Hi...
I am going to give it a whirl for the following reasons. I am willing to take the $695 gamble that it could work. I am mostly an exchanger , with 3-4 exchanges/year I can save some $$$ with the $199 straight fee.
Before you fit me for the straight jacket, let me proceed with my logic. I mostly trade my 3 bedroom gv's for two bedroom plat joints in ski season, beach locations (Myrtle Beach, HHI etc). View doesn't mean anything to me, as an exchanger I get garden or island view anyway. My 3750 points for GV gets me nice summer weeks (2 bedrooms) on HHI garden view (except GO) Myrtle, June in Newport. The ski weeks will take a bit more (unless I only go for 6 days, slicing out a weekend day). It seems like I will get most of the trades I received before (ski weeks will be a bit more expensive)
I was reluctant to trade my Hawaii's in the past, as they usually traded down (even with the AC attached). Now I plan on making some serious Sun-Thurs gigs to resorts within driving distance to me in off season (Marco, Lakeshore, Oceana Palms and HHI. It looks like I can snag 3 of these in off season for the points of one Waiohai (4250) or Koolina (4050).
I have some concerns about every trader with enuf points trying to snag ski and plat weeks, but I think it will be cost prohibitive. Lets take the super plat ski week at Summit for 5200 points. For the new purchaser of points this will cost $50K just for the points + the 2K Mf's. If you add the lost interest on the 50K you get to about $3500/year cost just to purchase enuf points for this. This is close to the rental fee on redweek.
Current owners of gold/silver/bronze /weeks can combine points if they convert , but will have to consume the MF's on 2-3 units to do so (also pretty pricey and in line with rentals.
If the system is a complete disaster and inventory is available I am out the $695. The yearly fee doesn't faze me as that is much cheaper than II fees, lock off fees and fees to use the ac's...
I will miss searching the flexchange waiver wire on II however, as there were great deals there!!!
Only time will tell...