When Wyndham originally transitioned from weeks deposits to points deposits, the points required for an RCI reservation were in most cases, higher than the points required to make the reservation directly through Wyndham. So if an off season week at a Wyndham resort was say 126K points, going to the RCI site may have been showing 166K points, and on top of that, you had the $200 or so transfer fee. I called initially to ask "is the points in RCI including the transfer fee?", as I knew it wasn't but because it seemed that most RCI reservations were roughly 40K points more, I wanted to find out why they were higher, plus you had to pay the transfer fee... At the very least, they should have matched up to Wyndham. The person couldn't answer my question on the more points issue, but stated that of course, no, transfer fee was still required.
Since then, RCI's points requirement is now normally less than Wyndham for a week (about 40K...) though sometimes they are the same during PEAK season. I actually have an excel spreadsheet that when I'm looking to make a reservation into a Wyndham, I put in the Wyndham points (it calculates based on my average MF costs), and the cost of 1 reservation fee (ya, I know I have X free... but it's just to compare). I then load in the RCI points on the next line, and it adds in the reservation fee, and transfer fee. Last line is if there is an Extra Vacation or Last Call available, and that cost. Gives me 3 rates to compare and choose from.
Below is an example of a week at Smugglers during Thanksgiving week.
Avg. MF 5.05
Resort Wyndham Smugglers Notch
Date 11/23/2013
Days 7
Wyndham Points 126000
RCI Points 126000
RCI Extra Vacations $649.00
RCI Exchange Fee $199.00
Wyndham Res (transfer) $30.00
Wyndham Points $666.30
RCI Points $865.30
RCI Extra Vacations $649.00
Interesting, as the week prior to this, Wyndham is still 126K points, but RCI is only 77K points. So it's worth checking both systems to see where the best deal is.
