Owners' Update . . . Update (Wyndham Pompano Beach Resorts)

[Timeshare Von]

It appears the Wyndham resorts in the Pompano Beach area are all using the Royal Vista location for owner updates and sales presentations. We arrived to Sea Gardens (about 2 miles north of Royal Vista) late Monday evening. The next morning we needed to go to the concierge area to get our wristbands. Roxanne was our rep and very helpful & nice. She wasn't pushy at all, but also knew we were here for 12 nights and looking to do some of the activities around the area. She was able to put together a custom "gift" for our time spent getting the 45" update. She was also able to provide us with A LOT of discount coupons for local dining . . . most appreciated was the BOGO for Stingers for breakfast that morning. (It was excellent by the way! We highly recommend them, even if the owner is a transplant and runs his place as a Detroit Lions bar. LOL)

Anyway . . . as for the owners' update . . . since we have a VERY small 77k points contract we are always being encouraged to buy-up and take advantage of greater ownership value by being VIP. With the new Travel & Leisure program/membership, they have something "new" to push on unsuspecting owners. Our sales guy (Alex) was nice enough . . . and we let him have his time, especially since we were gifted such a wonderful custom package by Roxanne.

The bottom line, and I hope I have all of this correctly . . . to get us to 300k and the lowest level of VIP, he suggested we purchase 126k points, and do some sorta of short-term rental for the other 126k necessary to get us VIP for the next couple of years . . . after which we'd need to buy another 126k to keep VIP. He also really promoted the Travel & Leisure as the way to go in travel and timeshare ownership. Sorry . . . I'm still not impressed.

Alex never gave us "the price" as in how much would this cost us. What he did, was just talk about the monthly payments (roughly $550 for 10 years) which he implied included the MFs. But I never got him to say so outright. So what I gathered from his pitch was that for $66,000 ($550 x 120 months) we would own 203k points plus have access to another 126k for the next couple/few years . . . which he said would be enough points for us to take 3 or maybe 4 weeks of vacation/year. HOLY COW! How does that even sound remotely interesting? I was able to get him to share the interest rate, which he provided as a "range" of 12-19% "based on our credit score." He offered to run the real numbers to provide an actual price/month, but we told him we were in no way interested in acquiring any more Wyndham points.

Oh yeah, if we don't want to use all of our points for our vacation, we can give the time to them (Wyndham or Travel & Leisure?) to rent for upwards of $3,000/week . . . which would also help to offset our monthly fees. Yeah . . . that sounds like a great opportunity too.

When I mentioned to Alex how we've used our timeshare ownership in the past, the fact that I've been an owner "in timeshare" for over 40 years AND we are now considering doing the Wyndham Certified Exit . . . our meeting was pretty much over. Right at 45" and we were happy. Gifted in full . . . we were back on vacation.

As for our gift package put together by Roxanne . . . we received things (tours and g/c) we knew we would use during our 12 days here. It was the first time, however, that we were asked to pay something towards the package. That said, since we received over $400 worth of value, paying a nominal amount ($120) still provided us with a respectful amount for our 45" time to hear the update . . especially when I heard later in the pool that someone was gifted a $100 AmExp G/C and someone else received $75 G/C for The Beach House Restaurant (our package included $100 for that restaurant).

Anyway here's what we received from Sea Garden's concierge rep for our owners' update:
$100 The Beach House G/C
2 vouchers for the Serenity Yacht dinner cruise ($140 value)
2 vouchers for a full day cabana at Royal Vista ($60 value)
BOGO voucher booklet for local attractions including the Everglades jet boat (estimated value $100+ based on the activities we expect to do)

PLUS several BOGO dining certificates given to us for local restaurants (not that we anticipate dining out a whole lot).

One final comment about the Travel & Leisure program. Admittedly I don't know enough to have a real understanding of how it works, but my impression is that Wyndham has found yet another way to separate people from their money. Everything I have heard about it (and this was my 2nd or 3rd "presentation" on it), using your Wyndham points to "buy" hotel rooms, rental cars, flights and cruises is simply not a great deal. For people who have been hoodwinked into buying hundreds of thousands of points, and now not knowing how to use them every year, maybe it's better than losing them all together . . . but savvy travelers can do better!

I've spent the last 40+ years enjoying timeshare ownership. We've had some fabulous vacations, not only here in the USA but also Europe. Our timeshare for RV barters have been epic . . . and now in retirement timeshare ownership isn't quite the travel experience we're looking at for the future. I feel blessed to have done some amazing trips . . . and will continue to seek creative ways to travel as long as I'm physically (and mentally) able to.

 

[Timeshare Von]

<SNIPPED>
As for our gift package put together by Roxanne . . . we received things (tours and g/c) we knew we would use during our 12 days here. It was the first time, however, that we were asked to pay something towards the package. That said, since we received over $400 worth of value, paying a nominal amount ($120) still provided us with a respectful amount for our 45" time to hear the update . . especially when I heard later in the pool that someone was gifted a $100 AmExp G/C and someone else received $75 G/C for The Beach House Restaurant (our package included $100 for that restaurant).

Anyway here's what we received from Sea Garden's concierge rep for our owners' update:
$100 The Beach House G/C
2 vouchers for the Serenity Yacht dinner cruise ($140 value)
2 vouchers for a full day cabana at Royal Vista ($60 value)
BOGO voucher booklet for local attractions including the Everglades jet boat (estimated value $100+ based on the activities we expect to do)

PLUS several BOGO dining certificates given to us for local restaurants (not that we anticipate dining out a whole lot).

Ok so here's the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say. If it's too good to be true, it just might be. With the incoming tropical storm, even on the Southern Atlantic Coast, using all of our "gifts" was next to impossible . . . and the Serenity Dinner Cruise had been cancelled yesterday (due to lack of guests) and moved to today. They called earlier this afternoon to let us know with the severe weather coming in today, and expected through Friday, they were were cancelling for tonight and tomorrow, so our $140 valued vouchers for that were worthless, unless we were coming back later this year.

In talking with the concierge desk here (Roxanne was off all week), we learned from the other person that really all they do is provide you with a "package" of things you say you want to do and they sell you the tickets at a discount . . . less $100 (the actual "gift" Wyndham is providing for your time to do the owners' update). Had we known that, we wouldn't have said "sure add two cabanas" or whatever else given us, since the dinner cruise was really the only thing we knew we wanted to do. The Beach House $100 g/c while nice, it might not have been the way we would have spent say a $100 AmExp g/c if that had been offered instead. (We still spent nearly $100 out of pocket there, because the place was VERY expensive . . . as in $16 cocktails.)

Because we were unable to use the dinner cruise vouchers, they worked with us to provide what we felt was a fair outcome/refund of the money we paid for the gift package given to us after taking the owners' update. So no hard feelings . . . but once again, no full transparency or disclosure on exactly what was going on. Turns out had we done everything we thought we would, and there had been no tropical storm rolling in for our last 3 full days here, we would have been very happy. I appreciate that we were taken care of in Roxanne's absence this week.