WhenInHere
Guest
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2023
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 6
Hello everyone,
Saturday (3/11) we went to a presentation at the Welk property in Escondido for the travel gift and came away buying into this Hyatt Vacation Club program, which is I guess what they call the Welk program now that it's been merged with Hyatt. It sounded like a good deal at the time, but I'm sure like many others, I've been growing more cold on it. We've got 7 days to rescind and I'm now heavily considering it. My money is too tight as it is.
But now we have dreams of going on affordable vacations and we'd hate to see us lose everything they offered us. Tbh, now I wish I didn't go at all, because I was perfectly happy with my life before we went, but now I know what lifestyle I'm missing out on and the stress of trying to make a good decision has compounded my usual money stresses. But I'm very confused and don't want to make a mistake and you kind people seem like the experts.
So we bought 120,000 points bi-annually (every other year) with their club. It's worth about a single bedroom studio with a kitchen, which is probably fine for us since we don't have kids, and they said it could be easily upgraded into better rooms for a little money. It also came with a free bonus week, from Interval I believe, which I think we get gold membership to for 2 years(?) (I'm still trying to parse this contract, I hope I'm getting these parts right). It cost around $17,000 dollars with about $1400 in maintenence fees. It's got 14% interest, so we'd want to pay it quickly down so we don't end up paying double that in 10 years.
Now, we're not actually that interested in the Welk properties. A couple seemed kinda nice but the closest one isn't in the most convenient spot (I wish Escondido was closer to San Diego) and we also don't care to go to the same resort every year (or every other year).
Instead, these are the parts that sold us:
1. Being able to transfer our points into interval for $279 and stay in a one-bedroom at any resort in their catalogue they showed us for a week. $279 for a week seems like a cheap way to stay in various countries all around the world. They also said something about the Elite status of their properties gives us higher priority or something like that? I'm still not sure how the Elite and Premium rank of the properties comes into play but apparently it helps. This is the main thing that made it seem attractive. We also like that we could split it up into less than weeks, so we could take weekend jaunts to Napa or Vegas or whatever.
2. Transfer our points either through interval (?) or through their World of Hyatt program to stay in any Hyatt hotel, which also expands the places we can stay. We go to Comic-Con every year and were hoping this could let us stay in the expensive downtown hotels. If it let us stay in what are usually $500 a night downtown hotels during comic con for $279 the whole week then that would be awesome and could quickly add up to be worth it over a couple years.
3. They gave us some nice perks. 120,000 bonus points this year, 2 bonus free interval weeks, a VIP dining experience at the new Gordon Ramsey Hell's Kitchen restaurant near the Escondido Welk resort through some new Hyatt experiences thing they said they're starting. I'll really miss that one if we rescind, but I don't think I care about these as much.
4. It sounds kind the whatever gold membership that comes with a concierge also offers discounts on flights, which would also help pay for the other expensive part of traveling. Once again, a lesser priority, but it did factor into me buying it.
Why not rescind? Our concerns with not keeping it:
Sorry for the all of text guys. We really want to make sure we're making the right decision. This has been terrible on our anxiety and mental health today and yesterday. We've got the rescission letter written up, just looking for a reason to do it. Thanks for any help and advice you can give.
Saturday (3/11) we went to a presentation at the Welk property in Escondido for the travel gift and came away buying into this Hyatt Vacation Club program, which is I guess what they call the Welk program now that it's been merged with Hyatt. It sounded like a good deal at the time, but I'm sure like many others, I've been growing more cold on it. We've got 7 days to rescind and I'm now heavily considering it. My money is too tight as it is.
But now we have dreams of going on affordable vacations and we'd hate to see us lose everything they offered us. Tbh, now I wish I didn't go at all, because I was perfectly happy with my life before we went, but now I know what lifestyle I'm missing out on and the stress of trying to make a good decision has compounded my usual money stresses. But I'm very confused and don't want to make a mistake and you kind people seem like the experts.
So we bought 120,000 points bi-annually (every other year) with their club. It's worth about a single bedroom studio with a kitchen, which is probably fine for us since we don't have kids, and they said it could be easily upgraded into better rooms for a little money. It also came with a free bonus week, from Interval I believe, which I think we get gold membership to for 2 years(?) (I'm still trying to parse this contract, I hope I'm getting these parts right). It cost around $17,000 dollars with about $1400 in maintenence fees. It's got 14% interest, so we'd want to pay it quickly down so we don't end up paying double that in 10 years.
Now, we're not actually that interested in the Welk properties. A couple seemed kinda nice but the closest one isn't in the most convenient spot (I wish Escondido was closer to San Diego) and we also don't care to go to the same resort every year (or every other year).
Instead, these are the parts that sold us:
1. Being able to transfer our points into interval for $279 and stay in a one-bedroom at any resort in their catalogue they showed us for a week. $279 for a week seems like a cheap way to stay in various countries all around the world. They also said something about the Elite status of their properties gives us higher priority or something like that? I'm still not sure how the Elite and Premium rank of the properties comes into play but apparently it helps. This is the main thing that made it seem attractive. We also like that we could split it up into less than weeks, so we could take weekend jaunts to Napa or Vegas or whatever.
2. Transfer our points either through interval (?) or through their World of Hyatt program to stay in any Hyatt hotel, which also expands the places we can stay. We go to Comic-Con every year and were hoping this could let us stay in the expensive downtown hotels. If it let us stay in what are usually $500 a night downtown hotels during comic con for $279 the whole week then that would be awesome and could quickly add up to be worth it over a couple years.
3. They gave us some nice perks. 120,000 bonus points this year, 2 bonus free interval weeks, a VIP dining experience at the new Gordon Ramsey Hell's Kitchen restaurant near the Escondido Welk resort through some new Hyatt experiences thing they said they're starting. I'll really miss that one if we rescind, but I don't think I care about these as much.
4. It sounds kind the whatever gold membership that comes with a concierge also offers discounts on flights, which would also help pay for the other expensive part of traveling. Once again, a lesser priority, but it did factor into me buying it.
Why not rescind? Our concerns with not keeping it:
- The main thing we want is the flexibility to travel to different places around the country and world, which, judging from the presentation, seems to be through access to the II thing. If it can't be resold with that interval stuff attached, then does that mean buying on the resale is it not worth it for us? Or can we buy points or something for cheap on the resale market, or through another vacation club or timeshare program, and then still get interval to work with that, so we can still go somewhere different every year?
- They also have first right of refusal during resales that we saw. If we rescind, will we not be able to buy this in the future because they saw that we backed out and prevent us from buying better deals on the resale market in the future?
- Also, like I said above, we couldn't actually find a lot of ways to buy Hyatt Vacation Club stuff in resale markets, so we're wondering if that's harder to do than it seems. Would we rescind this and just end up buying from the developer again if we decide we want this in the future?
- Finally they set up an owner's call on Friday. Should we use that opportunity to ask questions and clear stuff up? Is it not worth it because they'll use any opportunity to get us to not rescind and stay in even when that's a bad idea and we've proven we can fall prey to their tactics?
Sorry for the all of text guys. We really want to make sure we're making the right decision. This has been terrible on our anxiety and mental health today and yesterday. We've got the rescission letter written up, just looking for a reason to do it. Thanks for any help and advice you can give.
