levels, but I didn't hear it promoted until 2015. It was especially promoted at the silver level (15,000 points) and above, since your points are worth 8 cents each instead of 7 at the silver level. They promoted this benefit to get people like me to buy more points and upgrade to silver. That was the bait. The switch came on January 1 this year when, without warning, Diamond changed the policy so that standard and silver members can only be reimbursed for 20% of airline tickets or car rentals. Only gold and platinum owners (>30,000 points) can get reimbursed for 100% of travel. That negates their sales pitch of all-inclusive travel for silver members. It was a lousy deal anyways. My 2017 maintenance fees were 19.3 cents a point, so if I use points for an airline ticket at 8 cents a point, I am actually paying 2.4 times the cost of the ticket, or throwing away 11.3 cents per point.

 

[WBP]

For the past 2 years, Diamond Resorts has been promoting the use of points for "all-inclusive travel", meaning that their points can be used to get reimbursed for airline tickets and rental cars booked thru Diamond, as well as for lodging. In looking thru past contracts, I discovered that this "benefit" was available in 2013 for all membership levels, but I didn't hear it promoted until 2015. It was especially promoted at the silver level (15,000 points) and above, since your points are worth 8 cents each instead of 7 at the silver level. They promoted this benefit to get people like me to buy more points and upgrade to silver. That was the bait. The switch came on January 1 this year when, without warning, Diamond changed the policy so that standard and silver members can only be reimbursed for 20% of airline tickets or car rentals. Only gold and platinum owners (>30,000 points) can get reimbursed for 100% of travel. That negates their sales pitch of all-inclusive travel for silver members. It was a lousy deal anyways. My 2017 maintenance fees were 19.3 cents a point, so if I use points for an airline ticket at 8 cents a point, I am actually paying 2.4 times the cost of the ticket, or throwing away 11.3 cents per point.

Lord knows how Diamond currently (post-1/1/2017) addresses this inequity in their sales presentation. My guess is that they refer to it as a "great value."

The "great value" was probably deduced by a Trump University mathematics or economics major, alumnus, now working for Diamond.