Who has the best point system around?

[Spence]

Perry,
Once combined and 'grown' can an NHK account be split and sold in parts?

 

[BocaBum99]

Perry,
Once combined and 'grown' can an NHK account be split and sold in parts?

It can be split, but only 1 account will retain the NHK designation.

 

[Spence]

There were just scraps left at the MW Kihei resort on Maui and I booked the following:
Fri 2BR $50 cleaning fee
Sat 1BR $45 cleaning fee
Sun 1BR no view $45 cleaning fee
Mon 2BR limited view$50 cleaning fee
Tue 2BR no view $50 cleaning fee

That’s 5 separate reservations (booked just 6 months out - Kihei is all booked except for scraps) and normally we would have to pay $240 in cleaning fees – we pay $0 since we have a NHK account.

That's a lot of bag schlepping!

 

[BocaBum99]

Perry,

When was the last time your tried to rent credits? It's a lot more difficult now than it used to be. I don't think you can get them for $.05/credit any longer. I couldn't in a recent attempt. I was able to get them that low about a year and a half ago. Perhaps it was just timing.

And, as you know, Trendwest is planning some type of crack down on rentals of credits as they mentioned in one of the recent Destinations magazines. I hope they don't shut it down completely. They say they want to do it to stop hoarding and rentals of WorldMark units in large quantities. But, I am afraid they are going to create rules that somehow limit the usage of transferred credits for everyone. We shall see. I believe their hidden agenda is to limit credit rentals so that owners are forced to upgrade to bigger ownership sizes. That loophole is a huge one for not buying more credits. I predict that Trendwest will attempt to close it via a VIP program and severe restrictions on credit rentals. We shall see. I hope I am wrong.

Other than that, I agree with most of your conclusions regarding WorldMark. In fact, you are one of the people who got me into it. I have used my credits to book lots of Flexchanges in Florida for really cheap. I can verify that it's easy to get Marriott's anytime of year in Florida. I've done it using WorldMark. In addition, I recently got 2 Four Seasons units. One in Scottsdale for next month and a second one in October for Carlsbad. This summer, I stayed at 3 WorldMark resorts and I hope to see 5-10 more in the coming year since I will be in the West Coast a lot. And, I am planning a family reunion ski week for early 2008. I'll need those rental credits to book the units.

To keep on topic, I believe that the Bluegreen Vacation Club is better than WorldMark if you live in the East Coast. The maintenance fees are cheaper and the upfront capital cost is lower. The bonus time is much better. So, if you live in Driving distance to several resorts, that's a phenomenal feature.
Bluegreen is better for exchanging in DAE and RCI Points than WorldMark. I think WorldMark may trade better than Bluegreen in SFX. But, I haven't tried it for both. The biggest difference is that in Bluegreen, you can't transfer points between accounts. Bluegreen was smart and didn't allow that.

Lastly, with Bluegreen, your points are deeded in a specific resort week and unit number. That provides some level of security against points inflation caused by the resort developer. Trendwest is actively devaluing WorldMark credits by adding inflated and/or hallow credits into the system. Since nobody owns a specific unit, everyone gets devalued when Trendwest adds new resorts. I believe the Bluegreen system is more fundamentally sound than is WorldMark. But, David Siegel is attempting a hostile takeover of Bluegreen. If that happens, all bets are off.

 

[philemer]

That means a couple could retire to Florida, and stay at Marriotts 52 weeks a year for $635 * 52 = $33,020 via WM.

They could do the same thing buy waiting 59-days before check in and spend just 4,000 WM credits and the cost would be $200 + $135 or $335 * 52 weeks = $17,420 a year. There are ALWAYS 3BR, 2BR, 1BR, and studios at the 59-day mark in Orlando.

Can you imagine packing & unpacking suitcases EVERY week! No thanks.

 

[BocaBum99]

Can you imagine packing & unpacking suitcases EVERY week! No thanks.

Phil,

Try doing it every day on a cross country trip with 3 kids. That was tough. I can easily handle changing rooms every week. And the great thing is that the room is cleaned every week.

Alternatively, you can just use WorldMark resorts and stay in the same unit for a month if you like. I love that feature. I'm going to try it some day.

 

[cluemeister]

Rental of credits

I would be interested to hear Perry's feedback from Boca regarding credit rentals, and possible changes. I see an active auction on ebay where you can buy (rent) them for 6 cents.

Getting a 6,000 point WM account sounds like a great idea for our next phase of ts ownership. However, renting credits at 5 cents vs. 7 cents changes the cost of a 2BR red week's timeshare by $200.

 

[PerryM]

Back to the stone age

BB,

TW’s sponsorship of owner to owner renting of credits, that have the same rights and benefits of developer sold credits has got to be the stupidest, boneheaded, insane, idea that ever came from a developer. Thanks TW.

I’ve never rented credits – have too many already. I would hope that TW is sued to the hilt if they try to infringe with a de facto right – they started it and promote the policy. But, TW has made horible mistakes in the past and I should imagine they will keep up that fine tradition in the future (for the lawyers at least).

TW has a rumor mill that is second to none – they’re just full of hot air in my opinion and will be sued back to the stone age if they should do anything to impede owner rentals of WM credits.

I don’t know about Bluegreen and should take the time to learn about it. Is there a handy-dandy guide to BG usage?

Thanks,

Perry
P.S.
I would have no problem packing up once a week to move to another 5-star resort for the peanuts it costs. The savings in dishwashing detergent and laundry power and shampoos and soaps and free coffee bring a smile to my face. We would be in retirement - what else do we have to do?

I doubt that we would actually do this, but there are many cases where the Grande Vista has 2BR/1BR villas available for 4 – 6 weeks at a time (outside the 59-day window). That would not require packing and would have the maids to magically do what they do.

What we would probably do is to just book 100,000+ credits worth of WM reservations at WM Orlando and then bargain hunt, at the 59-day window, and find better accommodations. WM allows you to cancel your reservations up to 30 days before check-in and return all the credits back into your account where they can be used once again.

So instead of paying 9,000 WM credits for a 1BR or 11,000 credits for a 2BR at the WM Orlando we would just use 4,000 credits and say at a Marriott instead – what a great system!

 

[brucecz]

I don’t know about Bluegreen and should take the time to learn about it. Is there a handy-dandy guide to BG usage?

Thanks,

Perry

Perry, yes there is one called Boca Bum and another one is the Bluegreen Yahoo group.

Bruce

 

[Spence]

Here's an interesting quote from the WM Owner Education Handbook

There will be a 48-hour waiting period between a cancellation and a new reservation whenever the following occurs:
(1) The Owner is canceling a one-week reservation in red season and then requests to rebook the same reservation for
less than a week within 60 days or less of occupancy;
(2) The Owner is canceling a Vacation Credit reservation and then requests to rebook that reservation as a Bonus Time
reservation;
(3) The Owner is canceling a regular Bonus Time reservation and then requests to rebook that reservation as a Guest-only
reservation within fi ve (5) days of use; or
(4) The Owner is requesting a revision to an existing reservation and the revised arrival date was not within the Guidelines on
the original date of booking.

It makes sense so you can't cancel and immediately rebook at a discount.

Sunterra allows you to do this.

 

[luv_maui]

If some WM owner has snagged a Maui Marriott, I’d like to know.

I snagged a Maui Marriott in 2004 with an ongoing exchange (confirmed maybe 10-11 months in advance, however, it wasn't a summer week. Also, I snagged a week 51 Maui Marriott for this year, online about 11.5 months in advance, but released after I couldn't make the dates work. We've made it to the Four Seasons Aviara every year for the past 5 years. We currently don't have an ongoing search for next year, so we may actually skip the Four Seasons Aviara next year.

 

[PerryM]

It's official...

I snagged a Maui Marriott in 2004 with an ongoing exchange (confirmed maybe 10-11 months in advance, however, it wasn't a summer week. Also, I snagged a week 51 Maui Marriott for this year, online about 11.5 months in advance, but released after I couldn't make the dates work. We've made it to the Four Seasons Aviara every year for the past 5 years. We currently don't have an ongoing search for next year, so we may actually skip the Four Seasons Aviara next year.

Luv Maui, thanks for the info.

I can now make it official…WM is THE most powerful II exchanger! (Well, officially for my family…ok, just this thread….ok, just this post)

We now have 3 documented cases (II exchanges can support the claims) that WM is just as powerful as:

• Week 51 at Marriott Summit Watch (A Platinum Plus week)
• Week 51 at Marriott MountainSide (A Platinum Plus week)
• Week 51 at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club (Platinum week)

(What is it with week 51 and the top Marriott resorts?)

I personally can’t think of 3 harder trades to exchange into. If you make an exchange you must have matching exchange power.

It’s hard to believe that not a single Marriott owner wanted to exchange into these 3 units ahead of the WM. I, therefore, conclude:

• WM is one of the top, if not the top, II exchanger
• The Marriott employee screwed up


To many of you this is unsettling, to us WM owners it's just reality.

 

[boyblue]

RCI points are like penny loafers. They may be out of stlye but they're pretty good.

The biggest thing about RCI Points is it don't take much $ to get going.