Update: I typed up top that
Bonus Weeks are shown among available offers every time I log on at RCI Dot Com.
That was true at the time, & for several weeks afterward.
By the middle of August 2021, it was no longer true.
The
Bonus Week "certificate" which I had grown accustomed to seeing either expired or got used & thus was no longer shown after I made an August 2021 reservation.
With hardly any points to draw on, my current options for RCI reservations are limited to
Extra Vacation Getaways &
Last Calls &
7 Nights For 10,000 Points & Below.
All those are good, but they all have disadvantages.
Extra Vacation Getaways aren't exactly bargains.
Even though
Last Calls &
7 Nights For 10,000 Points & Below are big bargains, they are only available for check-in within the next 6 weeks or so, whereas we don't plan on going to timeshares again till January 2022.
Bonus Weeks, if they show up again some time (as I expect they will, once the Vacation Village timeshare chain issues a new "certificate") will likewise be available only for check-in within a similar 45-day period. Basically, those weeks are like
Last Calls, except a bit cheaper. Also, there's no RCI Platinum discount for
Bonus Week reservations, the way there is with
Last Calls &
Extra Vacation Getaways.
At an RCI-101 orientation I attended at 1 of the timeshare resorts, the discussion of
Bonus Week certificates mentioned the need to cite a number printed on the certificate when making a
Bonus Week reservation by telephone. The RCI person went into some detail about where to find that number on the physical certificate, as though the certificate is a piece of paper given to the RCI member upon purchasing at an RCI-affiliated timeshare, or a paper that gets mailed to the RCI member.
In all our years of owning points units 1st at Vacation Village At Parkway & more recently at Grandview At Las Vegas, we have never even seen a
Bonus Week certificate in the form of a piece of paper. Nor have we seen a
Bonus Week certificate number on anything sent to us via email or shown on the RCI Points website when we log in. Yet we have received email informing us that a
Bonus Week certificate has been issued, & until mid-August 2021 we saw lots of units available for
Bonus Week reservations on the RCI website.
When we did make
Bonus Week reservations, we did it via the RCI website. The reservation process was basically the same as making a reservation via
Last Call & did not involve citing any certificate numbers. That is to say, we've been informed that we had a
Bonus Week certificate & we've made
Bonus Week reservations accordingly, but we've never seen an actual certificate in any form, with or without numbers. Go figure.
I expect that 1 of these days soon, maybe by Thanksgiving, we'll be informed via email that a new certificate has been issued, & that
Bonus Week offerings will show up once again on the
Offers section of the RCI web site. If so, we'll take advantage of the bargains if any fit our January 2022 criteria. If not, we'll make do with
Last Calls &
Extra Vacation Getaways.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.