Hello,
About eight months ago my wife and I bought HGVC points from the developer, found this board and cancelled (thanks again all!). From there we went to eBay and the classified ads here to buy. We ended up buying 105,000 every year points at Westwinds in Myrtle Beach. I belive we bought for around $995 - but don't quote me on that.
Anyhow, closing took EXCEPTIONALLY long through the resort, in fact we were supposed to have access to banked points for 2005 but didn't get the actual deed and papers from the resort until January 2006 (again, we started the transfer process in late Oct. 2005). I won't bore you with all the details regarding the banked week, but what happened was the seller never actually banked the week so right now we are waiting for either a refund for the 2005 MF we paid or the broker will deposit 105,000 points in our FF account (btw, the broker, Emily Best with Go Vacations has been very amazing as has the closing company).
We called FF a bunch of times to get a directory, still haven't seen one but whenever we call them they are very happy to answer all our questions. We haven't received any info on our RCI account, but they said they've requested one to be opened so that should hopefully arrive in a couple more weeks.
We're pretty patient people in this process so we're not too hung up on how long it's taken, but be warned, buying resale is a LONG process (at least with FF).
We just booked our first timeshare vacation. We're in Toronto so we booked through the FF Web site (compatible with Firefox on Apple OSX 10.4 and IE on Windows XP, btw) at the GeoPrime resort in Quebec. We got five nights in a studio for 35,000 points. It took all of five minutes to do it, we called FF right after to make sure it worked and sure enough it was there. We booked just last week for the end of July so we were pretty happy we were able to book on shorter notice.
I've read here that there are great last minute deals through RCI which I plan to take advantage of ... but for our first transaction I'm quite happy.
The studio is way better than a hotel room and the property itself kicks butt over any type of hotel we would normally pay to stay in. Our MF are $56/month. If we did two more trips like this it would work out to $44.80/night. We're pretty stocked about that!
All the information here was so overwhelming when we first started looking into purchasing a TS. Once we understood what type of TS user we would be (we wanted to be able to drive in a day or two to the timeshare we'd be using and would probably do one or two vacations a year) we opted for FF because they have lots of resorts on the East Coast and being in Toronto it fit our distance criteria. We bought points because it seemed to have more flexibility and it also made it a lot easier for us to understand: i.e., we bought 105,000 points, so we can look at a FF chart at any resort and see what that could potentially get us.
I think the key is to detirmine what you'll be using your TS for, then go out and buy based on that. Yes our TS might have good RCI trading power, it also may not, but that was secondary to our goal for buying so we didn't let it effect our decision. Try to focus on the one or two things that are most important to you when making your purchase and you'll find it a lot easier to filter the information on this board that is pertinent to your investment.
About eight months ago my wife and I bought HGVC points from the developer, found this board and cancelled (thanks again all!). From there we went to eBay and the classified ads here to buy. We ended up buying 105,000 every year points at Westwinds in Myrtle Beach. I belive we bought for around $995 - but don't quote me on that.
Anyhow, closing took EXCEPTIONALLY long through the resort, in fact we were supposed to have access to banked points for 2005 but didn't get the actual deed and papers from the resort until January 2006 (again, we started the transfer process in late Oct. 2005). I won't bore you with all the details regarding the banked week, but what happened was the seller never actually banked the week so right now we are waiting for either a refund for the 2005 MF we paid or the broker will deposit 105,000 points in our FF account (btw, the broker, Emily Best with Go Vacations has been very amazing as has the closing company).
We called FF a bunch of times to get a directory, still haven't seen one but whenever we call them they are very happy to answer all our questions. We haven't received any info on our RCI account, but they said they've requested one to be opened so that should hopefully arrive in a couple more weeks.
We're pretty patient people in this process so we're not too hung up on how long it's taken, but be warned, buying resale is a LONG process (at least with FF).
We just booked our first timeshare vacation. We're in Toronto so we booked through the FF Web site (compatible with Firefox on Apple OSX 10.4 and IE on Windows XP, btw) at the GeoPrime resort in Quebec. We got five nights in a studio for 35,000 points. It took all of five minutes to do it, we called FF right after to make sure it worked and sure enough it was there. We booked just last week for the end of July so we were pretty happy we were able to book on shorter notice.
I've read here that there are great last minute deals through RCI which I plan to take advantage of ... but for our first transaction I'm quite happy.
The studio is way better than a hotel room and the property itself kicks butt over any type of hotel we would normally pay to stay in. Our MF are $56/month. If we did two more trips like this it would work out to $44.80/night. We're pretty stocked about that!
All the information here was so overwhelming when we first started looking into purchasing a TS. Once we understood what type of TS user we would be (we wanted to be able to drive in a day or two to the timeshare we'd be using and would probably do one or two vacations a year) we opted for FF because they have lots of resorts on the East Coast and being in Toronto it fit our distance criteria. We bought points because it seemed to have more flexibility and it also made it a lot easier for us to understand: i.e., we bought 105,000 points, so we can look at a FF chart at any resort and see what that could potentially get us.
I think the key is to detirmine what you'll be using your TS for, then go out and buy based on that. Yes our TS might have good RCI trading power, it also may not, but that was secondary to our goal for buying so we didn't let it effect our decision. Try to focus on the one or two things that are most important to you when making your purchase and you'll find it a lot easier to filter the information on this board that is pertinent to your investment.