I purchased Worldmark recently, and from the short experience I have had with the online system, it's pretty clear that whatever Worldmark has done with housekeeping fees and guest certificate fees - it may have impacted the bottom line of megarenters, but they are just as active now (concluded based on my studying the availability of Hawaii Xmas weeks for 2019) as they ever were. Every morning for the last 5 days, I tried to get a good unit at a good time. But what happens is that between the hours of 6 and 7am, the current date's availability disappears (as expected), but if only one unit was available today, within a half hour, availability for the following 3 days slowly goes from >5 to 0 units available for many unit types - sometimes just for the following day, sometimes for the next 2 days, sometimes for 5 days. If people are only allowed to book from today to 13 months from today, then the availability of units for the following 6 days should only decrease by the number of units that could be booked 13 months from today. It seems Worldmark has some serious glitches in its system. I have not seen anything like this in Vistana. I have read a lot about people doing strange things with waitlists.
It doesn't seem like the problem with the system is megarenters - Worldmark has nothing in its bylaws against renting units out. The problem is with the 13 month rule not being applied equally to all Worldmark owners. Worldmark really needs to fix the situation with 13 month reservation workarounds. Owners are blaming megarenters for the problem - but any owner can do whatever it is a megarenter is doing as soon as an owner figures out how to "beat" the system.
If Worldmark wants to fix the real problem, they need to do something about the reservation rules (and the computer programming - their online system is very glitchy) and the waitlist rules. A small subset of Worldmark owners have the know-how to get reservations booked in advance of 13 months - that's pretty clear. This morning was crazy to watch how the availability for high demand Xmas weeks suddenly disappeared completely - even checking in on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Worldmark has to know what is happening - and the fix seems pretty easy - if two accounts appear to be working together in a fixed pattern - where one cancels, and the other account continuously gets the cancelled units off the waitlist - there is clearly a link between the two accounts, and a problem in the system. If someone at Worldmark took 3 hours to look at the history of waitlist placements and cancellations for Kihei units, they could likely identify a number of people who are using some type of workaround. Worldmark could contact any owners doing this and tell them to stop.
There should at least be a rule in place that says if accounts are found to be connected to create workarounds for creating reservations greater than 13 months in advance for more than "x" units per year, those accounts will lose their current reservations. There could be an additional rule that if those accounts continue to use workarounds, they will no longer be allowed to borrow credits into their account, and not be allowed to make reservations until the 12 (or 11) month window - or... make up a consequence...
I find it difficult to understand why this has gone on for so long. (Based on prior posts - it appears this is something owners have known about for a good number of years.) The average owner should have the same access to high demand weeks as any other owner - and not have to watch availability for checkin dates 13 months +1,2,3 days out disappear between the hours of 6-6:30am. It's crazy!!