Does anyone know if you can make your developer purchased Wyndham RCI portal into an RCI Platinum points account? And whether there are benefits to RCI Platinum? Or is this portal already equivalent to a separate RCI Platinum account?
Supposedly, RCI Platinum gets 'Priority Booking' which I think means seeing inventory when dropped into RCI a few days before non-platinum accounts do. Does this really work out? Do you get priority for an ongoing search as well? Are there other inventory advantages? Is there a discount or waiver of the exchange fee? Are there any other worthwhile discounts?
Also please comment about the difference between what you see in the Wyndham Portal vs an RCI points portal vs an RCI Platinum points portal.
Bob
No you can't turn your Wyndham RCI weeks account into an RCI points account. If you want a points account you could buy something that's a points week to get an RCI points account and pay the additional amount to have the platinum benefits. Weeks accounts they don't get some of the best platinum benefits that points owners get with platinum.
Weeks and Points accounts are two separate things and cannot be combined due to the inventory. Weeks accounts owners get TPUs, Trading Power Units, when they deposit their week for trade and see the inventory that is deposited by other weeks owners when they elect to get the TPUs instead of using their week. Points owners see also see that weeks inventory plus all the underlying inventory that all other points owners points are based on. When you own a points week you do have the option of using your week instead of just automatically getting the points each year. To do that you notify your resort and RCI 11-12 months out. In 15 years we've never used any of our weeks instead of getting the points. However we own where we own because it gets us a nice amount of points for the maintenance fees. Some people own a points week where they want to go that would be very hard to get at a specific time of year and usually use their week so don't often take the points. However they like knowing that when they do take the points they will have a greater amount of inventory to use those points on.
With an RCI points accounts an owner can also transfer points to another owner at no charge once a year. So in the case of someone who owns where they want to go and usually uses their week instead of getting the points, they could find another owner who has more points than they can use and arrange with that owner to take some of their points. That would give them some points to play around with if they find a stay they really want or to pick up some last minute discounted point stays. If you pay to have the platinum benefits that gives you longer to use your points. If one year they elected to take the points for their week or had points transferred from another owner that would give them points to work with for several years. Having the platinum benefits allows you to extend your points for two additional years so you can have up to 4 years to use your points.