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Weird RCI/Wyndham portal situation

paxsarah

TUG Member
Joined
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Location
Athens, GA
Resorts Owned
Wyndham Ocean Boulevard, Grand Desert, Kingsgate, Bali Hai, Oceanside
I had a weird experience with the RCI/Wyndham portal earlier this week and I'm wondering if anyone has had anything similar happen. I think it's been resolved satisfactorily, but I'm still a little nervous that my confirmed exchange will somehow disappear as I'll explain below.

The background is that once my last Wyndham contract was finalized in July, I made a deposit of 184K Wyndham points to RCI and in early August set up an ongoing search for 2BR Orlando DVC in late May/early June 2012. Nothing for months, I was expecting that because I've been following the deposits and knew it was early. Then about two weeks ago I started getting "matches" to non-DVC Orlando resorts, and after about a day I realized they were coming so fast that I'd never get a legitimate match so I called RCI to ask them to limit the search, and the matches stopped coming.

Then, this Tuesday I was searching for DVC via the portal and I clicked through to one of the results (a 1BR) and noticed it said "insufficient points." Knowing I had 184K points on deposit I went to my account summary and my account showed as '0' club points where it previously showed the 184K. Nothing on hold, nothing showing as confirmed.

I got on the phone to RCI and the first person I spoke with told me that the points were gone because they had been used to confirm a reservation for a 2BR June 8-15 at BCV (!!!). I told him that I would be thrilled if it was the case, but nothing was showing in my account, I hadn't been asked to confirm a hold by email or phone, nothing. He put me through to one of their web support guys who was incredibly helpful, told me that the reservation had been confirmed the day before, it was definitely showing for him, and he even scanned a confirmation and e-mailed it as an attachment to me while we were on the phone because I wanted to see something in black and white. Later that morning I received a more typical-looking e-mail confirmation (typical as far as I can tell, this being my first RCI exchange) - I don't know if it was prompted by my call or if it would have come anyway.

The final weirdness is that the scanned confirmation from the web support guy says in the header "RCI Points Resort Confirmation" - I don't have access to RCI points, only weeks. It does have all of our contact information correct. The regular e-mailed confirmation doesn't mention RCI Points at all, and the contact phone numbers in the later e-mail appear to be RCI Weeks numbers.

So, this is weird, right? There is still nothing showing in my RCI account via the portal (nor via RCI weeks direct login, but I wouldn't expect that). Has anything like this happened to anyone else here? And most importantly, should I be worried that this could disappear, like if they realized something was a mistake they could cancel my reservation? My fear is that something would go wrong and they would cancel it too late for me to catch another DVC week. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
 

learnalot

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Interesting post and it follows with something I have been wondering about since they did the last "enhancement" shutdown for RCI a few weeks ago. I have noticed that the interface seems different. I used to go in through the Wyndham portal and from there, if I wanted to search inventory, I would go through one of two doors: one for RCI weeks and the other for Nightly Stays. Since the shutdown, everything comes up as RCI Points search. The two choices are gone. But, poking around with the inventory, it seemed to me that in the Wyndham portal, the inventory was still set up such that some resorts/reservations required full week stays while others would allow different configurations. If you don't have access to nightly stays, it might be limiting or filtering and limiting your results to 7 night stays

As far as the mystery about why you were not notified of the match, I have no clue. I can appreciate your nervousness, but if he sent you a confirmation, you are probably good to go.
 
Last edited:

paxsarah

TUG Member
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Location
Athens, GA
Resorts Owned
Wyndham Ocean Boulevard, Grand Desert, Kingsgate, Bali Hai, Oceanside
Well, I called DVC member services today and they had all of my information. They gave me my confirmation number so I can make some dining reservations next week, and I was able to use that to pull up my resort reservation online. So, I feel pretty good, and I'm mostly reassured that my exchange isn't going to disappear. I'm hoping that this is just another example of the front end being unable to handle something that the back end is properly doing.
 

paxsarah

TUG Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2010
Messages
4,064
Reaction score
3,207
Location
Athens, GA
Resorts Owned
Wyndham Ocean Boulevard, Grand Desert, Kingsgate, Bali Hai, Oceanside
So, this is weird, right? There is still nothing showing in my RCI account via the portal (nor via RCI weeks direct login, but I wouldn't expect that). Has anything like this happened to anyone else here? And most importantly, should I be worried that this could disappear, like if they realized something was a mistake they could cancel my reservation? My fear is that something would go wrong and they would cancel it too late for me to catch another DVC week. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I hadn't been into the RCI portal for a while but inspired by another thread I thought I'd window shop. When I landed on my account page I saw this graphic:
daysforvacation.jpg


Why yes, my vacation is in 49 days, thanks for noticing!

However, when I click on the "confirmed" tab (or any of the tabs) under Vacation Plans, it still shows nothing. Their system obviously knows all about my exchange, it's just not showing it to me. I'm still operating on the assumption that things are good, I'm an optimist at heart. :rofl:
 
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