Sales Presentation - Oceana Palms

[Hindsite]

It's simply an intimidation tactic, an attempt to create a sense of urgency.

It wasn't presented that way the last time it happened, but that was shortly after COVID when there was practically a fire sale of inventory and the salesperson joined us in our unit. Signing was a way to ensure there was a record of us receiving the offer, as no appointment had been made for a sales meeting. It seemed odd, but not intimidating, but so much was odd during that time...........

 

[curitiba_tapley]

It is interesting, because I was recently in a Sales Presentation, where the Sales guy used the same approach with a twist - it wasn't the Trust Points MFs that would increase dramatically, but the MFs for our owned week - increasing nearly at 20% annually! So the pitch was to sell back the deeded week and buy more points.

While the Sales team loves to play off the maintenance fees, can you remind me. It is the HOA of each resort, and the Board of the Points Trust that sets the Maintenance budget and from there the MFs are assigned to each unit or point? As a result, what insight does the Sales team have in terms of year over year MF increase? From what I can tell, a Sales guy nothing more than owners who can look at historical, receive proposed annual budgets, and read TUG?

 

[daviator]

It is interesting, because I was recently in a Sales Presentation, where the Sales guy used the same approach with a twist - it wasn't the Trust Points MFs that would increase dramatically, but the MFs for our owned week - increasing nearly at 20% annually! So the pitch was to sell back the deeded week and buy more points.

While the Sales team loves to play off the maintenance fees, can you remind me. It is the HOA of each resort, and the Board of the Points Trust that sets the Maintenance budget and from there the MFs are assigned to each unit or point? As a result, what insight does the Sales team have in terms of year over year MF increase? From what I can tell, a Sales guy nothing more than owners who can look at historical, receive proposed annual budgets, and read TUG?

The MFs for trust points are simply the total MFs for all the weeks owned by the trust, divided by the number of trust points. So if the trust owns weeks at 10 resorts, representing 1 million Abound points, and the total MFs for the weeks they own at those resorts total $1 million, then $1 million divided by 1 million points = $1/point. If the maintenance fee for those weeks collectively increase by $100,000 in year two, then the trust MFs also go up 10%, to $1.10 per point. It's a complete fabrication to claim that trust points are a way to somehow escape increases in maintenance fees.

MVC can (and has) put a lot of low-quality weeks into the trust, some of those have lower MFs but that doesn't mean they won't go up in the future, they will. And a trust filled with low-quality weeks means that there aren't a lot of high-quality weeks (popular times of the year at the better/more popular resorts) available to book. Then you're depending on elected weeks to feed inventory, and the folks who own at the best properties and seasons may not want to turn them in for Abound points.

MVC is desperate to get people to trade in their valuable weeks (and then pay them more money for less-valuable points) and some sales people will tell all kinds of lies to accomplish that. I assume they are being heavily motivated, financially, to encourage owners to give up their weeks. Don't fall for it unless you don't like what you own and don't want to vacation there in the future.

 

[Fasttr]

The MFs for trust points are simply the total MFs for all the weeks owned by the trust, divided by the number of trust points.

Your overall point in your full post above still holds true, but technically, the Resort Component Expenses (Resort MFs) only represent 86% of the expenses driving the Trust Point MFs. The other 14% is Trust Administration fees, to manage the Trust activities themselves.

 

[daviator]

Your overall point in your full post above still holds true, but technically, the Resort Component Expenses (Resort MFs) only represent 86% of the expenses driving the Trust Point MFs. The other 14% is Trust Administration fees, to manage the Trust activities themselves.

Oh that’s true. So actually the trust MFs are HIGHER than the MFs of the VOIs it owns. MVC makes money at every level, so they’re making 10% of the property expenses for the underlying properties (as their management fee), and then presumably another 10% of that total for every week that goes into the trust, as a fee for administering the trust. So it’s no wonder they want people to trade in their weeks ownerships – MVC gets to essentially double their pro-rata revenues for every VOI that goes into the trust.

So in my example above, the $1 million in MFs for the weeks in the trust becomes $1.14 per Club Point which is assessed to Abound owners.

Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong in my analysis – isn’t MVC essentially getting compensated doubly for weeks in the Abound trust?

 

[ups0858]

Bad Deal

 

[Carlsbadguy]

I am actually surpised my sales guy didn't try this tactic last week. I mentioned that the Mtc fees for Kauai Beach Club have gone up a lot. It is worth 3375 points. I have always either used it or rented it. The only thing he tried to sell was 1,000 points to be able to use for the destination escapes and then I would be at the next level and have the 13 month prioity for booking points.

 

[dioxide45]

I am actually surpised my sales guy didn't try this tactic last week. I mentioned that the Mtc fees for Kauai Beach Club have gone up a lot. It is worth 3375 points. I have always either used it or rented it. The only thing he tried to sell was 1,000 points to be able to use for the destination escapes and then I would be at the next level and have the 13 month prioity for booking points.

Well, if you are enrolled in Abound and elect or rent points, you can already you can use Destination Escapes.

 

[Luvtoride]

MVC is desperate to get people to trade in their valuable weeks (and then pay them more money for less-valuable points) and some sales people will tell all kinds of lies to accomplish that. I assume they are being heavily motivated, financially, to encourage owners to give up their weeks. Don't fall for it unless you don't like what you own and don't want to vacation there in the future.

We attended a sales presentation yesterday at Oceana Palms. This was clearly the tactic that our salesman was using but with the added urgency of “selling back Florida weeks”. Due to the upcoming requirement that all these Florida properties will have to have reserves fully funded, it’s expected that Maintenance Fees for all of these weeks will skyrocket over the next two years. He actually had a sheet projecting what the maintenance fees would be over the next several years for Florida properties on a fully funded basis. By “exchanging” these weeks for Trust Points we will be :
- Managing our future maintenance fees to a much more reasonable level (currently 81 cents per point) vs. the weeks fees going forward
- exchanging a WORTHLESS asset (a Florida week…he actually said this) for Trust points that are a true asset as they can be sold on the secondary market for about 1/2 of the current price (currently priced just under $18 per trust point.

So the proposal was to buy 4,000 points (2,000 value of our week, plus a matching 2,000 new trust points) for $70,000. After various discounts and original purchase price credit of our existing week, the net price came out to $35,000. We politely said no and he gave up on us quickly. We were out of there in under 90 minutes, the fastest we had ever left a sales presentation. They are getting desperate using SCARE tactics now to try to sell more points!


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[rickandcindy23]

57.5K Marriott Bonvoy points? I would love that. Better wait for a more intriguing offer before I bite again. I thought 40K points was good.

I just saw this is a November thread, so the comment is directed to the original poster, thread starter. I am into collecting Marriott points. You never know when you will need to use them. I like to keep a huge supply. Rick is right there with me on that.

 

[bazzap]

We attended a sales presentation yesterday at Oceana Palms. This was clearly the tactic that our salesman was using but with the added urgency of “selling back Florida weeks”. Due to the upcoming requirement that all these Florida properties will have to have reserves fully funded, it’s expected that Maintenance Fees for all of these weeks will skyrocket over the next two years. He actually had a sheet projecting what the maintenance fees would be over the next several years for Florida properties on a fully funded basis. By “exchanging” these weeks for Trust Points we will be :
- Managing our future maintenance fees to a much more reasonable level (currently 81 cents per point) vs. the weeks fees going forward
- exchanging a WORTHLESS asset (a Florida week…he actually said this) for Trust points that are a true asset as they can be sold on the secondary market for about 1/2 of the current price (currently priced just under $18 per trust point.

So the proposal was to buy 4,000 points (2,000 value of our week, plus a matching 2,000 new trust points) for $70,000. After various discounts and original purchase price credit of our existing week, the net price came out to $35,000. We politely said no and he gave up on us quickly. We were out of there in under 90 minutes, the fastest we had ever left a sales presentation. They are getting desperate using SCARE tactics now to try to sell more points!


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So I guess the salesman chose not to mention that as the Abound Trust owns many, many weeks at many resorts in Florida any requirement to fully fund the reserves at these resorts would therefore inevitably result in Points MFs also skyrocketing

 

[Luvtoride]

So I guess the salesman chose not to mention that as the Abound Trust owns many, many weeks at many resorts in Florida any requirement to fully fund the reserves at these resorts would therefore inevitably result in Points MFs also skyrocketing

Buzzap, he neglected to state that but I was thinking exactly the same thing. When I “sell” him back my worthless Florida week, that is exactly where it and it’s “skyrocketing” MFs will end up!


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[Dean]

Buzzap, he neglected to state that but I was thinking exactly the same thing. When I “sell” him back my worthless Florida week, that is exactly where it and it’s “skyrocketing” MFs will end up!


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For those with higher PP costs it could still result in a modest savings in yearly fees though not nearly enough to justify the huge expense. I once had a situation here I did an equity trade and purchase with a non MVC timeshare that ended up with a large SA within a few months. I paid around $76 in a SA rather than almost $10K it would have been had I not traded in. The reason, the costs were spread across the entire trust evenly on the points side. Of course placing higher PP cost resorts in the trust could increase the overall fees but it would be small increments.

 

[bazzap]

For those with higher PP costs it could still result in a modest savings in yearly fees though not nearly enough to justify the huge expense. I once had a situation here I did an equity trade and purchase with a non MVC timeshare that ended up with a large SA within a few months. I paid around $76 in a SA rather than almost $10K it would have been had I not traded in. The reason, the costs were spread across the entire trust evenly on the points side. Of course placing higher PP cost resorts in the trust could increase the overall fees but it would be small increments.

Ironically even small increments would be on top of the current Abound Points MFs, which are already significantly higher than all of the different MVC resort weeks we own based on their enrolled elected Weeks value.
I am sure that we will be very interested to see what does actually happen with future MFs for Points and Weeks (especially Florida Weeks)

 

[davidvel]

Ironically even small increments would be on top of the current Abound Points MFs, which are already significantly higher than all of the different MVC resort weeks we own based on their enrolled elected Weeks value.
I am sure that we will be very interested to see what does actually happen with future MFs for Points and Weeks (especially Florida Weeks)

Correct. MF for the trust always go up more than the underlying weeks it owns, as there are additional admin costs for the trust. Though, they may not go up more than any particular week an owner has.

 

[Dean]

Ironically even small increments would be on top of the current Abound Points MFs, which are already significantly higher than all of the different MVC resort weeks we own based on their enrolled elected Weeks value.
I am sure that we will be very interested to see what does actually happen with future MFs for Points and Weeks (especially Florida Weeks)

No doubt that each week that has a higher fee to point ration will increase the fees incrementally and each week that has a better ratio will improve the overall fees. I suspect that going forward weeks added to the trust will generally be favorable on average since they front loaded the trust with off season weeks. ROFR weeks should generally be neutral or incrementally lower the fees comparatively speaking.

 

[bazzap]

No doubt that each week that has a higher fee to point ration will increase the fees incrementally and each week that has a better ratio will improve the overall fees. I suspect that going forward weeks added to the trust will generally be favorable on average since they front loaded the trust with off season weeks. ROFR weeks should generally be neutral or incrementally lower the fees comparatively speaking.

I guess I am just very pleased (relatively) that our Weeks MFs are so much lower than their Points equivalent, especially with Phuket Beach Club at ~35 Cents per elected Point

 

[Dean]

I guess I am just very pleased (relatively) that our Weeks MFs are so much lower than their Points equivalent, especially with Phuket Beach Club at ~35 Cents per elected Point

Same here, but silver and bronze weeks in general and certain resorts that provide low points are just brutal. All of my weeks are Platinum and the ones that return low points I use mostly for exchanging. That's one of many reasons why it pays to be educated going but also bit of luck isn't bad either.

 

[Superchief]

I overheard a conversation at the pool yesterday about a recently completed sales presentation (I'm assuming it was at MVC here on Hilton Head). Although I didn't hear all of the details, they were discussing something 'new' called Quest. From their discussion, it appears to be a prepaid access to travel 'deals'. I wonder if MVC is now trying to presell packages from an expanded travel agency that they recently surveyed members about. It wasn't part of Interval or their currently offered group tours, and would be sold separately from the trust points.