New RCI member, new purchase and last minute deposit

[coppersmom1]

Hello Madge,

I hope this wasn't covered in the past- I couldn't find a complete answer to my questions in all of my searching.

We are in escrow for a week at Kona Coast Resort II, purchased on e-bay. They have a reservation for July 21-28, which is the one week (of course...my luck) we cannot use. We tried changing the week at the resort, with the ok of the seller but they are completely booked for our season (weeks 17-34) unless we could go in May (can't...we started this process at the end of last week).

The seller said if I wanted to they would bank the week in our account with RCI within the next 2 weeks, so I had to join in order for them to do so. I originally planned on using all of our weeks in our home resort.

We would like to trade back into our home resort this Fall sometime- that would be our first choice. If that doesn't work, then we'd hope to use this deposited week to add on an extra week at another resort (Maui or Kauai) to our May 2008 KCR week. (We already own 1 week at Kona Coast Resort, so this is the 2nd week at that resort.) If we could manage that it could extend our trip to 2 weeks That scenario is our 2nd choice.

My main question is this- I keep hearing that you need to bank your week early. Obviously in this case it just wasn't possible. Will this last minute deposit of our week severely impact our ability to use our week as we would like to? I'm sorry to be so wordy, but felt it all needed a good explanation.

Logically it seems that if a resort is 100% booked for the season an added week would be something RCI would want to have, and thus make it trade well. However being totally new to exchanging I'm not sure if traditional logic applies! I just don't want to lose this week, or have to use it going somehwere we really don't want to go. Our vacation time is too precious.

Also, how do I go about adding any weeks we own on to our RCI account, or is it simply not necessary unless we want to trade them? It will soon be 2 EOY at Kona Coast Resort II, and one annual week at Gaslamp Plaza Suites in San Diego. Also, when I called to join, he told me I needed to notify Kona Coast Resort that we were now RCI members. Is that correct? I haven't done so yet.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give. It is wonderful to have this forum here on TUG!

 

[bnoble]

I'm not Madge, and this isn't what you asked about, but you might also be able to rent that week out. I had a similar situation with a Wisconsin Dells week this summer, and offered it to friends and family to recover my MFs for the 07 UY. A friend got a nice vacation at a very good price, and I netted the same deal that I would have had the seller kept the '07 week and sold it to me with usage starting in '08, which is what I preferred. A win-win all around.

 

[coppersmom1]

Thanks bnoble-

We considered doing that, but honestly don't have ANY family that travels and as far as our friends go, they pretty much have their "travel books" full for the year. We decided to give the deposit a shot.

 

[Madge]

coppersmom1,

Hawaii weeks can suffer a dramatic reduction in Trading Power when deposited very late, because airfare is needed in order for someone to be able to use the unit. However, it's early enough now that you should still have strong Trading Power with your week in Kona.

If you'd like to add your other timeshare ownership information to your RCI account, simply provide which resorts, weeks, and unit numbers you own. We will then verify the information with the resorts and add it to your account.

 

[coppersmom1]

Madge, we shifted things around enough that we are able to use the week. We had a friend who would be visiting that week and at first she didn't want to go- then realized turning down a free trip to Hawaii wasn't the smartest idea ever, so she's going!

Thanks for the answer to the questions though...