512damon
Guest
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2015
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 4
- Points
- 63
- Location
- Leander, TX
- Resorts Owned
- Westin Desert Willow
Those are some high MFs! This looks like an every other year contract. So it works out to over $0.24 per 1,000 Options. You can get mandatory SVV in the $0.14 to $0.15 range and I think WKV is in the area of $0.11 per 1,000.
I was looking at the third attachment and took $2000 (the VOA was $1000 a year) and divided it by 81,000 = 0.02469. Multiply that by 1000 and you get $0.247 per 1000.The MF on that 148,100 Annual purchase is 2.8% higher than what was billed per Home Option in August 2020.
Not sure about your math. On the EOY offer the MF runs $0.227 per 1,000 Home Options. On the Annual offer the MF runs $0.213 per 1,000 Home Options.
Since the MFs are an average of all the weeks in the Flex Trust, how can they be that high? WSJ isn't even in the Westin Flex trust. Do they have a bunch of mud weeks in there? Where at, in the mountains?Those maintenance fees are becoming pretty hefty. I wonder at what point it becomes cheaper to rent and not have the ownership obligation. The only thing that's more expensive is St. John. I'd rather own 12 months at STJ in high season at that MF price.
I didn't think they were taking direct trade ins anymore? I knew they were early on and also for Sheraton Flex. I suspect much of the weeks in the trust are Steamboat. Wasn't there an entire tower/building there that came after they stopped selling weeks and it all went into the trust?The more low season weeks they put into the flex, the higher the mf per staroptions is going to be. The deed owners are incentivized to trade their low season weeks into flex, probably what the sales are pushing for
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Since the MFs are an average of all the weeks in the Flex Trust, how can they be that high? WSJ isn't even in the Westin Flex trust. Do they have a bunch of mud weeks in there? Where at, in the mountains?
The reality is that there aren't even any Oceanfront Hawaii weeks in the Westin Flex trust. So you have as good a chance to book Oceanfront there using StarOptions as a Flex owner does using their options at the eight month mark.This product is so not competitive with a mandatory resort that we almost never even got offered the option to buy Flex and I don't know much about it despite being an owner for 12+ years and a relatively well-informed owner. When they see we own multiple WKV resale weeks they probably realize we're a lost cause...
The one time it was offered to us the pitch was something like this (paraphrased) - "We'll take your WKV week, and give you 148,100 flex options instead. You will have to add quite a bit of money and your annual maintenance fees for those options will be about 80% higher. But you will be able to get an Oceanfront unit every time you go to Hawaii which you can never do with your lousy current ownership."
Good thing Hawaii too far for us to go often and that view is not something we prioritize too highly, or we may have been tempted to do something we'd regret...
The reality is that there aren't even any Oceanfront Hawaii weeks in the Westin Flex trust. So you have as good a chance to book Oceanfront there using StarOptions as a Flex owner does using their options at the eight month mark.
That's something you learn the hard way after you buy... I wouldn't have known that at the time.
I'm surprised that wasn't communicated upfront. I was told upfront they were not included but I guess that may have been because I already owned WKORVN OF at the time. At least three sales people have told me during different presentations to "never trade in your OceanFront units for Westin Flex because Flex does not include OceanFront units."
Vistana seriously botched their Flex products. They opted to keep the oceanfront weeks out of the trust so they could sell those at a premium. Thus it left the flex program weakened and with higher MFs per SO. I doubt there were enough oceanfront units available to make much of a difference, but the lower MF/SO of those would have helped push down the MFs of Westin Flex.
They probably look at what you own and figure out what buttons they can push.
When you can only reserve Hawaii at 8 months out it's probably a good sales pitch to push the "home resort" idea and (at least theoretical) access to the most desired units at that resort.
So are you saying you were told you could reserve OF at 12 months if you purchased Westin Flex?
Yes - at a presentation at SVV. That was the main reason we "needed" to give up our WKV week and get 176K flex points (and part with over $20K).
These types of offers is probably how they get Platinum WKV weeks to resell as weeks or put in the trust. WKV has no ROFR.
So the salesperson just lied to you.