I purchase 2 weeks for the price of one and take my chances or the one week and feel more secure??
If it were me, I'd definitely buy the 2 weeks for the price of one, with no reservation. Look at it this way:
-these statements are rumors at best; at worst they are the overactive imaginations of salespeople desperate to make a sale
-Marriott , IMHO and that of many here who certainly know a lot more than me, would be stupid to shoot itself in the foot. Many Marriott owners are repeat customers; even resale owners are prime prospects for pre-construction purchases at the new resorts they are anticipating building. Furthermore, any changes to existing owners which would affect use of their current ownership would be ripe for litigation; Marriott would be stupid to put themselves in such a position and would be sure to avoid the negative publicity that this would incur. As DaveM has postulated on the other thread (and I quote him, because he has some reliable resources and differentiates between fact and fiction) grandfathering of current resale owners is the most likely scenario. Frankly, it is the only one which makes business sense for Marriott, again in my opinion.
-if resales in the future are negatively impacted by a new system, one will naturally expect the resale market to wither and values to decline, because buyers will not have as many benefits (hence, the product would be worth less). You are already seeing that buying from the developer immediately means that the value of the product being purchased will diminish by half for your particular property (since you can buy 2 for the price of 1). Thus, IF there were to be any adverse effects from the new policy, you would stand to lose less, because all owners would take a bath on reselling.
-the likely scenario, as stated in the other post on this topic, is that present resale owners will retain the same rights and that ownership benefits would likely only change for future resale buyers.
-keep in mind that Marriott does not have a monopoly on exchanging. The more they exclude from their internal exchange program, the more business they lose- to II and elsewhere. If, for instance, they were to enact the internal exchanges at 6 months only for developer purchases, I would venture to guess that many owners (including developer purchasers) would opt to deposit into II to try their luck at earlier exchanges.
On fact, these rumors would, if anything, make me nervous about buying direct from the developer, because it would kill the resale market. One of the great things about Marirott is that due to their price structuring and retention of value, many people have posted that after 5-10 years they have sold their units for at or, in many cases, above their original purchase price. I think instead of allowing the salespeople to intimidate us and get frightened by spreading this rumor (and, who knows, maybe it is pervasive because some "smart" PR person wants to test the waters and see what impact this might have)
we should counter by asking why we would ever want to purchase a Marriott timeshare in this case because it would adversely affect the resaleability of their product and thus negatively impact our "investment."
I would love to see the salesperson's reaction to that- they tout these purchases as investments, and emphasize how the values keep on going up. Under this scenario, why would it make sense for anyone to buy?
