Wyndham Changes PIC Points 10 Years Later; Loss of 200,000 Points

[confused-owner]

On our honeymoon in Hawaii in November 2007 my wife and I were persuaded to buy 84,000 points for little more than $14K at the Wyndham Bali Hai property. We told the sales rep during the presentation that we did not need any additional time share time (I already had 4 weeks at that time that we were having trouble using), but the sales rep managed to convince us that we could use the PIC program to better manage the weeks we did have and we would then have priority access to the Wyndham portfolio of resorts (which were not oftentimes available through RCI). We were promised a total of 508,000 points for our PIC deposits, as well as full VIP Gold status during the 4+ hours we spent with the sales rep that day (we had never heard of the points program before that day, so there was quite a bit of explaining to do).

After all the paperwork cleared and our information was added to the Wyndham website (back then that process took more than a couple of weeks), we discovered that Wyndham was only crediting our account for less than 300,000 points. We were told variously that (1) either the weeks we wanted to deposit into the PIC program did not qualify for the points we were promised or (2) that there was a limitation on the number of weeks that could be deposited into the PIC program, which fell short of the 508,000 points we were promised. The Hawaii sales staff and sales agent offered several additional weeks of time to be used in the next 2 or 3 years at any Wyndham property and/or free access to various Wyndham benefit programs that normally had fees associated with them - but we told them that we did not need additional time or additional benefits because the only reason we purchased the Wyndham points was to take advantage of the PIC program which we believed would allow us to make better use of the weeks we already owned.

After we were unable to get satisfaction from the sales staff we consulted an attorney in Hawaii about making a complaint to the Real Estate regulators and perhaps filing a lawsuit to rescind the deal. With the attorney's guidance we also talked to, emailed, and wrote to the Wyndham corporate offices on Orlando requesting that Wyndham make good on its sales presentation promises - making the point that but for the sales presentation offer of the 504,000 points and Gold VIP status we would not have made the purchase. By early 2008, Wyndham agreed with us and we were able to make the PIC deposits for the full 508,000 points each year, and achieve Gold VIP status.

As an aside, we also made an additional purchase of 70,000 Wyndham points for the Royal Sea Cliff property in 2013 for $12.6K - these additional points were sold to us to allow us to participate in the TPI program for our Hawaii time. Obviously, we would not have made this purchase if we did not already have the 508,000 PIC points. A couple of years later, the sales rep for these points helped us clear up confusion with Wyndham corporate as to whether we were grandfathered into Gold VIP status when Wyndham changed its points requirement from 500,000 to 700,000 points for Gold status - we were grandfathered in, despite several people in the sales and corporate sides at Wyndham initially telling us we were not.

Back to main point of this post --our PIC deposits continued each year since early 2008, albeit with some of the same snafus and hassles reported by other TUG users on these forum pages, until December of 2017. At that point in time Wyndham stopped accepting our deposit - claiming that their updated computer programs showed that the units we were depositing into the PIC program only qualified for a total of 308,000 points (154,000 per deposit). Wyndham requested that we complete forms intended to "correct" our PIC contracts to reflect this new point value and stated that we would lose our Gold VIP status upon completion of these forms.

Has anyone experienced, or heard of any other Wyndham owners experiencing, this type of situation with Wyndham? (The Wyndham customer care rep we have been dealing with told us that numerous owners had been adversely affected by Wyndham's "improved" computer tracking of PIC deposits and that most of her time was being taken up with owner complaints about their diminished PIC points.)

Is the loss of 200,000 Wyndham points and the loss of Gold VIP status something worth a significant battle with Wyndham? Is it worth the time and effort to file a lawsuit with the hope of either getting a refund of what we paid to Wyndham to purchase our points or forcing Wyndham to honor their 10 year practice of providing 508,000 points for our PIC deposits?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Keg]

We had a problem with are program they did not give me any credit for my points. We called Quality Assurance hot line 850 636 8257 and they gave us the owners care phone# 800 251 8736 for easy pic and they fixed the problem. We had to send a copy of are recent maintenance agreement to prove we paid it that fixed the problem

Keg

 

[bnoble]

The fact that they are asking you to sign something suggests to me that they believe they aren't able to unilaterally make this change. I would consider consulting an attorney you trust to get their advice on the matter.

 

[tschwa2]

What specifically are you using with PIC? What property and what size units?

 

[CCdad]

Did you keep all of the signed documents from your original developer purchase when you enrolled your PIC weeks?

Those documents could serve as proof that Wyndham contracted with you and your PIC enrollment included 508K qualifying VIP points as part of the developer purchase. If you have any signed documents mentioning that you will be a VIP Gold upon that first purchase and PIC enrollment, it would also be helpful proving the effective date of your grandfathered VIP Gold status.

It's unfortunate that you'd purchased the Royal Sea Cliff contract to gain access to TPI, as your initial Bali Hai Villas purchase should have included a TPI account. Wyndham owners I know that tried the TPI program decided it came with too many restrictions, it wasn't worth it to them.

With your Hawaii purchases, you'll have access to the Outrigger resort club. But those resorts tend to be expensive to book at, plus only the qualified Hawaii resort points you own (154K) are eligible to book Outrigger resorts during the priority reservation period. Your PIC points don't qualify for Outrigger bookings unless its during the ten month or less window.

 

[confused-owner]

What specifically are you using with PIC? What property and what size units?

The deposits that Wyndham has accepted as PIC deposits for the past 10 years are 2 bedroom 2 bath / sleep 8 (sleep 6 private) units from the Four Seasons on the Gulf property. Wyndham has known of the unit size ever since they initially questioned the points that were promised for the PIC contracts in 2007. Wyndham now is saying "We only give 154,000 points for 2 bedroom PIC deposits" and our response is (1) that is not what was promised in 2007, (2) we went through this same dispute 10 years ago (and again when Wyndham questioned our Gold grandfathered status a couple of years ago) and it was resolved in our favor, and (3) you have accepted these units for 254,000 points each for the past 10 years and can't go back on the 2007/2008 resolution or your past pattern of acceptance now. The point we made in 2007/2008 was that we would never have made the purchase if we weren't given Gold VIP status and that status was contingent upon the 508,000 points for the two PIC weeks - to us that was the only way this purchase made sense to us.

In case it matters, our weeks at the Four Seasons on the Gulf were purchased at auction (back in the "old days" before eBay and internet sales, etc.). That fact was also disclosed to the Wyndham sales rep during the 2007 sales presentation -- and she was astonished at how little we paid, etc., etc.

 

[confused-owner]

Did you keep all of the signed documents from your original developer purchase when you enrolled your PIC weeks?

Those documents could serve as proof that Wyndham contracted with you and your PIC enrollment included 508K qualifying VIP points as part of the developer purchase. If you have any signed documents mentioning that you will be a VIP Gold upon that first purchase and PIC enrollment, it would also be helpful proving the effective date of your grandfathered VIP Gold status.

It's unfortunate that you'd purchased the Royal Sea Cliff contract to gain access to TPI, as your initial Bali Hai Villas purchase should have included a TPI account. Wyndham owners I know that tried the TPI program decided it came with too many restrictions, it wasn't worth it to them.

With your Hawaii purchases, you'll have access to the Outrigger resort club. But those resorts tend to be expensive to book at, plus only the qualified Hawaii resort points you own (154K) are eligible to book Outrigger resorts during the priority reservation period. Your PIC points don't qualify for Outrigger bookings unless its during the ten month or less window.

We have most, if not all, of the documents that were provided in the 2007 sales presentation, as well as the contracts. We used those documents in making our case to Wyndham in 2007 and 2008 that 508,000 points were promised to us based on our PIC deposits. And those documents would have been presented to the Hawaii real estate regulators and in court had we pursued that plan of action (which became unnecessary when Wyndham agreed in early 2008 to accept the PIC weeks for the promised point values).

When our grandfathered Gold VIP status was questioned a couple of years ago, we did not specifically reference the 2007 documents, but did raise the issue of what had been promised to us in 2007 and what Wyndham had agreed to in 2008 regarding the point values and Gold VIP status. As I indicated in my original post the sales rep who sold us the Royal Sea Cliff points also interceded on our behalf with the Wyndham corporate folks - I don't know exactly what he said or did on our behalf, but he fully understood the fact that we would never have been Wyndham owners (and never would have purchased the additional points in 2013) if not for our Gold VIP status and the PIC program points. And we did eventually get a formal notification from Wyndham that our Gold VIP status was grandfathered into the system based on our 2007 purchase and the PIC points associated with that purchase.

You raise a good question about the TPI program -- it was explained to us in 2013 that Wyndham had no record of ever offering us the TPI program in 2007 at the time of our initial purchase. We were told that the TPI program was only available on "day of sale," but since we had not been offered the program in 2007 that Wyndham was willing to give us the opportunity to make the purchase in 2013, but we needed to have a purchase of at least 126,000 developer points in order to be offered the TPI program. This sales pitch may have been total BS, but we were persuaded that the TPI program might be useful in our retirement when we might want to use additional weeks of timeshare time and made the purchase of the additional 70,000 points. In addition, the 2013 sales rep said that he would act as our Wyndham "Legacy Advisor" for any problems we might have in the future with Wyndham - and he did in fact act in that capacity a couple of years ago when we had the dispute about our grandfathered Gold VIP status. (I have reached out to him on this latest dispute, but have not heard back from him - I suppose he might be retired at this point in time.)

Finally, we are aware of the Outrigger Resort reservation opportunities (and restrictions), but hope to be able to work within those restrictions if we take Hawaii vacations in the future.

 

[Jan M.]

I think you will be able to resolve this like you did before. You will just have to once again put in the time and effort to get it done.

 

[confused-owner]

I think you will be able to resolve this like you did before. You will just have to once again put in the time and effort to get it done.

I have already gone through the various steps that I previously followed with Wyndham (with several hours of work already expended in 2017 and 2018) - and they have refused to change their mind. Wyndham's position is "agree with the reduction in points and sign the documents we sent, or you can get rid of your Wyndham points through Ovation or some other 3d party agent." Those unacceptable proposed solutions are what led to the posting of my specific situation on the TUG website, with the hope that someone had dealt with this situation (or something similar) and could offer suggestions to get this resolved short of litigation.

 

[T-Dot-Traveller]

I guess Wyndham thinks the anti -bullying concept is not applicable to corporations .

 

[Sandi Bo]

You might try filing a complaint with the State of Florida Department Of Business and Professional Regualation

http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/lsc/documents/complaint_english.pdf

My understanding is they have no official control over Wyndham, but Wyndham likes to make them happy. It should get attention to the right people at Wyndham and hopefully help you resolve this without hiring an attorney.

 

[scootr5]

Wyndham requested that we complete forms intended to "correct" our PIC contracts to reflect this new point value and stated that we would lose our Gold VIP status upon completion of these forms.

Have you had an attorney review these "forms" for you? That would likely be where I would start.

 

[ecwinch]

So what happens if you do not sign the forms? Seems like this is an attempt to badger you into signing them away.

On FB some owners have reported getting better service by emailing Micheal Brown, the new President.

So at this point I think I would try to summarize in paragraph or two the details, and simply close with "I do not consent to this unilateral attempt to deprive me of the benefits I spent $xx purchasing in xxxx. I request you immediately desist these actions or rescind my purchase contract and return what I have paid to acquire them."

And cc: Michael Brown. Reportedly his email is Michael.brown@wyn.com.

 

[confused-owner]

You might try filing a complaint with the State of Florida Department Of Business and Professional Regualation

http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/lsc/documents/complaint_english.pdf

My understanding is they have no official control over Wyndham, but Wyndham likes to make them happy. It should get attention to the right people at Wyndham and hopefully help you resolve this without hiring an attorney.

Thank you. This is helpful information. If we go this route we will probably also make a similar complaint to the Hawaii authorities since that is where the purchase was made.

 

[confused-owner]

Have you had an attorney review these "forms" for you? That would likely be where I would start.

We have not yet had an attorney review the form that Wyndham has requested we complete and sign, but the form appears to be a standard Wyndham form and is titled "PIC Plus Modification Form" and is worded in such a manner (e.g., "Modification Requested") to make it appear that the owner, rather than Wyndham, is the party requesting the change. Indeed, it might well be that under normal circumstances the owner would be requesting changes - name change of resort, change of Resort ID, etc. The form specifically states "The PIC Modification form is used to amend information that was incorrectly entered at the time of the initial enrollment . . ." Of course, our PIC points were initially incorrectly entered, then they were corrected to the agreed upon amount of 508,000 (254,000 each week) after we initially raised the issue shortly after our purchase in 2007. Now that Wyndham wants to renege on that deal, this form is not really the correct form for that purpose.

I suppose I could get cute and draft a form using the same Wyndham template and ask Wyndham to sign with the terms acknowledging the validity of our 508,000 points, but it doesn't seem that such activity would be very productive or advance the ball very far towards a resolution. On the other hand, such a form might put the dispute in the starkest terms for a Wyndham supervisor to see in a 30 second glance. Anyway, something for me to think about.

 

[confused-owner]

So what happens if you do not sign the forms? Seems like this is an attempt to badger you into signing them away.

On FB some owners have reported getting better service by emailing Micheal Brown, the new President.

So at this point I think I would try to summarize in paragraph or two the details, and simply close with "I do not consent to this unilateral attempt to deprive me of the benefits I spent $xx purchasing in xxxx. I request you immediately desist these actions or rescind my purchase contract and return what I have paid to acquire them."

And cc: Michael Brown. Reportedly his email is Michael.brown@wyn.com.

Thank you for this suggestion (and the email address for Mr. Brown). Your suggested phrasing of the closing sentences is exactly the situation we are faced with and neatly summarizes the options for resolving the situation in my mind.

 

[confused-owner]

So what happens if you do not sign the forms? Seems like this is an attempt to badger you into signing them away.

On FB some owners have reported getting better service by emailing Micheal Brown, the new President.

So at this point I think I would try to summarize in paragraph or two the details, and simply close with "I do not consent to this unilateral attempt to deprive me of the benefits I spent $xx purchasing in xxxx. I request you immediately desist these actions or rescind my purchase contract and return what I have paid to acquire them."

And cc: Michael Brown. Reportedly his email is Michael.brown@wyn.com.

I apologize - I neglected to respond to the first portion of your post in my earlier reply. If we refuse to sign the forms then Wyndham will not accept our PIC weeks for deposit. Thus, the 508,000 points never make into our Wyndham account and we are limited to the 154,000 developer purchased points - obviously those limited points do not go terribly far when it comes to making reservations, etc. I suppose it is possible that our Gold VIP status remains, but without the 508,000 points the utility of Gold VIP status is severely limited.

Again, thank you for the succinct "closing" you posted - in two sentences you summarize our situation better than I have been able to in the past two months.

 

[ecwinch]

Your welcome.... glad to help.

 

[cassvilleokie]

On our honeymoon in Hawaii in November 2007 my wife and I were persuaded to buy 84,000 points for little more than $14K at the Wyndham Bali Hai property. We told the sales rep during the presentation that we did not need any additional time share time (I already had 4 weeks at that time that we were having trouble using), but the sales rep managed to convince us that we could use the PIC program to better manage the weeks we did have and we would then have priority access to the Wyndham portfolio of resorts (which were not oftentimes available through RCI). We were promised a total of 508,000 points for our PIC deposits, as well as full VIP Gold status during the 4+ hours we spent with the sales rep that day (we had never heard of the points program before that day, so there was quite a bit of explaining to do).

After all the paperwork cleared and our information was added to the Wyndham website (back then that process took more than a couple of weeks), we discovered that Wyndham was only crediting our account for less than 300,000 points. We were told variously that (1) either the weeks we wanted to deposit into the PIC program did not qualify for the points we were promised or (2) that there was a limitation on the number of weeks that could be deposited into the PIC program, which fell short of the 508,000 points we were promised. The Hawaii sales staff and sales agent offered several additional weeks of time to be used in the next 2 or 3 years at any Wyndham property and/or free access to various Wyndham benefit programs that normally had fees associated with them - but we told them that we did not need additional time or additional benefits because the only reason we purchased the Wyndham points was to take advantage of the PIC program which we believed would allow us to make better use of the weeks we already owned.

After we were unable to get satisfaction from the sales staff we consulted an attorney in Hawaii about making a complaint to the Real Estate regulators and perhaps filing a lawsuit to rescind the deal. With the attorney's guidance we also talked to, emailed, and wrote to the Wyndham corporate offices on Orlando requesting that Wyndham make good on its sales presentation promises - making the point that but for the sales presentation offer of the 504,000 points and Gold VIP status we would not have made the purchase. By early 2008, Wyndham agreed with us and we were able to make the PIC deposits for the full 508,000 points each year, and achieve Gold VIP status.

As an aside, we also made an additional purchase of 70,000 Wyndham points for the Royal Sea Cliff property in 2013 for $12.6K - these additional points were sold to us to allow us to participate in the TPI program for our Hawaii time. Obviously, we would not have made this purchase if we did not already have the 508,000 PIC points. A couple of years later, the sales rep for these points helped us clear up confusion with Wyndham corporate as to whether we were grandfathered into Gold VIP status when Wyndham changed its points requirement from 500,000 to 700,000 points for Gold status - we were grandfathered in, despite several people in the sales and corporate sides at Wyndham initially telling us we were not.

Back to main point of this post --our PIC deposits continued each year since early 2008, albeit with some of the same snafus and hassles reported by other TUG users on these forum pages, until December of 2017. At that point in time Wyndham stopped accepting our deposit - claiming that their updated computer programs showed that the units we were depositing into the PIC program only qualified for a total of 308,000 points (154,000 per deposit). Wyndham requested that we complete forms intended to "correct" our PIC contracts to reflect this new point value and stated that we would lose our Gold VIP status upon completion of these forms.

Has anyone experienced, or heard of any other Wyndham owners experiencing, this type of situation with Wyndham? (The Wyndham customer care rep we have been dealing with told us that numerous owners had been adversely affected by Wyndham's "improved" computer tracking of PIC deposits and that most of her time was being taken up with owner complaints about their diminished PIC points.)

Is the loss of 200,000 Wyndham points and the loss of Gold VIP status something worth a significant battle with Wyndham? Is it worth the time and effort to file a lawsuit with the hope of either getting a refund of what we paid to Wyndham to purchase our points or forcing Wyndham to honor their 10 year practice of providing 508,000 points for our PIC deposits?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Just an also, The PIC program is not a purchased program it is a benefit option, At one time I had 8 weeks in PiC started way back in fairfield days, a couple of things can happen, You can lose you PIC weeks entirely in the program if the resort you own coverts to Points in RCI not weeks, If the resort changes what it would deposit into RCi that can change your value, a mistake that has been going on for 10 years you have a good argument but it was an enticement to purchase not a purchase so can change it at anytime just like when they put the 2 week rule into place. Could keep the extra weeks until they fell out or you didn't pic them. After that couldn't put them back in if over the 2 limit. That was how I lost a couple. just FYI

 

[ecwinch]

Just an also, The PIC program is not a purchased program it is a benefit option, At one time I had 8 weeks in PiC started way back in fairfield days, a couple of things can happen, You can lose you PIC weeks entirely in the program if the resort you own coverts to Points in RCI not weeks, If the resort changes what it would deposit into RCi that can change your value, a mistake that has been going on for 10 years you have a good argument but it was an enticement to purchase not a purchase so can change it at anytime just like when they put the 2 week rule into place. Could keep the extra weeks until they fell out or you didn't pic them. After that couldn't put them back in if over the 2 limit. That was how I lost a couple. just FYI

Since I paid a fee to enroll my two PIC weeks, and pay the program fee on those points, I would argue that it is a purchased program and not a benefit option. Certainly I would not hold Wyndham responsible if some action outside their control resulted in my weeks not being available to PIC.

 

[tschwa2]

My take on this- OP was given a contract that awarded more PIC points then described in the various program descriptions. Wyndham tried to get out of it once but backed down. They are trying to get out of it again and either think they can win a legal fight and/or are betting that the OP will back down and won't sue to enforce the contract. Perhaps Wyndham thinks at this point the OP no longer has all of the original documents or the clause about changes may be made to the program will protect their position. Wyndham is taking a hard stance and I am not sure anything other than a judgement against them will cause them to honor the original agreement.