As to the trust yes, but as Ron has endlessly pointed out - this was about credit pooling -though he will tell you it shouldn't impact the trust as the points are being paid for. When you push 2-3 years worth of points into one year, at the level of MILLIONS and as high as tens of millions, two things are going to happen. Inventory is going to dissappear and if they're are no failsafes, you're going to end up with a points management/inventory problem. THIS is where the trust was having issues - not cancel rebook which is simply usable inventory being used (fairly or unfairly) there is no impact on the trust at 60 days usage AFTER wyndham takes their cut for 60 days. The crisis IMHO was the growing number of people figuring out what Ron had been taught. AND let us not forget that something went wrong in the old system too. Remember for the last year folks were getting credited back double and triple points on cancellations. We don't know what we don't know but damn we are all enjoying speculating
AS to the more forcefully enforcing existing rules, will you please send me the page cite where cancel/rebook it not allowed or even referenced in the fairfield, wyndham past or newly revised rule sets. This is the 'rumor' that keeps festering animosity among people. Cancel / Rebook is no different than the guys waiting in line all night at walmart to buy out the xbox so he can sell them on ebay. Walmart instilled a limit on how many you can buy. So now he takes his wife. Wyndham implemented changes that will create limits too - 48hr guest cert and such. These will limit the megas who were booking like drunk sailors in hopes they could rent out, and in many cases would just expire the units if they didn't book. That in my opinion was more hurtful to owners than if they had been returned (and there are several on here that can explain to you why they didn't care if they lost the points because they had historical results that they were more likely to rent in the last 14 days than actually lose the points but it did happen).
I stand by my opinion from all the calls I've had that the upgrade feature is a results of the waitlisting requests that have been circulating for years because again - if they were attempting to outlaw something wouldn't you create a rule ESPECIALLY if you are already rewriting the rules at the same time, yet not a single mention.
The pulling future points into the current year with the old credit pool should not have been a trust problem if it had worked properly. The way it was supposed to work was, if I deposited 2018 points into the pool and wanted to use them in 2017, there had to have been someone else's 2017 points on deposit. It was possible that the pool would be "empty" for a particular year and if that was the case, I would have had to wait for another deposit.
I always pooled everything. . One of the reasons I promoted the use of the pool here and on facebook was "insurance" I wanted to be sure as i could be, that there were points in the pool when I wanted to make a reservation
I have no idea whether Wyndham checked to make sure there were enough 2017 points in the pool when I made 2017 reservations. If they didnt; there would absolutely be problems with the trust. For the last several years I maintained a 10 million point ownership, and adding 20 million points a year, and I pooled everything, I cane into January with 30 million, sold 20 and bought 20 .... so using 2015 as my example.. On Jan 2nd I pooled 10 million 2018 points, and started buying with the goal of buying 20 million points by December, As those new contracts came in I pooled the points so by the end of the year there were another 60 million points in the pool (and I sold contracts (20 million points worth) throughout the year)
And I knew of several other guys who used it more aggressively than I ever did
But as I say, it shouldnt have been a problem if Wyndham managed it properly.
Regarding cancel and rebook. This technique is nothing that Wyndham can "outlaw" ie there is a cancellation policy anyone can cancel at any time and of course anyone can make a reservation from available inventory at any time. All we were doing is to do the two transactions one right after the other.
Wyndhan didnt like cancel and rebook. I could go into a long discussion as to why, but it would be nothing but good guesses. Lets just accept the fact that they didnt like it. and that they have intended to stop it for a long time. Those of us that used c/r a lot, knew it couldnt last. In fact there were two rules that if they had enforced them would have ended it, One was the commercial use prohibition and the other was the no unfair advantage rule. The only question was what exactly were they going to do to stop it. There were several possibilities discussed here,
a waiting list like with RCI or Worldmark (both Wyndham clubs)
a random delay before cancelled inventory would return to inventory
stop extending VIP benefits to resale points in a VIP account
What wyndham actually did was, as another tugger put it.. "clever" Instead of introducing a new rule to prohibit anything, they introduced a new VIP benefit;. "auto upgrades", the intended consequence of which, would be that my cancellation becomes someone elses upgrade. The other thing it does is to frustrate the guys that are still using bots.
So when you demand "send me the page cite where cancel/rebook it not allowed" and suggest that if its not specifically outlawed, it must be allowed, You are wrong..Using your ownership for commercial purposes and manipulating the program to gain an unfair advantage over other owners are already disallowed. You can still cancel, and you can still make reservations from available inventory, but the new auto upgrade feature is meant to make it difficult, if not impossible, manipulate the system to get a high value 3 bedroom reservation at half the studio price, to rent (commercial purpose) or even to use yourself.
and when you ask "if they were attempting to outlaw something wouldn't you create a rule?" The answer is no. Wyndham is smarter or more clever than that. They didnt write a new rule to end the practice, they introduced a new benefit
