Ron's story is really about buying low and selling high. He bought contracts on ebay at a low price. He used the points and sold them to someone else without the points for the next couple years. I didn't realize that Wyndham was the buyer. So Wyndham should have bought directly from ebay instead of buying stripped contracts from Ron.
What I did was something the evolved one step at a time and there was a whole lot that happened before I would, buy, strip and sell
1) Between November 2010 and Jan 2011 I bought 385000 Wyndham points and one week at The Avenue Plaza Resort in New Orleans. The Avenue Plaza week came with the 2011 fees paid and with a reservation for Mardi Gras .I wasnt going to use that Mardi Gras reservation so I put it on Craigslist and got it rented almost immediately That worked out well so at 10 months I made five 3 and 4 day reservations for the 2012 Mardi Gras to rent, and a week at Bonnet Creek for Christmas 2011... for myself. The income from the 5 rentals paid for all the maintenancs fees, so the week at Bonnet Creek was free... I was hooked
I continued to buy, make reservations (mostly in New Orleans) and rent them, the rentals paid the fees and I had points left over for myself...
2) I was a tug member by then and had gotten involved in a long discussion about the timeshare liquidation companies and Viking Ships and the problems they caused at resorts. I took the unpopular position that these outfits provided a necessary service, I got a message from the one other participant in that discussion that agreed with me, suggesting we meet.. I had no idea what for, but I drove to Orlando to meet him at the timeshare he was staying at. The end result was that we formed a relationship with one of the timeshare relief companies. I got all their Wyndham points and weeks if I wanted them, and he got everything from another timeshare system.
3) So I was getting big. too big to use all my points for Mardi Gras and other high value weeks and weekends. I had learned about cancel and rebook for half price, but I needed to be Platinum VIP. Again Tug to the rescue.. Two tuggers let me know the secret to a low priced VIP account, I had to contact one particular salesman at Bali Hai, buy a small contract from him and convert several Pahio weeks to points and voila....Platinum. I bought enough enough Pahio weeks to do it twice, I bought two 126000 point contracts for $6000 down and $6000 financed (each) and converted 6 Pahio weeks to get 2 platinum accounts. Later I figured out that certain Pahio weeks that had been converted to points held their VIP status when sold. I used that knowledge to build 3 more Platinum accounts
4) now I was too big to handle it all myself, I needed help. I found a Points manager guy that said he could handle everything. I maintained my speciality in New Orleans, but he handled everything else. The problem was he only paid me $6/1000 points which was only about 50 cents / 1000 more than my maintenance fees. There was really no more incentive to grow. Until I figured out how to use the credit pool. .. Everything went into the pool and my guy paid me $6/1000. So for example I would get 1,000,000 points, put 3 million in the pool and be paid $18000. Depending on what time of the year I got those points I paid anywhere between no fees and one year of fees. Most of what I got came in in the last quarter, so for every million points I would "make" $10k to $12K. The problem i know you can see is that in the second and following years Id only make $500/ million points. and at sometime in the future Id have to get rid of a stripped contract. When asked about my exit plan, I would say Im gonna die owning this stuff. It will be someone elses problem. In the meantime I planned to buy 10 million points a year (making about $100000/year plus my New Orleans stuff. When I got to 50 million points under management Id stop buying and continue to make about $20000 a year plus about $40000 in New Orleans. Id be 70 with social security a little pension plus $50k or so from the timeshares
The reason Im going through my story is not to just bore you, but I want to make it clear that I did not intend to sell stripped contracts or any contracts, I intended to grow to 50 million points and then, except for 3 or 4 New Orleans events, retire. I even made arrangements for the points manager to continue to manage the points for my wife, if I was to die before her
5) But what happened was that I didnt die, and came to the realization that i will probably never retire, so I was going to keep growing...unfortunately my points manager let me know that he was reaching the limit of what he could handle from me. I began to call around to see if there was a market for stripped contracts. I was willing to even give them away, I hadnt yet gotten to the point where I would pay folks to take them off my hands, when I found a guy that said he could move them. I didnt ask any questions,I asked, but he wouldnt tell me) I sent him the deeds, for review, He prepared new deeds for my signature and away they went. I was paid a half a penny a point... that first year (2014) I sold 20 million and retained 10 million, at one point I followed one deed through the LLC that bought it from me back to Wyndham.. I suspected Wyndham was the buyer, but I didnt know for sure until I followed the deed. The next year (2015) I bought 20 and sold 20, (still retained 10) and in the 3rd year (2016) I bought and sold 10 million and had another 10 under contract, to buy, when Wyndham froze the accounts (August 2016) I know this was a good deal me and Wyndham too They needed cheap inventory to resell and they got some of it from me.
I think I know why Wyndham didnt buy from EBay. Most Ebay inventory came from the timeshare relief companies. And Wyndham had a policy not to buy anything from the timeshare relief companies, because they (the timeshare relief companies) were screwing Wyndhams customers. Thats why they created Ovation to give folks a way out without having to pay (Which is what we were suggesting early on in that Tug thread i mentioned somewhere above)
In any case that was their policy but Ovation wasnt delivering all the inventory they wanted. They were hungry for more, and they wouldnt or couldnt buy from the relief companies, so they engaged a realestate company (actually 3 companies I know of) to buy points on their behalf)
I will keep playing every angle I can to travel for less without any regrets.
