Thank you for all of the replies. When we bought the contract two years ago, it came with bonus points. And we have used them each year. I’m just concerned now that I’m silver we won’t be getting the upgrades like we were with the gold status. But I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth buying through Wyndham or buying just a bunch of points on the secondary market.
So you're actually using all 500k annual points - plus whatever bonus points you were entitled to. Let's first define how large your bonus points contract was here. How many bonus points did you have that you have since used up? When did you initially buy into Wyndham? I'm guessing a bit over two years ago since bonus points contracts typically expire after a two year period. How often did you receive free room upgrades and how often did you book within the discount window to take advantage of the 35% VIPG points discount? If you don't typically use the discount window often, then it's generally not worth much to upgrade to a higher VIP tier as the major benefit is higher points discounts and free room upgrades (when available of course).
Regarding the PIC program - here's a good article that describes what PIC is and how to use it:
https://wyndhamexperts.wpcomstaging.com/2019/07/27/wyndham-pic-program/
Basically PIC allows Wyndham to enroll non-Wyndham timeshares into the PIC program and then provide either VIP qualifying points and/or actual Wyndham points when you convert those PIC properties each year. The article will flush out more details of course. I'm a PIC owner myself, having bought into Wyndham in 2018 with two PIC properties in hand - two RCI weeks that we owned - week 37 at Colonies at Williamsburg, and week 42 at the Outer Banks Beach Club I. When you enroll your RCI weeks based properties using PIC Plus - you get a certain amount of points that count toward your VIP status - that you can then convert into points each year if you want to forgo using your actual RCI weeks each year. That's what we have done for the past several years now. We currently own 210k CWA points, along with two 254k PIC Plus contracts - for a total of 718k Wyndham developer qualified points - which back in 2018 put us at VIPG (700k) with temp VIPP for two years due to a large bonus contract that we received when we purchased. So we were VIPP for two years (that was nice) - after which we dropped down to VIPG. We were under the prior VIP program - so we are VIPG Grandfathered status - which means we still have unlimited RTs and HKCs - unlike the current VIP program which doesn't offer unlimited anything.
So for example, if you to find two eligible RCI weeks - and then enroll them into Wyndham using the PIC Plus program (don't ever use PIC Express just to be clear), then you'd go from the current 500k VIPS - to VIPP permanent with temp VIPF (Founders) level - if you attach a bonus contract to your next purchase. You'd have to buy at least another 100k Wyndham points with the PIC Plus enrollments, but you'd then have:
500k VIPS
508k PIC - two 254k PIC Plus contracts
100k new points purchased
1108k total (VIPP is attained at 1100k points permanent)
This may or may not make any financial sense nor vacation sense for you dependent upon your actual vacationing needs - i.e. 1100k points may be way too many points to use - especially with the larger 50% discount window points. etc. Only you can determine if this makes any sense for you long term. Figure the 100k points would run you roughly 15k if you were to purchase more CWA points - or you could spend a bit more and convert to lower MF points at the same time - like National Harbor points - to bring down your MFs longer term. Whether doing so makes any sense or not entirely depends on how you use CWA today - for example if you make good use of ARP bookings 13-10 months out using CWA - then you may want to stick with your CWA ownership - however if you tend to make most of your reservations 10 months out or less - in the SRP - then keeping CWA may not make sense long term.
Lastly, here at TUG we always recommend buying resale. We ended up buying a larger resale NH contract (689k points) and stayed at VIPG for now, mostly because it just doesn't make any financial sense to buy 400k more points at developer prices no matter how we looked at it. That's basically spending 50k up front - the ROI for us just never made sense even over the long term. Please ask any/all questions as needed - we at TUG are always here to help!
