Attorney Disclaimer Ordered by the United States District Court:
I am an attorney who was admitted to represent some of the objectors in a class action pending in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Any statements by an attorney, including myself, should be considered to be the personal opinion of the attorney and are not approved by the Court. As such, my statements contained herein are not approved by the Court. More information is available at www.weeksprogramsettlement.com, the Court-approved website.
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. . . I have some concerns about some of the items which this objection group is raising. Firstly, I'd like to know why one of the largest requests to RCI is not requesting disclosure on exactly the amount of Trade Power each unit has, as well as the amount of Trade Power that is required to make the exchange? I feel that has more power than anything else, because I know that claims of 'red weeks' getting any inventory I want is completely false. This is what is told to us at timeshare presentations though. . .
Agreed, Adam. However, one of the major points of the settlement which the Plaintiffs' attorneys DID negotiate is that, prior to depositing a week, an RCI member may check the trade power of the week being considered for deposit. (Section II A.1.a) This is one of the reasons why I disagree with members who claim that the Plaintiffs' attorneys did nothing of any value. There are some important benefits to the settlement, but I confess that I believe that the settlement does not go far enough. There is also a provision that the historical trading power required to obtain an exchange in a particular area, broken down by month, be revealed. (Section II A.1.b) Personally, I don't believe that this disclosure is as relevant as it should be for months which include holidays, such as December, but my suggestion that historical trade power requirements for holiday weeks be listed separately was not received with wild enthusiasm by RCI executives.
As far as what is represented at timeshare sales presentations, RCI has consistently denied any responsibility. They have agreed to do some follow up with members (see Section II B), but IMO that's not enough. RCI did not take well to the suggestion that they monitor the resort salespeople and train them when they were seen to have made misrepresentations. (My suggestion was for experienced members to go on sales presentations as non-owners and report back to RCI regarding the representations made.) Nor did RCI accept the suggestion that members and potential members be allowed to check the value of weeks they might wish to purchase. In the end, my settlement request includes a provision that resorts with unsold inventory have access to the same information as members. This is not a perfect solution, but it would at least
allow sales people to check the comparative trade power of red weeks, and then eventually, these same sales people could hopefully be held responsible for misrepresentations.
Second, why are Points members not referenced here? A points member can book inventory in my weeks pool for as low as 9,000 points! Which means if they are given 45,000 points a year, that means they can take 5 vacations from my weeks pool for only one of their units? As a weeks member, I do not have the power to get 5 vacations for 1 from my weeks pool of inventory, who made it ok for the Points members to get that luxury out of my weeks pool?? If they want 5 for 1, stick to Points Pool Inventory!
For better or worse, this "points" provision is intended to mirror the fact that, historically, within 45 days of the start date, RCI has dropped trade power provisions. Many members, particularly those with blue weeks, seem to rely on this "45-day rule," and IMO it is important to protect this provision, which I believe is threatened by the provisions of the proposed settlement agreement, which allows RCI to rent weeks within 90 days of the start date without the restrictions placed on other weeks (such as substitution of other weeks and simultaneous availability for exchange).
Thirdly, the rental requests make sense in theory, but to me are so extreme that there is no way it could be considered by the court, let alone RCI. Make sure rental rates are above maintenance fees? How could that possibly be done? I can't even search for the maintenance fees for 90% of the resorts my family and I have visited in the past 10 years. And if a resort has ridiculous maintenance fees, why should that harm me in my vacation. I was able to goto Orange Lake this fall for $350. I'm sure the MF's are more than that. But that is ridiculous. Who is going to pay $600/$700 in the fall for these units? I sure won't be. And clearly nobody is going to exchange into Orlando in October, there are so many units available right now. You will end up getting all the other important requests rejected by putting this in there.
This may be termed as a valid difference in opinion. I, for one, have no objection to units being rented at rates lower than the maintenance fees
close to the start date. However, IMO renting them for less that the maintenance fees far in advance (nine months, a year, sometimes more) will hurt every resort (and every timeshare owner at those resorts) which has unsold weeks.
I have never had a problem calling the resort sales staff and asking what the maintenance fees are. I've done this for every resort at which I was considering buying a week, except for the first. (Once burned . . .)
Last thing on Rental, the statement that several are making here which you may or may not be requesting in this objection list (i am not sure, the wording is confusing) is about exchange and rental available at the same time. What does that mean? Does that mean that if something is available to rent, that it should be available for EVERYONE to exchange? I purchased a timeshare in Key West, Florida for a reason. I wanted to ensure I got to see as much inventory as possible. Now you are telling me that person that purchased some pathetic January week in Branson will see that inventory as well if the unit is available to rent? What will stop RCI from just putting all the space for rental, and then basically making every unit of inventory available to all members, and it being a free-for-all?? That will just deteriorate things even more!
The way I read the proposed settlement agreement (Section II C), if RCI decides to rent a week, it cannot remove that week from the exchange pool, even though it provides a substitute week acquired from another source (such as directly from the resort). Instead, RCI must keep the week available for exchange by those members with sufficient trade power to exchange for it. However, there seem to be exceptions, including for weeks within 90 days of the start date (Section II C.2). There also doesn't seem to be any exchange protection for weeks which RCI transfers to another exchange system. (Section II C.1) Other TUGGERS have posted much on these other systems, so I won't go into that here.
I don't think that this section of the agreement is as clear as it could be, and I have requested clarification. Ideally, every interested member should be able to read and comprehend the agreement.
As someone that has generally been very happy with my RCI experiences, I do not want that to change. I have been able to exchange into some great destinations, including some Hyatt hotel rooms just this year, which I know I cannot get through any other timeshare portal. Having asked the Hyatt staff when they started a timeshare program, the look I was given was just shock. From what I can tell, this space is not 'timeshare' space at all, but just regular hotel rooms. The fact that I was able to exchange my week for a week at a very nice Hotel in a location that we'll never see timeshare (this was Houston, Texas) was very valuable to me, and a nice change from the typical caribbean, mexico, etc... Now I want to see the numbers of how much space RCI is putting in compared to how much they are renting. But if they are limited in renting, could this mean that they will no longer put this Hyatt space for me to travel to? I do not want that either.
Under the terms of the proposed agreement (Section II A.3), RCI must disclose what they are putting in and what they are taking out, at least in general numbers. However, this provision is set to expire as soon as "two years from December 31, 2008." (This may have automatically been extended, as I have not seen any indication that the required disclosures were made for the year ending December 31, 2008.) Section VII G also requires RCI to disclose compliance information to Plaintiffs' co-lead counsel.
Hope this answers at least some of your questions!
Susan
