I understand the manipulation of points and the ability to upgrade and use fewer points, but have you ever considered the rest of the Wyndham owners having difficulty getting what they want in many cases as you tie up multiple reservations and not intending to use them. I think consideration is in order, you already get discounted reservations.
This is not manipulation of points, please see other posts addressing this point. Also, I cannot help but note, the moving of points forward by use of the credit pool or any other authorized method, would have the effect of creating more availability for other users in the current use year. What you are probably addressing is the book cancel rebook trick. I am not sure what the net effect on availablity would be during the course of a year.
As it relates to the issue being discussed here, the booking then cancelling period only takes a couple of minutes. Therefore, the effect on availablity is not significant.
The primary differences between the credit pool, as far as I can tell, and the mulitple use year verision are as follows:
1. Credit Pool has specific dates that the current use year points must be placed into it ranging from prior to the beginning of the use year to the Platium timeframe (I think it is 9 months into the use year). There is a fee associated with this. You get 3 years to use the points and not just to the next overlapping use year.
2. It is my understanding that the Credit Pool has a different availability pool than regular year use and cancelled points use years have (be careful, a Wyndham point is not necessarily a Wyndham point when considering the different availablity pools for reservations).
3. As was pointed out earlier, if not a VIP Gold or Platium Member, a reservation transaction may have to be used. Maybe two if something goes wrong (moral of that is call to confirm the cancelled points went were you wanted them to on the same day or run the risk of needing another one to fix it). If this results in your going over your free transation limit, then this may cost you some money for the transaction (Wyndham still would collect a fee in this case).
4. Based on the two tests reported here, the safest method is to book the reservation to be cancelled before the end of the one use year to shift the points to the overlapping use year with the end date for use as the furthest out. It might very well be that if there is only one use year in an account, this process may also work. I cannot try this verision because I have multiple use year, but it would be logical given the other tests.
I was trying to get some canceled points expiring 6/30/12 to move into my next use year of 12/31/12. I obviously have to book a reservation using dates before 6/30 in order to use these points, and when I would book and then cancel a June reservation, it would end up back in my 6/30/12 use year.
