Upset with Vistana

[Mroze]

I think you have until the end of June even if you aren't elite. I had a late July rental and cancelled it before 60 days and have unrestricted options that I can still bank for $109.

If you plan to go the Banking route, here's a snippet from the Vistana-Fee PDF.

 

[dioxide45]

Common knowledge or not, this is not how it should have been handle.People did not choose to cancel,the resorts were closed.I think at any point when people had to cancel, the options should have been given back as unrestricted.People have died ,others in financial ruins.That would have gone a long way with owners who pay incredibly high fees.

The question then is, where does the inventory all come from. You have a lot of people with 2020 points that are now good in to 2021 and 2022 for reservations 8 months out competing against those with their actual 2021 and 2022 use year options. They had to instill some type of restriction. Finding available inventory will be hard enough even with the restrictions.

 

[DTD1990]

I understand the OP's frustration. I had both a Colorado and a Mexico trip cancelled so I am sitting on a lot of restricted shares. But as someone else posted in another related thread, we are (fractional) owners not renters, so Vistana can only do so much to balance the inventory constraints caused by months of inventory being taken offline due to COVID19.

Imagine if you owned a vacation home (100%) in Hawaii, the Bahamas or Mexico and the same situation presented itself where the local government instituted travels bans or 14-day quarantines for incoming visitors - what would be your recourse? You would have none! You still would have to pay your vacation home's mortgage/property taxes/utilities even though you could not use the home at all. Its the same situation for timeshare owners.

 

[Cornell]

The question then is, where does the inventory all come from. You have a lot of people with 2020 points that are now good in to 2021 and 2022 for reservations 8 months out competing against those with their actual 2021 and 2022 use year options. They had to instill some type of restriction. Finding available inventory will be hard enough even with the restrictions.

What you have brought up (the increased demand in 2021-2022) for usage has really been on my mind with all of this. Don't get me wrong - I love my Westin timeshares - but this is potentially a big downside to timesharing. Another consequence of this crazy pandemic that I don't think of us could have ever dreamed up.

Thank you again Vistana experts for helping me sort out my upcoming trip. I generally feel like a fairly intelligent person but keeping track of the Vistana rules taxes my brain .

 

[PamMo]

Caterina25, I feel your pain. I've had ten weeks of timeshare vacations cancelled since March, with various degrees of loss. I did cancel our July Harborside reservations at the end of April so I'd have unrestricted StarOptions/banking options, but I'd MUCH rather have use of my deeded units. As you well know, prime summer weeks are only worth 95,700 SO's at $3,000/wk in MF's, so it's hard to get good value with any trade in Vistana or Interval. So, yeah, timesharing has been a big "Ouch!" for a lot of us this year.

 

[pchung6]

I feel your pain. I had 5 hawaii weeks that I had cancelled until July. In my cases, I cancelled these weeks and refunded renters before 60 days, so I got unrestricted points back. I wasn't going to just sit there and waited renters and Redweek to act on me, so I did the move and lost thousands $. Now with 500k points banked until 2022, I really don't know what to do with these and feel it will be difficulty to even just find any valuable reservation in next 2 years. This Covid-19 really gave us all timeshare owners nightmare and worst scenarios we could ever image.

 

[DeniseM]

At 8 mos, you can make reservations at your home resort and rent them - it's doable, if you are on top of it.

 

[Mroze]

I am an owner of two weeks at Harborside and two Marriott weeks.I had reservations at Harborside for July 3-10,2020 and called Harborside May 23,2020 to see if everything was operational.They told me they were closed and were not sure when they would open so I canceled my reservations.I saw my star options returned as regular points,which was fine.Today when I looked into my account I saw my star options have become restricted because of the 60 day rule.I am really upset.I didn't want to cancel they were closed.The only three options I would accept would be cash back or cash used for the next maintenance fees or a least unrestricted points.What has others done.They will not get away with this.

Jut received an email [minutes ago] that Atlantis Paradise Island [not Harborside] that they will officially open and welcome visitors from Tuesday Jul 7th, 2020 onwards.

 

[CPNY]

At 8 mos, you can make reservations at your home resort and rent them - it's doable, if you are on top of it.

Exactly. It’s how I use all of my star options. I’ve also been able to find last min availability .

 

[CPNY]

Jut received an email [minutes ago] that Atlantis Paradise Island [not Harborside] that they will officially open and welcome visitors from Tuesday Jul 7th, 2020 onwards.

I reached out to Atlantis through social media and asked about harborside. I was told Hs would be open. I just got off the phone with vistana and they said HS will open on the 7th as well. It also seems booking harborside for the 7th is open but not prior to that.