What percentage of 884,000 Owners are VIP?

[SNA27]

I liked her post because it contributes to the healthy back and forth, regardless how you or anyone else may feel about it. It also reminded me directly of what I outlined and reinforced - which is that I’ve been guilty of not taking the time to search for answers and to be patient and to learn from other long time Wyndham and forum members.

Context is everything. I didn’t “like” the post because of anything to do with you in other words - but that is the potential false assumption and personal interpretation you chose to embrace. Seek first to understand before being understood. I’m not in your head and you are not in my head. The internet is largely tone deaf - and considering up to 90% of direct human interactions when face to face consist of nonverbal communications - the written word leaves a lot open to false interpretations and assumptions.

I’d also humbly submit that your explicit overuse of exclamation points needs to be scaled way back. Exclamation points used on Internet forums are widely known to portray escalation, charged emotion, along with aggression and overt anger when used repeatedly in almost every sentence. I highly doubt you intend your posts to come across this way - and I personally am not interpreting your posts in this manner - but many other people will - and this alone could explain why people are prone to reacting to your posts in the manner that I’ve repeatedly observed. Just some constructive food for thought from one forum member to another.


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It did occur to me that there might have been a 'nugget' in that otherwise inflammatory post that caught your fancy and had nothing to do with me.

I understand your point about punctuation. I actually appreciate it. Thank you. It's a weakness I must work on. I love this Grammarly for correcting my punctuation.

In my defense, I must say that weakness arises from the fact that in my mother tongue, there is no need for punctuation marks. All that is required is 'space' between word clusters and 'full stop' between the sentences. Even a '?' mark is superfluous. No '!' mark either. In fact, in my mother tongue, words are used instead just as the flowchart below recommends.

I learned the English Alphabet at the age of 10 and studied English as a subject before I attempting to speak it at 16 in college. In my undergraduate years, the medium of instruction was English, I had to speak English since most of the student population spoke other languages and English acted as the link language.

English, especially colloquial English, is lost without it! An incredulous exclamation 'I shot the clerk?!' could become a confession 'I shot the clerk.' without correct punctuation. (My Cousin Vinny)

 

[SNA27]

I proudly shop at Good Will for myself and my daughter. I can proudly say that I dont spend more than $100 a year on clothes. I've seen family members make around 160k a year one year and 0 the next 7 years because of the 2008 recession and being "overqualified" and losing all their retirement because they owned too expensive of a house that they couldn't get rid of from the market crash. I've seen people get cancer and lose everything just to stay alive.

Everyone has their own opinion on luxury spending. I've personally just have had a lot of bad luck things happen to my family: layoffs, a missed miscarriage etc and I've learned to not have any expectations so I dont feel disappointment. If you spend more money on something, youd expect more out of it, but sometimes that expectation just leads to disappointment.

That reminds me of my late father. He used to tell us 'don't have expectations, so you won't be disappointed'.
He also reprimanded me that I was too young to have 'likes and dislikes'.
He had this 'essential and urgent' test for any purchase. Not essential, forget it. Essential but not urgent, we will think about when it becomes urgent. Haha, it usually meant never!
So, I just observe that rule for myself but let my wife (who was more affluent growing up) spoil our children! They spend money like water, like real Americans. Good for the economy, I guess.
Btw, I never shop at Nordstrom, just so you don't mistake my metaphor.

Going by the E&U rule, Wyndham TS was neither! So, I am nonplussed as to what magic spell Wyndham guy at Maui cast upon me in 2016.
I guess when you have postponed your 'present' rewards for 'future' ones all your life, you fall for a guy who says my resplendent future is right here, right now. Smh.

Ok, @HitchHiker71, please give me feedback on my use/abuse of '!" marks. I am serious, I want to get the hang of it. DM me, if you like.

 

[geist1223]

If/When you read a Post that you think is attacking you or your thoughts try not to respond. Simply dip your shoulder and let it slide by. Take a deep breath and hold it for the count of 20. Then simply move on. When someone cuts me off in traffic I can get upset. I could try and respond. But what good does it do me. Or I can say to myself that person obviously has a need I do not understand and lower my blood pressure.

 

[ecwinch]

What would stop Wyndham from changing both the programs to be more and more alike and overcome the resistance to a complete merger?

As is mentioned, they cannot change the programs because the WM governing documents prevent them from doing so.

Keep in mind that the Club Wyndham Plus is a "Club of Clubs". They certainly could add Worldmark as one of those Clubs.

But central to how Club Wyndham Plus is the ability of all Clubs to make reservations outside their Club at the 10 month mark. In some cases that is directly built into that Club's governing documents (i.e. CWA), or by the deeded owner assigning their usage rights to the Club in exchange for points.

Neither is true or even possible with WM under the governing documents. So WM owners would have to consent by a 50%+ majority of the total voting power (excluding the developer) to modify the governing documents. Which would be very difficult to accomplish.

 

[SNA27]

@HitchHiker71, I just realized the probable cause of my mistake. In Sanskrit and Hindi, the 'half-stop' and 'full stop' are indicated by '|' or '||' respectively. There is no such symbol as '.' I must have been inadvertently using '!' as an approximation for '|'. I am really going to get a handle on this punctuation intricacy. I thank you for pointing out the error in my punctuation.

Btw, seriously, what do you think about half-liners and one-liner nonsequiturs on this forum? Or the rambling run-on sentences of streaming consciousness that give you a bigger headache than a 10Q report.

I have read a lot of threads on this forum in the past month as if I am doing a crash course. I find it so tedious to wade through so much chaff full of off-topic nonsequiturs and nonsense to find some grains of wisdom!

Do you think any newbie will have the perseverance required to hunt through those threads to find the needle in the haystack! That's not 'due diligence', it's an 'archeological adventure'.
Stickies are the best but I would expunge quite a bit of useless posts from them too.

So, any advice to newbies to do due diligence and search through the forum must take cognizance of these limitations, imo.

Did you notice that I didn't abuse any '!'? I am learning fast.

 

[ecwinch]

Moderator Note:

I want to remind everyone on the proper procedure for handling posts that violate TUG rules. If you find a post to be improper then the proper action is to report that post. This is outlined in the rules we all agreed to when we joined TUG:

Avoid replying to messages to point out bbs rule infractions

Leave this to BBS Administrators and Moderators. When you jump in, it makes for even more work on the part of the administrators to clean up the mess. If you feel a message is improper, you may report it to the BBS Staff by clicking on the "report" link at the bottom of the message.

 

[SNA27]

As is mentioned, they cannot change the programs because the WM governing documents prevent them from doing so.

Keep in mind that the Club Wyndham Plus is a "Club of Clubs". They certainly could add Worldmark as one of those Clubs.

But central to how Club Wyndham Plus is the ability of all Clubs to make reservations outside their Club at the 10 month mark. In some cases that is directly built into that Club's governing documents (i.e. CWA), or by the deeded owner assigning their usage rights to the Club in exchange for points.

Neither is true or even possible with WM under the governing documents. So WM owners would have to consent by a 50%+ majority of the total voting power (excluding the developer) to modify the governing documents. Which would be very difficult to accomplish.

Dang! @ecwinch, you pack so much in your concise posts! It's a lot to process.
How can a club in the 'club of clubs' build into its governing document a reciprocal arrangement? Wouldn't that be negotiated at the time a club joins the 'club of clubs'?

Since my previous residence is in an HOA, I am aware of the power of the developer to encumber the HOA with CC&Rs that are inimical to the HOA. We have been encumbered by CC&R to pay for the road-paving costs of a neighboring HOA. A fair solution would for the 2 HOAs to merge but it will never happen because that HOA managed to get our HOA encumbered by CC&R to pay their costs. All because our developer shared 1000 feet of road with them so he could build a few more units. And they use our roads more than we use theirs. We sued and lost! CC&R won!

The point I am trying to make is that an HOA or a club of HOAs are sovereign entities that can govern themselves without the developer exercising his influence to encumber them is a myth!

 

[ecwinch]

The point I am trying to make is that an HOA or a club of HOAs are sovereign entities that can govern themselves without the developer exercising his influence to encumber them is a myth!

Which is true and easy to do if the developer is there when the governing documents are crafted. Which they have been for Clubs that makes up Club Wyndham Plus. But not true for Shell Vacation Club and Worldmark. Therein lies the difference that makes your example an apples to oranges comparison.

 

[SNA27]

Which is true and easy to do if the developer is there when the governing documents are crafted. Which they have been for Clubs that makes up Club Wyndham Plus. But not true for Shell Vacation Club and Worldmark. Therein lies the difference that makes your example an apples to oranges comparison.

All developers anticipate future acquisitions and mergers and I bet their clever lawyers include fine print to cover that inevitability. Would Wyndham have acquired WM without doing due diligence as to these issues? I think we underestimate the power of Wyndham and give too much credence to the voting power of owners. It's an illusion or delusion on the part of owners. Developers are no fools to cede so much power to the owners to prevent future possibilities.

 

[ecwinch]

Is this an informed opinion or your speculation? aka have you ever seen the WM governing documents?

 

[SNA27]

Pure speculation or intelligence gathered from experience. My gut tells me the developers have covered themselves for all eventualities!
We talk about Governing Document as if it's Gospel. Realistically, how many have read either? I never read the 500-page CC&R before I bought my previous residence.
Call me cynical, I think owners don't realize they will be made an offer they can't refuse.

 

[ecwinch]

As Stan Lee would say "Nuff Said"

 

[SNA27]

Who's Stan Lee? Is he the guy Sheldon of BBT manages to get a restraining order from?

 

[Jan M.]

@HitchHiker71, I just realized the probable cause of my mistake. In Sanskrit and Hindi, the 'half-stop' and 'full stop' are indicated by '|' or '||' respectively. There is no such symbol as '.' I must have been inadvertently using '!' as an approximation for '|'. I am really going to get a handle on this punctuation intricacy. I thank you for pointing out the error in my punctuation.

Btw, seriously, what do you think about half-liners and one-liner nonsequiturs on this forum? Or the rambling run-on sentences of streaming consciousness that give you a bigger headache than a 10Q report.

I have read a lot of threads on this forum in the past month as if I am doing a crash course. I find it so tedious to wade through so much chaff full of off-topic nonsequiturs and nonsense to find some grains of wisdom!

Do you think any newbie will have the perseverance required to hunt through those threads to find the needle in the haystack! That's not 'due diligence', it's an 'archeological adventure'.
Stickies are the best but I would expunge quite a bit of useless posts from them too.

So, any advice to newbies to do due diligence and search through the forum must take cognizance of these limitations, imo.

Did you notice that I didn't abuse any '!'? I am learning fast.

I can relate to what you are saying about wading through past threads. When I joined TUG we had already been Wyndham owners for 8 years, were already platinum, I knew how to use the website, and booked and cancelled my own reservations without calling a VC to hold my hand. From talking to other people at the resorts it became obvious to me that there was more I didn't know and searching online for more information led me to TUG. When I was new to TUG and reading back through the threads I often had a hard time even understanding a lot of what I read. I didn't know the people posting or their timeshare backgrounds/opinions. I didn't know their histories with each other. It was like coming into a movie with a very complex plot half way through. You can figure some things out as you go but it isn't easy and when the movie ends you know you didn't get everything. And to make it worse when I was trying to search out something specific in the threads I had a very hard time. I still do!

If this has already been covered I apologize but a little context and history might be helpful. There are a lot of owners who follow the threads and rarely post or have stopped posting. And they have good reasons, usually being offended, disgusted or just done. Sometimes newbies come in with their own axes to grind or with stances that may not be as well informed as they think. Some don't take well to having others point out to them how they are wrong or not as knowledgeable as they think they are. A good description is what the people who have read all the Harry Potter books and have usually seen the movies too think and say about the people who have only seen the movies and are talking about how they love or hate the movies. The people who have read all the books think and often say something like " You know nothing and please just stop talking now. You don't even have any idea about how much you missed by not having read the books." I was managing a movie theater during the years the Harry Potter movies came out and I heard so many of those comments and discussions. Btw, I've read all the books in case anyone was wondering, Lol. Not an expert on them any more than I am on knowing all there is to know about timeshares. Like a lot of other people I wouldn't be wasting my time on TUG if I wasn't interested knowing as much as I can about the timeshares we have and staying on top of any changes. Some people seem to want to use TUG for their own entertainment rather than being an asset in making productive posts or adding value to discussions which also offends, disgusts and makes other people just want to be done with TUG at times.

There is one lesson I apparently learned much easier than you and a few others appear to be learning. That is to listen, learn and not take offense when a longer time well respected member explains to you how you are mistaken, incorrect in some detail, that for whatever reason you need to step back with what you are saying or need to think about how you are responding. Online lacks the nuances of person to person discussion as we all know. Plus not everyone is good at putting things into words, particularly written. Without as many of the long time members posting these days it can be very difficult to figure out who consistently has the best advice or will point you to someone who can better answer a question. In talking face to face it is much easier to get a feel for who has an agenda, who is the player or poser and who is the real deal.

Unfortunately sometimes we get judged unfairly because of the history of the discussion on a topic or the histories of certain people. It takes time to learn these things. Btw if someone disagrees with you there is nothing wrong with asking them to expand on or explain their reply in a less confrontational way or without what feels to you like a personal attack. They may not have intended that you should feel that way and will usually make that clear if you give them a chance. Being wrong, misinformed, or whatever in one instance or on one topic doesn't make you wrong about everything. Many of us have been there so you have plenty of company in that, lol! Just own it, don't let others rub your nose it in forever and a day and move on.

That last part made me think about Ron P. again. If we went back on the threads to when he first started on TUG I seriously doubt he started out with the expertise we came to credit him with having. And I know for sure because I remember from after I joined that not everyone was a fan of him or thought he was right about some things.

Some people are very judicial in their use of their likes on comments. Others hand them out freely in an effort to garner support.

 

[dgalati]

@HitchHiker71, I just realized the probable cause of my mistake. In Sanskrit and Hindi, the 'half-stop' and 'full stop' are indicated by '|' or '||' respectively. There is no such symbol as '.' I must have been inadvertently using '!' as an approximation for '|'. I am really going to get a handle on this punctuation intricacy. I thank you for pointing out the error in my punctuation.

Btw, seriously, what do you think about half-liners and one-liner nonsequiturs on this forum? Or the rambling run-on sentences of streaming consciousness that give you a bigger headache than a 10Q report.

I have read a lot of threads on this forum in the past month as if I am doing a crash course. I find it so tedious to wade through so much chaff full of off-topic nonsequiturs and nonsense to find some grains of wisdom!

Do you think any newbie will have the perseverance required to hunt through those threads to find the needle in the haystack! That's not 'due diligence', it's an 'archeological adventure'.
Stickies are the best but I would expunge quite a bit of useless posts from them too.

So, any advice to newbies to do due diligence and search through the forum must take cognizance of these limitations, imo.

Did you notice that I didn't abuse any '!'? I am learning fast.

Way off topic now. This is a good example of why newbies need to ask questions instead of reading and filtering through all the off topic posts!!!!!!

 

[schoolmarm]

For those of you who are reading old threads, you might find the search tool (although clunky) a little bit useful. OR look at long threads on topics of interest. OR look at short threads that are on a specific topic you are interested in. Search before you ask.

Jan's post is spot on.

 

[ecwinch]

As the moderator of this forum, I have always tried to strike the balance between having to be the crossing guard and the police officer, with a bias to facilitating discussion rather than shutting it down. Recent activity has had me acting more like a police officer, which I will do, but would rather not.

And increasingly I find myself being asked to be more like a NBA referee, with players trying draw contact and then immediately pleading get a foul called on someone else. I think very few of the people who frequent these forums finds that behaviour interesting.

To sum up the sentiment of past few pages.... listen more, talk less. Google is your friend.

 

[dgalati]

@SNA27 curious if you have results on this poll?

 

[bobinmich]

20k sounds accurate for resale. I've never come across another resale only member casually talking in a hot tub etc. I only knew Wyndham had resale before my first purchase because I was originally looking into DVC resale for short getaways. Not many people are tech savvy to the point of knowing how to look up how to do something like that properly without getting scammed.

My brother bought nearly 1million RETAIL points...he's been bragging up Wyndham for nearly 20 years.....then I found some on ebay 2 years ago, 238k for 596.00 and 91/month MF.....Then I told my 2 sisters, who BOTH bought resale on ebay. Then last year, I added another small 126k resale contract from ebay. My brother doesn't regret ANY of the cost he has paid,...but...he will only buy RESALE now if he decides to buy more. WE NEED RETAIL buyers to keep the horse in front of the cart.

 

[SNA27]

@bobinmich, ride the cheap seats in the carriage! Don't you ever try to get on the horse, they kick! And they know where bears relieve themselves! Neighhhhh!

That was a reference to your ability to wring out very low $/night! I am sure your VIPP brother can get even lower $/1000 with his 50% discount and upgrades if he applies your methods. Not counting capital costs of course. I used your metric and came up with ~$66/per night on all my reservations. But that doesn't measure the VIP multiplier effect.

 

[raygo123]

20k sounds accurate for resale. I've never come across another resale only member casually talking in a hot tub etc. I only knew Wyndham had resale before my first purchase because I was originally looking into DVC resale for short getaways. Not many people are tech savvy to the point of knowing how to look up how to do something like that properly without getting scammed.

One thing that you must take into consideration is the fact that the number of owners on this site, although large, is not a sampling of the whole. Neither are we typical.

As far as how many VIPs are there, Wyndham's goal was 25%. My Guess less than half that. Does it matter? To me what's important is what is Wyndham going to do for me today?

Sent from my Lenovo TB-X103F using Tapatalk

 

[dgalati]

When do you post the results?

 

[dgalati]

@bobinmich, ride the cheap seats in the carriage! Don't you ever try to get on the horse, they kick! And they know where bears relieve themselves! Neighhhhh!

That was a reference to your ability to wring out very low $/night! I am sure your VIPP brother can get even lower $/1000 with his 50% discount and upgrades if he applies your methods. Not counting capital costs of course. I used your metric and came up with ~$66/per night on all my reservations. But that doesn't measure the VIP multiplier effect.

I like the expensive seats but only want to pay the cheap price. The use of airline miles is a great example. Southwest has a companion pass which works great and nothing better then flying 1st class while using bonus points with United, Delta and American. I have played them all the same way just like I have played Wyndham. Find a way to make it work to your advantage.

 

[dgalati]

@SNA27 Can you add to the post above with a little more clarity?

 

[raygo123]

This things are hard to calculate by yourself and I think the fastest way is to use a percentage increase calculator that can help to calculate the percentage using a minimum number of percent that you would like to put.

In respect you must also make an adjustment for drop off as a percentage of what you stated. In your example are you using a mini max in calculation? If so what is your derivative?

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