Wyndham is closing a handful of legacy resorts - dedicated chart/tracker located in the first post for this unfolding set of events

[paxsarah]

thanks for the information. It sounds like the CWA contract has no stipulations in it for exiting: seems rather open-ended. It surprises me (probably shouldnt) that the contract doesnt stipulate this in lieu of a deed. How can a contract be enforced without a defined option to end the contract?

The contract can be transferred to another person or entity. In this instance, Wyndham has instituted a program where they will facilitate that transfer back to Wyndham itself, entirely on their (ever-changing) terms. For me, that program didn't even exist when I first purchased. My exit plan when I first became an owner was to give my contracts away to another person. Wyndham had no obligation to offer or continue offering an exit program. It was nice that they have - I've used it multiple times when reconfiguring my own ownership. But if it goes away forever or I don't qualify, I go back to my original plan of giving it away to a person.

 

[HitchHiker71]

unfortunately this link provides zero information. what are the costs / limitations / requirements etc. of the exit? I've given up on the Wyndham cares phone line after 3 phone calls totaling 5 hours of hold time without ever getting my call answered. But I'd like to know the details of the exit stategies before I do the swap.

Per your original ask - there is literally no one on this thread, forum, website, or even anyone at Wyndham or T&L, that is going to be able to predict the future a few years from now with respect to the exit program(s) existing or what those exit programs will or not will provide. Your guess is as good as anyone's really. No company is going to write anything into a legally binding contract guaranteeing an exit strategy for an asset that essentially has zero value on the secondary markets. No lawyer in existence is going to sign off on any such guarantee or strategy given no one knows what the future holds. There's actually been efforts to do something like this in Wyndham contracts in the past, via Pathways, and it didn't go well for Wyndham, so I wouldn't expect anything similar to come to fruition contractually based upon the old Wyndham Pathways efforts.

 

[HitchHiker71]

The contract can be transferred to another person or entity. In this instance, Wyndham has instituted a program where they will facilitate that transfer back to Wyndham itself, entirely on their (ever-changing) terms. For me, that program didn't even exist when I first purchased. My exit plan when I first became an owner was to give my contracts away to another person. Wyndham had no obligation to offer or continue offering an exit program. It was nice that they have - I've used it multiple times when reconfiguring my own ownership. But if it goes away forever or I don't qualify, I go back to my original plan of giving it away to a person.

Or worst case - as we always end up stating - just stop paying the MFs. Since there's no underlying deed in play with CWA - typically there's no credit hit unless you still have an outstanding purchase loan for the contract in question - which for this swap offer - would never be the case. This is what we tell folks - just give it away - or if that's not feasible - just stop paying the MFs - and eventually Wyndham will take it back and claim it as a bad debt and attempt to resell that foreclosed inventory anew to another unsuspecting buyer LOL.

 

[roscograves]

Per your original ask - there is literally no one on this thread, forum, website, or even anyone at Wyndham or T&L, that is going to be able to predict the future a few years from now with respect to the exit program(s) existing or what those exit programs will or not will provide. Your guess is as good as anyone's really. No company is going to write anything into a legally binding contract guaranteeing an exit strategy for an asset that essentially has zero value on the secondary markets. No lawyer in existence is going to sign off on any such guarantee or strategy given no one knows what the future holds. There's actually been efforts to do something like this in Wyndham contracts in the past, via Pathways, and it didn't go well for Wyndham, so I wouldn't expect anything similar to come to fruition contractually based upon the old Wyndham Pathways efforts.

Yes, I understand your point from the company side. From a consumer side however I have some heartache signing a contract that commits me to a membership without a defined means of ending the contract. I never considered this before since my ownership was deed based. The only disagreement I have with your comments is that the company should take into consideration in its business plan the likelihood of some customers wanting out and planning for that. No company can boast a 100% customer retention (unless the customer base is a captive group) and the loss of a customer should be a managed business risk . I've had enough business contractual dealings to question the wisdom of such an open-ended commitment on my part - and the fact that the other party is a timeshare company doesn't asuage my fears any. But I guess it is what it is and wont change.

To your later comment... Is it common for people to quit paying MF without a credit hit, or worse being hounded by credit dogs?

 

[jp10558]

Yes, I understand your point from the company side. From a consumer side however I have some heartache signing a contract that commits me to a membership without a defined means of ending the contract. I never considered this before since my ownership was deed based. The only disagreement I have with your comments is that the company should take into consideration in its business plan the likelihood of some customers wanting out and planning for that. No company can boast a 100% customer retention (unless the customer base is a captive group) and the loss of a customer should be a managed business risk . I've had enough business contractual dealings to question the wisdom of such an open-ended commitment on my part - and the fact that the other party is a timeshare company doesn't asuage my fears any. But I guess it is what it is and wont change.

To your later comment... Is it common for people to quit paying MF without a credit hit, or worse being hounded by credit dogs?

You should search / look around TUG. This is discussed all the time and the answer is usually if you don't have a loan, more often than not (at least as far as people reporting on TUG) you don't get a credit hit. You do get hounded by collections, but you just tell them to only contact you by mail and ignore the letters. This isn't to say it's guaranteed, just that it's rare in reports to TUG that you'd take a credit hit. Who knows about the whole gamut of TS defaults though?

Where you almost certainly would take a credit hit is if you defaulted on a loan. I've seen reports of that being like any other credit hit, and I've seen reports that some potential lenders etc will discount timeshare reports on your record. Who knows the reality - I don't think there's enough reports to really say.

On the contract thing, they're all perpetual. TS companies like it, consumers take it or leave it.

 

[paxsarah]

From a consumer side however I have some heartache signing a contract that commits me to a membership without a defined means of ending the contract. I never considered this before since my ownership was deed based.

I'm not sure what the difference is. The means to exit or transfer either type of ownership is essentially the same, except CWA doesn't require the recording of a deed.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Yes, I understand your point from the company side. From a consumer side however I have some heartache signing a contract that commits me to a membership without a defined means of ending the contract. I never considered this before since my ownership was deed based. The only disagreement I have with your comments is that the company should take into consideration in its business plan the likelihood of some customers wanting out and planning for that. No company can boast a 100% customer retention (unless the customer base is a captive group) and the loss of a customer should be a managed business risk . I've had enough business contractual dealings to question the wisdom of such an open-ended commitment on my part - and the fact that the other party is a timeshare company doesn't asuage my fears any. But I guess it is what it is and wont change.

Yes, within the timeshare industry, contracts in perpetuity, until death of the owner(s), resale, or via any other available exit program, are the only options for relief from the MFs. Some timeshare systems are not in perpetuity and do have a defined time period, such as Disney timeshare contracts for example, but the general rule in the timeshare industry IME is that the contracts are in perpetuity. The exception is to have a defined timeline in comparison. That said, there's been a lot of talk about the viability of perpetual ownerships moving forward, given the younger generations are less likely to want to be tied into anything long term or permanent in nature - they are more used to subscription pricing models that are either time defined or have no defined timeline at all - i.e. cancel at any time. There's been talk about what I'd term as timeshare leasing - think about the Discovery type ownerships that were originally meant for people to try out timeshare ownership over a 1-3 year period of time with a static amount of points - with no MF payments or anything in perpetuity. Discovery still costs up front though - it's not like you pay monthly - or something similar to a subscription pricing model. I think what most folks would rather have is a RTU type timeshare subscription option - where you gain access to the Club but for a defined time period and receive an annual points allotment - and you pay the same monthly amount over that defined time period. Something like this would seem to offer up what you're looking for, but we haven't seen wide adoption of this model as yet. Will this change in the future? Maybe, maybe not. Wyndham still seems to be able to sell a lot of VOIs every quarter - it's still their single largest revenue generator by far. That tells me that we won't see adoption of an alternative pricing model until we start seeing actual declines in VOI sales on a persistent basis.

To your later comment... Is it common for people to quit paying MF without a credit hit, or worse being hounded by credit dogs?

Well, it's not uncommon especially within the timeshare vertical at least. Keep in mind that many timeshare companies don't even offer up any exit program like Wyndham. So for folks that own timeshares that have no exit option, they have only two options, sell it, or stop paying the MFs and default on it. I've heard mixed reports on whether people take a credit hit when they stop paying on MFs, so there are no guarantees, but in general, what I've observed is that for non-deeded type ownerships like CWA - when there's no loan - oftentimes there's no credit hit when MFs fall behind. Your MF payments aren't typically tracked or reported to the credit bureaus in the first place, unlike almost all other financial accounts/obligations. The loans are, but not the MFs, at least IME.

 

[hjsweet2002]

Just received our email regarding swap for our contracts at Bentley Brook. Called the number and informed them that we do not want to swap points for BB or Fairfield Glade contract. They will annotate out file and we were informed that we do not need to do anymore. My guess it may be months or years before we hear if we will get any proceeds from the sale of these properties. Not holding our breath for any proceeds lol