Questions About RCI Changes

[kaljor]

I suppose I should call Wyndham with this question, but in reality, the answers I get in this forum are more reliably accurate. At least I’d like to get some knowledge here before I call if I have to!

I am a 100% resale owner and I’ve used RCI successfully at least once a year for the past several years. I understand how it works but there has been a change this year that I don’t fully understand.

In the past I had to deposit Wyndham points into RCI to be able to book a week. Sometime earlier this year, I noticed that RCI was showing all my current Wyndham points and even all my Wyndham points for next year as available. Does this mean that we no longer have to make a specific points deposit? Will RCI just deduct them from my total available balance? If so, which use year will they take from? I might want to book an RCI week now for January and the obvious question is which use year points would that booking come from.

It matters because I will most likely want an RCI reservation next year. Knowing where the points would come from is important because I might not want the booking if it would use up a bunch of my current year points. It’s kind of helpful to know how this will work and I wish we would have gotten an email explaining this change.

I hope I explained this properly. Any input from the group is welcome.

 

[bnoble]

Nothing prevents you from explicitly depositing the points you want to use. You can hold the week instead of booking it, deposit the specific points you want, and confirm the next day before the hold expires.

 

[capital city]

Nothing prevents you from explicitly depositing the points you want to use. You can hold the week instead of booking it, deposit the specific points you want, and confirm the next day before the hold expires.

Correct, however after completing some bookings recently it looks like depositing points takes a reservation transaction but making RCI pull them does not. I usually have leftovers so doesn't matter to me but for others it might

 

[Sandy VDH]

My rule of thumb is this. If I have points expiring and there is no saving them in Wyndham (already saved or past my deposit date) then I deposit them in RCI. So yes I will incur a transaction charge, but it is that or lose points.

If I need to book a reservation in RCI it should use up my deposited items first. If they are all used up it will pull what I need from wyndham directly no deposit needed.

 

[geist1223]

We are Worldmark Travelshare Members. We do not deposit in advance. We use the Reserve First. We create a search in RCI. If it Hits we get an email asking if we still want the Booking. If we say yes it pulls our oldest Credits for the Booking.

 

[bnoble]

a reservation transaction

Online reservation transactions are free for the moment.

 

[kaljor]

I know that they are free for making reservations, but I'm not sure if they're free for depositing to RCI if you've used up your annual allotment.

 

[basilray]

My rule of thumb is this. If I have points expiring and there is no saving them in Wyndham (already saved or past my deposit date) then I deposit them in RCI. So yes I will incur a transaction charge, but it is that or lose points.

If I need to book a reservation in RCI it should use up my deposited items first. If they are all used up it will pull what I need from wyndham directly no deposit needed.

This is an interesting idea. I assume they still follow the use year when they go over to RCI?

 

[tschwa2]

I know that they are free for making reservations, but I'm not sure if they're free for depositing to RCI if you've used up your annual allotment.

No (transaction) fee to deposit in rci if you do it online. If you call in, I would assume the fee would apply.

 

[kaljor]

OK, I got some information in this thread, but my main question wasn’t answered.

As I said in my first post, I know I should call Wyndham (or RCI) but I just wouldn’t have faith that any answer they gave me would be correct. I was hoping that someone who had done this would chime in with the information that they had first hand. Maybe folks here don’t use RCI that often, so they can’t respond. Maybe this new system of RCI having access to all of our current year and next year points is too new for anyone to have an experience with it.

As a reminder, my main question is:

Can I designate the use year points I want to use for an RCI reservation? In other words, if I make an RCI reservation tomorrow for February 2026, can I insure that the rez is made with my Wyndham 2026 points?

My gut tells me that they would take the points from my current year total, which would definitely mess up my tentative December plans! I can think of a work around to get this done my way, but I would like to know if there is an official way to accomplish what I want.

Thanks for reading.

 

[capital city]

No, you cannot designate what bucket or year it pulls from. It doesn't even ask you if you want to pull your points at all. They show as available mixed in with your already deposited points. Once you make the reservation it just pulls the points.

However I made a reservation recently through their live chat and it was helpful and I'd guess they could help with the use year

 

[paxsarah]

I would guess (but don’t know) that they would pull the earliest expiring points first, so current use year if any remain. I would think the check-in date of the RCI exchange is irrelevant. Check-in could be 2027, for instance, but 2027 points aren’t yet eligible to deposit.

 

[kaljor]

Thanks all for those answers. It seems correct that RCI will take from deposited points first, then current points, and then the future year points.