It sounded funny to me too. So he brought in his supervisor and Director of Sales.
The salesman was trying to convince me to buy points and as part of the sales tactic, I think he let this slip out because he thought I would need additional points to get into some of the properties since my week would not cover some properties at high point locations like in Hawaii. The change was supposed to happen Jan 1, but it has been delayed because of Coronavirus until later next year.
I kept asking for details, but received none. I was only told that that just about everyone they surveyed dislike the hassles of dealing with trying to trade within Interval and instead just traded their week for points. They also said that Marriott timeshare owners were fed up trying to get a week at a particular resort only to find that somone from another resort traded their week into a Marriott timeshare that they had been trying to get into. So they were giving people what they asked - have people trade their week in for points & use the points to book a week at their preferred destination.
I pointed out two significant issues with this logic:
1. Those of us that trade our weeks through Interval were frustrated that Marriott week owners are not given first notice as to any Marriott resorts that become available so we can grab them ourselves. This is why we are frustrated with Interval.
2. I said earlier that I trade my week for other Marriott properties. If I were to convert my week into VC points, I would not have enough points for every Marriott location. But if that resort became available in Interval, I could indeed grab it.
I asked if they were in fact pulling the Marriott weeks out of Interval so that Marriott owners can trade with other Marriott owners in a Marriott only program and their answer was they already have Interval for trading weeks and now they are moving everything to the VC point system. If we want to trade within Interval, we can, but there will be no Marriott inventory for us to choose from.
Their answer to this was simply: "Buy more VC points."
I have looked for corroborating information on TUG and other places, but I have not yet confirmed any of this. This is no joke, this is no lie. If anyone can show this is not what they told me I will be grateful. I would very much like to be wrong, but 3 different Marriott sales people told me this today, and I stormed out mad as hell from what I heard. When they invited me to a sales presentation, why would they want me pissed off?