DRI- Give me your two cents, please

[clifffaith]

We LOVE our travels; having timeshares has MADE us get up and get out of the house since 2002 when we bought our first. But every January I turn into a screaming maniac as I shuffle $10K+ in DRI maintenance fees between credit cards. We've tried to look at the SUBSTANTIAL out lay of cash for purchases as money gone and under the bridge, and have tried to determine if we are getting $10K of travel from the $10K of maintenance fees. The last two years we've bought Viking River Cruises and hotel stays in New York and Boston with points becoming cash refunds, but realistically we've decided we can do quite a bit with the cash we'll save on just biting the bullet and relinquishing some points.

We are semi-retired (mostly because we are gone so much) and in two years when my husband turns 80 I want us fully retired. At the point we stop working we absolutely cannot deal with the maintenance fees the way they are, and I'm also thinking ahead to when either or both of us have physical limitations that make traveling more difficult.

Just in the last few days we have started to do some research on getting rid of some of our DRI points, maybe selling them for $1 on eBay, or having someone like Timeshare Exit Team negotiate us out of our contract(s). I joined TUG to do research at about the same time my husband called Diamond to try to get an understanding of how the maintenance fees work between the Hawaii & US Collections. The person my husband was speaking with mentioned the Loss Mitigation department in response to "do you ever take points back?" I came to TUG and was pointed at the thread on points take-back. We just emailed a request to relinquish all our DRI US points last night and have received a ticket number. If that works out, it sounds easy-peasy.

We have two "lumps" of US points (24500 + 12500) and three lumps of Hawaii points (3000 + 10000 + 11500). Best we can tell each group of points corresponds to purchases we made during presentations. We thought to get rid of the 37000 US points, leaving our Hawaii points intact. We love going to Kaanapali and do so each year, and go almost every year to Scottsdale, Sedona and Santa Fe as well. And we stay at the Royal Regency outside Paris about every three years. (We also own Worldmark, which we love, and are constantly borrowing points against the coming year because we use the heck out of it).

I just thought I'd throw our circumstances out there in case someone "see's something" in our situation that would make one course of action or another better for us. FYI, we have no mortgage on the points and paid 2016 maintenance fees, we have about 19K points left for 2016, have pending hotel stays in Boston and NY in May that I assume are "safe" from Diamond wanting/needing to take them back since they wrote us a check for them, and we have already booked Kaanapali for a week in January 2017. My reading here tells me we will be forfeiting the rest of our 2016 points.

Comments/suggestions welcome. Thank you!

 

[Ty1on]

We LOVE our travels; having timeshares has MADE us get up and get out of the house since 2002 when we bought our first. But every January I turn into a screaming maniac as I shuffle $10K+ in DRI maintenance fees between credit cards. We've tried to look at the SUBSTANTIAL out lay of cash for purchases as money gone and under the bridge, and have tried to determine if we are getting $10K of travel from the $10K of maintenance fees. The last two years we've bought Viking River Cruises and hotel stays in New York and Boston with points becoming cash refunds, but realistically we've decided we can do quite a bit with the cash we'll save on just biting the bullet and relinquishing some points.

We are semi-retired (mostly because we are gone so much) and in two years when my husband turns 80 I want us fully retired. At the point we stop working we absolutely cannot deal with the maintenance fees the way they are, and I'm also thinking ahead to when either or both of us have physical limitations that make traveling more difficult.

Just in the last few days we have started to do some research on getting rid of some of our DRI points, maybe selling them for $1 on eBay, or having someone like Timeshare Exit Team negotiate us out of our contract(s). I joined TUG to do research at about the same time my husband called Diamond to try to get an understanding of how the maintenance fees work between the Hawaii & US Collections. The person my husband was speaking with mentioned the Loss Mitigation department in response to "do you ever take points back?" I came to TUG and was pointed at the thread on points take-back. We just emailed a request to relinquish all our DRI US points last night and have received a ticket number. If that works out, it sounds easy-peasy.

We have two "lumps" of US points (24500 + 12500) and three lumps of Hawaii points (3000 + 10000 + 11500). Best we can tell each group of points corresponds to purchases we made during presentations. We thought to get rid of the 37000 US points, leaving our Hawaii points intact. We love going to Kaanapali and do so each year, and go almost every year to Scottsdale, Sedona and Santa Fe as well. And we stay at the Royal Regency outside Paris about every three years. (We also own Worldmark, which we love, and are constantly borrowing points against the coming year because we use the heck out of it).

I just thought I'd throw our circumstances out there in case someone "see's something" in our situation that would make one course of action or another better for us. FYI, we have no mortgage on the points and paid 2016 maintenance fees, we have about 19K points left for 2016, have pending hotel stays in Boston and NY in May that I assume are "safe" from Diamond wanting/needing to take them back since they wrote us a check for them, and we have already booked Kaanapali for a week in January 2017. My reading here tells me we will be forfeiting the rest of our 2016 points.

Comments/suggestions welcome. Thank you!

DRI has been accepting deedbacks for a low fee, I think $250 per contract. There is a very long thread about it here.

 

[Egret1986]

It's a sticky under All Other Timeshare Systems

Under the DRI sub-heading. It looks like a good opportunity to give back.

http://tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=224859&highlight=deed+backs

There's more advice that can be given by others here I'm sure.

 

[Kozman]

We LOVE our travels; having timeshares has MADE us get up and get out of the house since 2002 when we bought our first. But every January I turn into a screaming maniac as I shuffle $10K+ in DRI maintenance fees between credit cards. We've tried to look at the SUBSTANTIAL out lay of cash for purchases as money gone and under the bridge, and have tried to determine if we are getting $10K of travel from the $10K of maintenance fees. The last two years we've bought Viking River Cruises and hotel stays in New York and Boston with points becoming cash refunds, but realistically we've decided we can do quite a bit with the cash we'll save on just biting the bullet and relinquishing some points.

We are semi-retired (mostly because we are gone so much) and in two years when my husband turns 80 I want us fully retired. At the point we stop working we absolutely cannot deal with the maintenance fees the way they are, and I'm also thinking ahead to when either or both of us have physical limitations that make traveling more difficult.

Just in the last few days we have started to do some research on getting rid of some of our DRI points, maybe selling them for $1 on eBay, or having someone like Timeshare Exit Team negotiate us out of our contract(s). I joined TUG to do research at about the same time my husband called Diamond to try to get an understanding of how the maintenance fees work between the Hawaii & US Collections. The person my husband was speaking with mentioned the Loss Mitigation department in response to "do you ever take points back?" I came to TUG and was pointed at the thread on points take-back. We just emailed a request to relinquish all our DRI US points last night and have received a ticket number. If that works out, it sounds easy-peasy.

We have two "lumps" of US points (24500 + 12500) and three lumps of Hawaii points (3000 + 10000 + 11500). Best we can tell each group of points corresponds to purchases we made during presentations. We thought to get rid of the 37000 US points, leaving our Hawaii points intact. We love going to Kaanapali and do so each year, and go almost every year to Scottsdale, Sedona and Santa Fe as well. And we stay at the Royal Regency outside Paris about every three years. (We also own Worldmark, which we love, and are constantly borrowing points against the coming year because we use the heck out of it).

I just thought I'd throw our circumstances out there in case someone "see's something" in our situation that would make one course of action or another better for us. FYI, we have no mortgage on the points and paid 2016 maintenance fees, we have about 19K points left for 2016, have pending hotel stays in Boston and NY in May that I assume are "safe" from Diamond wanting/needing to take them back since they wrote us a check for them, and we have already booked Kaanapali for a week in January 2017. My reading here tells me we will be forfeiting the rest of our 2016 points.

Comments/suggestions welcome. Thank you!

I gave my two fixed weeks at Williamsburg back to DRI last year for the $250 fee each. Painless and gone. The maintenance fees have skyrocketed since i aquired them in 2003. Between the two the mf went from $800 to $3000. I was estatic to unload them. Originally i could easily rent them for a small profit. However you can no longer compete with RCI for price.