Maintainence Fee Question / Usage Question.

[tarheel36]

I've had a friend for years telling me buying two weeks in a RCI resort was the best thing his family has done. So finally, I've started looking into it since I now have a family of my own.

As part of my research on time shares being resold, I see a lot of places that are bi-annual odd year or even year; I understand that means you get usage on either an odd or even year. If you do not use it on your year are you just out of usage or can you bank it into RCI points and just have those until the next time your usage year is up to add more points etc?

The biggest question is let's say I got a place and the MF is $750 for example. Do I pay the MF only on the odd years if it is bi-annual odd year or do I have to pay the $750 EVERY year, which effectively means I'm paying $1500 for each week of use instead of $750 for a week of use? I really want to find out because that is a considerable difference in cost to use.

Thank you!

 

[AwayWeGo]

You Pay For Your Use Years Only. Points Expire After A Year Or 2.

Different timeshares do the billing different ways.

Our Orlando FL biennial timeshare bills us for 1/2 the use-year amount every year. The off-year amount is an estimate. The use-year amount plus the off-year payment adds up to the actual amount for our use year. (Sounds complicated but isn't).

If we don't use our unit in our use-year, we can bank it with RCI, etc. But we have to do something with it in the use year. The resort won't let us carry it over to the off-year, but RCI (etc.) will.

We also have a Kissimmee FL triennial RCI Points timeshare that bills us nothing for the 2 off years, then bills us the full maintenance fee for our use year. Yet it delivers 1/3 of the use-year points every year. The points are good 1 year & can be rolled over (free) 1 more year before expiring -- i.e., use'm or lose'm.

Different timeshares handle fee billing different ways. It's a good idea to check with the resort ahead of time before taking the plunge.

Good luck.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​