Worldmark - Weird Call Last Night

[Travel4Fun]

Hey Everyone - I received a call asking me to buy more credits since WM is now going to be owned by Wyndham. When I mentioned that I would probably buy the credits re-sale - the woman went crazy and said - "well you get what you pay for". Since I own re-sale credits and so far they have worked just fine - I asked her what she was talking about. She insinuated that the use of resale credits was going to change once Wyndham took over the company and that properties would be added for which my current number of credits would be insufficient. At this point I was so annoyed - I ended the call abruptly. Has anyone else received calles of this nature or heard about big changes once Wyndham takes over?

It sounded like typical Timeshare sales tactics to me and I was annoyed by the way this woman referred to the re-sale market as it was obvious she had very little experience with what she was talking about. :zzz:

Just wondering if anyone else has received any of these calls or knows much about the Wyndham take over.

Thanks!

 

[RichM]

First of all, WorldMark is not going to be owned by Wyndham. WorldMark is an independent, non-profit corporation. Trendwest, the for-profit corporation that develops new properties and manages daily operations at WorldMark resorts, is owned by Cendant which is splitting into 4 separate entities, one of which is being called Wyndham Worldwide and will include, in its subsidiaries, both Trendwest and Fairfield as well as RCI and various hotel chains. Here's a link to a PDF file from Cendant about WW: http://www.cendant.com/announcements/assets/documents/WW_FactSheetOnline.pdf

As far as credit values for new resorts increasing, this had already started to happen on a small scale with Las Vegas, Indio, etc. where the typical 10,000 2BR week increased to 11,000 with these new properties. The urban locations of Seattle and San Francisco brought even higher credit values (12,000 for a 1BR week or 14,000 for a 2BR at Seattle). The newest property, an ancient hotel in the outskirts of downtown San Diego without free parking or many typical onsite amenities, was just added with exorbitantly high credit values (12,000 for a studio hotel unit week and 15,000 for a 1BR hotel unit week). The justificiation from Trendwest is based on the property costs being higher even though the past business model has been to increase credit purchase prices, not system credit values. This is a huge discussion that has been going for awhile and especially heated since San Diego was announced a little over a month ago. There are 5 pages of discussions on wmowners.com in this thread and another 15 pages in this thread.

As far as resale credits and how that might change, there have been rumors for a couple years about a VIP program and how it might be implemented, complete with salesperson rumors and even new program names for which Trendwest job postings have been found. There are many disucssions about all aspects of VIP including various info (misinformation?) given by salespeople, analysis of possible impact, discussion of how it fits into the WorldMark governing documents, grandfathering of existing accounts, etc. in a 12 page thread here on wmowners.com. So far nothing has been announced by Trendwest, but the rumors keep on coming.

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[spatenfloot]

You can ignore anything a salesperson tells you. They come up with BS all the time.

 

[RichM]

In the case of the VIP stuff, though, some of the Vacation Counselors (the people that answer at reservations) have reportedly been mentioning snippets of rumors also.. Only time will tell - this VIP stuff has been a rumor for a long time.


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[PerryM]

“Warning – BS-O-Meter overload – turn off cell phone”

LG, the cell phone maker, is coming out with a cell phone that can test the alcohol level by simply blowing into a small opening in the phone. It even goes further by allowing you to lock out certain phone numbers in your address book so you can’t call your X-girlfriend while having a level of 2.0

I’m going to suggest to LG that they market a new cell phone that you could plop down in front of you and would have a BS-O-Meter built in. This would sell to the 3.5 M timeshare owners in just the US.

Imagine going on a timeshare tour and you put your cell phone down and press the BS button and it listens to conversations over the speakerphone. It would start clicking like a Geiger-Counter when it detects BS and as the salesrep gets cranked up your phone is just going nuts. The more BS the louder the clicking. There probably needs to be an upper limit where the cell phone announces “Warning – BS-O-Meter overload – turn off cell phone”.

The typical timeshare salesrep we meet on our many tours is a likeable person who lives in such a distorted world that I don’t think they understand the difference between reality and BS anymore.