II WM vs. FSP

[acesneights]

Assuming one wants to access the II inventory: What's the best way to do this?

I could have my wife buy GG and get an II membership and transfer FSP points to her to exchange.

I could buy a small WM acct to use with II.

Or would it be best to do both?

Use WM to search II and then make a FSP II deposit to make the exchange.

There are 1000s of posts about II, making it difficult to pull together all the info here on TUG.

Stan

 

[ausman]

From what I know of your ownership, I think the best option is to buy a small ownership in your wife's name only and transfer points to that account.

If you are already using all points within WYN then perhaps branch out and get a small WM account and rent in points from other owners.

Have you looked/asked at the Yahoo II group.?

 

[janej]

I am not sure about WM. But I have FSP II account. It does not seem to trade too well. It is great for last minute or low season, good quality resorts. I have school age children. I have not seen much at all for the weeks that we can actually use. I am very new to II. It might not be the right time to try summer 09 or Xmas 08, 09.

I would use option 1 unless you find out that WM trades better. You can at least transfer your points to one FSP account and use it the same way as you do today.

 

[vacationhopeful]

There are several II resorts within the FSP system. But you have to set up a new member number - but for one RT you can transfer points to your other account. Wyndham likes to give RCI accounts so you will have to insist that one is II.

Buy a resale FSP points as you are located on the East Coast where the Wyndham availability might be better than Worldmark's.

As travel costs and money gets tighter or more scarce - there may be more exchange availability.

JMO,

 

[mfan]

I can't speak for FSP, but I've been pleased with WM's II trade power. I'm a fairly new WM owner (about 9 months), and we have either completed or turned down the following trades so far:

• Westin Lagunamar (Cancun) for their opening week in August,

• Marriott's Newport Beach Villa for Xmas week 2008,

• Royal Islander (Cancun) for Spring break week 2009,

• Royal Caribbean (Cancun) for Thanksgiving week 2009, and

• Royal Islander (Cancun) for August 2010.

As you may have noticed, we only plan vacation during school holidays because we have kids. Some of these are not difficult trades, but we figure it's not bad for only 9 month... Of course, we'll never know what we may have missed.

However, unlike you, we live in the SF Bay Area. So, WM is the better choice for us anyway. I'm not sure if it makes sense to buy WM just for II trades.

 

[LLW]

Assuming one wants to access the II inventory: What's the best way to do this?

I could have my wife buy GG and get an II membership and transfer FSP points to her to exchange.

I could buy a small WM acct to use with II.

Or would it be best to do both?

Use WM to search II and then make a FSP II deposit to make the exchange.

There are 1000s of posts about II, making it difficult to pull together all the info here on TUG.

Stan

Re the Worldmark option:

1. WM trades very well with II. About the only trading challenge it can't overcome is the internal system preference periods of Marriott and Starwood, and any other internal preferences of other systems - you would have to wait till the preference periods are over. You can request or search on line with a 3BR Float week under Request First, and only pay after you find the week that you like. If you are willing to take the risks and work with the hassles of Deposit First, you can also get good trades with a bargain deposit.

2. It's true you can start with buying a small WM account. You may also rent points from other owners, and continue to do many big trades without increasing your initial investment.

3. Buying WM just for trading would be a good option if you become skillful in trading using WM. But you should study WM and understand WM ownership first. You can do that by reading the forums at http://www.wmowners.com/forum/.

 

[acesneights]

I thought the advantage of WM was you could have many searches without putting up points or an exchange fee.

If you use FSP points to search, you are committed to depositing the points and putting up the exchange fee(s). Just like RCI.

Stan

 

[janej]

Stan,

With FSP, you can also search online without deposit. You might even be able to do search request without deposit. But you have to pay the exchange fee. I have played online a lot, and have not seen much good options. I have not done search request though.

 

[LLW]

I thought the advantage of WM was you could have many searches without putting up points or an exchange fee.

If you do a Request First, you have to pay the exchange fee up front. You don't have to pay the points up front - you pay when it matches. You can cancel any time before it matches, and get a refund of the exchange fee.

If you search on line yourself, you don't have to put up points or the fee until you press "exchange" when you see what you want. You are charged according to the season and size you receive, not the size you search with. So you can search with a 3BR to get the maximum trade power.

If you do a deposit, you can search on line against it, without paying the exchange fee first. You can also do an on-going search against the deposit, by paying an exchange fee.

 

[bnoble]

Unless you have a lot of extra FSP points, I'd be tempted to go with WM. From what I can glean, it trades better. But, I haven't done the math to look at cost-effectiveness, especially comparing cost of credit to cost of 1K points.

Don't rule out a strong fixed week. II allows you to place searches over as many resorts as you want, for different dates, with one search---which can be search first (rather than deposit first) even with fixed weeks. I've been very happy with my fixed-weeks' performance in II.

 

[Rent_Share]

I've been pleased with WM's II trade power . . .

• Westin Lagunamar (Cancun) for their opening week in August,

• Royal Islander (Cancun) for August 2010.

Some of these are not difficult trades . . . .

Not exeactly peak season

 

[Jya-Ning]

Don't own II resort. Just a lot of lousy questions.

What do you think WM's value will be hold?

And since they both belong to Wyndham, how much confidence you have now in that company?

With all new WM resorts are affliating with RCI, what you think will be on the overall trading power?

With Wyndham, at least you can manipulate your points between both accounts.

But have you consider Diamond? Or you would rather deal with one bad guy?

Jya-Ning

 

[acesneights]

Diamond makes Wyndham look top of the line

I considered Diamond, but if you think WYN/FSP resale is bad, consider Diamond.

You pay $4/pt for resale of $0.20/pt.

PLUS YOU PAY $3000 to get T.H.E. CLUB for your resale.

(Assuming no discount) you pay $100,000 for 25,000 points which you can then sell for $5,000 but the buyer has to pay $3000 to get full use of the points and whatever Diamond charges for the transfer.

And there is no guarantee that Diamond will even continue to allow resales access to T.H.E. CLUB.

And there is no guarantee that Diamond won't load a new resort in Podunk into the Trust or that the Trust won't buy some overpriced resort from the Diamond insiders and put it into the Trust.

Kind of like WM is seeing with new resorts with higher credit values dumped in the WM Trust diluting the old owners.

Also like Seawatch in MB where WYN is selling high point value OB contracts which them have ARP in Seawatch leaving the SW owners scrambling to get reservations at their deeded resort.

Stan

 

[LLW]

Don't own II resort. Just a lot of lousy questions.

What do you think WM's value will be hold?

And since they both belong to Wyndham, how much confidence you have now in that company?

With all new WM resorts are affliating with RCI, what you think will be on the overall trading power?

Nobody has a crystal ball for the future, not WM owners, nor Wyndham Fairfield owners. But both have seen what damages Wyndham has done to their timeshares.

I don't have confidence in Wyndham VO at all. But I have confidence in WM, or rather, in educated WM owners' ability to optimize the vacation value of WM. Most WM owners are not using WM to the best of what it can do and never will. I believe WM is and will continue to be one of the best timeshares to own. Sorry, I am just biased.

I am not too sure on what you are asking on WM's trade power as a result of affiliation with RCI. Did you mean WM's trade power in II? So far, about 4 years after Wyndham switched WM back to RCI, WM has continued to have excellent trade power in II. Note that only less than 10% of WM owners do exchanges (probably due to the fee-free flexibility to go to any of over 60 resorts), and WM has resorts in many locations where there is not an oversupply of other timeshare resorts. That may be one of the reasons why WM has great trade power in both II and RCI.

 

[lprstn]

I personally think having an II can be highly over rated. If you are able to trade within RCI and get what you want then go for it. If you want to go somewhere within II, just rent some of your points for $$$ and rent the week at the location you want from an owner.

I currently have both II and RCI and only use my II account every once in awhile for VA Beach / DVC and Marriott trades or getaways which comes out to 1 time every year. Not really worth the trouble, but now I get the membership included with my Sheraton Vistana (which is a dual trader).