RCI Bonus weeks? Are these legit?

[pccross38]

So I purchased resell 675K odd year points to Wyndham Bali Hai latter part of last year, and have been happily using points to book in Vegas, Flagstaff and Oceanside.

I've gotten calls about if I'm willing to sell my 6 RCI 'bonus weeks' for others to use at a guaranteed $1600-1800/week rate, with the only cost to me being a $299/week reservation fee.
Is this legit, as my Wyndham dashboard makes no reference to bonus weeks, and I don't recall hearing anything about these when I attended the refresher presentation in Vegas last month?
The guy I talked to mentioned I will only see these bonus weeks in my RCI dashboard, which I've never logged into, as I haven't had need to exchange into anything RCI related yet.
Appreciate any insights into whether this is a scam or actually legit.

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

Hi @pccross38 ,
This sounds like a scam

There is no such thing as a guaranteed rental / but I'll guarantee that you will be out $ 299.

[PS - RCI does.not allow the rental of exchanges.]

 

[tschwa2]

You would be paying a 3rd party that couldn't "activate" or rent out rci weeks even if rci allowed them to do so. They will take your $2394 and that will be the end of the transaction. Except they will probably pass on your contact info as a big sucker to another scammer who might try to convince you to pay them to "recover" the fees you paid the previous scammer.

You have no free weeks. You have extra vacations and last call weeks that you have to pay rci directly if you want to use them and then if you want to send a guest, it would cost another $109 for a guest cert. Again even if you were allowed to rent them out they are priced fairly competitively so if you paid $289 plus a $109 fee for a guest cert for the week, it wouldn't be last minute excess inventory that wouldn't rent out for $1000+. If it were that valuable, RCI would simply rent it out for that much money themselves.

 

[tschwa2]

Consumer Alert | RCI.com​

RCI
https://www.rci.com › pre-rci › footer › consumer-alerts

RCI will NEVER contact you to buy, rent or sell your timeshare ownership, deposited RCI weeks, RCI Points or any type of “extra/bonus” weeks on your behalf.

 

[AwayWeGo]

Bonus Weeks are great. I don't know if they come with our RCI membership or if they are a bonus of our timeshare ownership (Grandview At Las Vegas).

Regardless, the only thing free about them is the opportunity to pay money to RCI for them if we want bargain last-minute timeshare reservations.

For that, Bonus Weeks are outstanding -- basically the same as Last Call reservations, except $50 cheaper.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[kanerf]

There are no Bonus Weeks attached to an RCI account that you can sell to anyone. Any call mentioning this, hang up.

 

[schoolmarm]

Bonus Weeks are great. I don't know if they come with our RCI membership or if they are a bonus of our timeshare ownership (Grandview At Las Vegas).

Regardless, the only thing free about them is the opportunity to pay money to RCI for them if we want bargain last-minute timeshare reservations.

For that, Bonus Weeks are outstanding -- basically the same as Last Call reservations, except $50 cheaper.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

This is a perk for those who own in the Vacation Villages/Massanuttan system. They often have a bonus week that is deposited in RCI when you deposit your week in RCI. This goes into your WEEKS account (which isn't used with Wyndham).

This has nothing to do with Wyndham.

But this DOES remind me that I need to book my "extra" week before it expires.
What the OP is posting about IS a scam. They make it seem like a really good deal. Just say that you don't have Bonus weeks. They will tell you that you do...etc. You DO NOT have any hidden bonus weeks.

 

[RX8]

As others have said, this is all LIES!

This is a common lie that advertising/listing companies will use. Their real business is supposed to be charging a ridiculous fee to advertise your weeks. However, that is all a sham to get your upfront fee. That business model allows them to steal money because they can always claim they are providing a service for the upfront fee, even if they never connect real renters with those who pay them big bucks upfront. We know this is a sham also by the lies they tell on the phone. Even these scammers know that trying to sell someone on the advertising model is difficult so the just make up up bonus week lie story. Since so many “companies” use this same lie, it might be the same scammers just opening and closing multiple businesses.

Do you have a name of the business?

 

[r4rab]

Known scam that has been going on for a while.

 

[pccross38]

Thanks so much everyone for the re-assurances that this was indeed a scam! Glad I told them I wanted to research before I made any decisions.
I do not know the name of the company, but I swear they said they were calling on behalf of RCI, which doesn't make sense.

 

[AwayWeGo]

I swear they said they were calling on behalf of RCI, which doesn't make sense.

Saying they're calling on behalf of RCI is part of the bamboozle.

Some of the callers don't know what RCI is or what organization uses those 3 letters.

Shux upon them.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​