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I seen an ebay auction for Equivest Points:
Please tell me a little about how they work
Please tell me a little about how they work
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This is an orphan points program. When Cendant bought Peppertree/Equivest and rolled the resorts into Fairfield, they did NOT merge the points programs.
New sales of Peppertree/Equivest points stopped, and the program started to contract. They have been gradually selling off supporting inventory in the program. -
Here is a summary of what I have found out so far
Does the information appear to be correct?
Equivest Vacation and Travel Club
Most of the vacation owners own a fixed or
flexible week interval in one of our resorts
Each unit is given a point value for every night of the year
Whether you own a fixed week or points in the Vacation Club,
you have the opportunity to visit all of our resort destinations.
Bonus Feature
Q: How many people belong to Equivest
A: More than 85,000 resort owners
If you buy or sell an Equivest Points Package
How much do they charge as a Transfer Fee
Many Equivest fixed week owners have been asked
to convert their fixed week into the new point system.
The fee to convert a fixed week
into the points system is $2,894.
This Equivest Points Ownership comes with a free II membership
WWW.EQUIVEST.COMComment
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Equivest - Newport RI
How does the old Equivest Points system work in Newport RI
Since most of them are now going under the Fairfield name?
Bay Voyage Inn
Jamestown, Rhode Island
Bentley Brook Mountain Club
Hancock, MA
Inn on Long Wharf
Newport, Rhode Island
Inn on the Harbor
Newport, Rhode Island
Long Wharf Resort
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport Onshore
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport Overlook
Jamestown, Rhode Island
How hard is it for the (old/resale) Equivest Points owners to get Newport ExchangesComment
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Marti,
The transfer fee is $100. The big drawback to equivest points is that the maintenance fees are on the very high side. Contracts are being practically given away. We made the mistake of accepting one for free. The maintenance fees are close to $700 for enough points for a 1 bedroom pink red (early and late summer) in Atlantic Beach. If I convert the unit back to its fixed status, our maintenance fees will drop to around $400. We were seriously considering doing that but have been lucky to reserve a good beach week and rent it out each year so far and have been covering the maintenance fees.
I have the book so I can check point requirements for Newport and even make copies of the relevant pages and fax or mail them to you. I can also call later or tommarrow (children have day off so it may be difficult for me to call today) and check general availability for you.
We always use our regular Fairfield points to trade into the Newport resorts.
Lisa
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One more thing. It really is an orphan program. We went through alot of headaches getting the thing transferred into our name. Most of the headaches came from nobody knowing which department at Fairfield was handling the Equivest stuff. The transfer paperwork went through Fairfield. In addition to the normal deed paperwork, a separate letter/form had to be prepared by the seller and be signed and notarized that said they were transfering the points portion over to us. This was when the $100 fee had to be paid. Then paperwork that said we accept the responsibility was sent to us that had to be signed and notarized. The contract we received had current year points and we started the process in May and when the banking deadline (Oct 1st) came around the process still wasn't completed. We had to get nasty with them to make them give us an exception to the banking deadline so those points would not be lost. Everything was finalized by January.
Lisa
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Originally posted by MartiSince I can't firgue out how to Multi Quote, I will answer your questions below. I have owned Equivest points since before Fairfield took over management. Fairfield has doubled fees and has the Club in a negative financial position.Originally posted by Marti View Post
1. The Equivest website is out of date. I would not trust anything posted there. All EVTC members own points. A converted week owner is referred to as a Charter member, and a points owner without an underlying deeded week is a New member. There are procedures to remove a deeded week from the points program. I do not believe that there is any current effort to convert deeded weeks owners to points, and no new points are being sold by the developer to my knowledge. Anyone doing either at this time is a fool in my opinion, because as Carolinian pointed out, EVTC is an orphan.
2. You do not have the ability to visit all of the resorts listed on the Equivest website. You may only reserve intervals at the resorts in which EVTC owns intervals or for which the beneficial rights have been assigned to EVTC by a deeded week owner. None of the RI resorts you inquired about are part of the EVTC network. Most of the resorts are old Peppertree resorts. The majority of intervals are at Atlantic Beach, Myrtle Beach, Blue Ridge Village and OBBC. Many are off season weeks.
3. The EVTC membership comes with an II membership. Is it free? Of course not, the cost is built into the exhorbitant membership fees. It is a corporate membership, so you still need to pay for a regular II membership if you own other II affiliated properties.
4. There are probably fewer than 11,000 EVTC members by now, and declining. I am supposed to be getting current membership numbers from the EVTC manager any day. Fewer members means higher overhead costs for members. The Club at peak membership probably totaled around 14,000 members. Membership has dropped by 25% since Fairfield assumed management. Membership fees have doubled since then also. More and more deeded owners are withdrawing their units - especially those with prime weeks. This is because those weeks have the highest point values, and fees are based on the number of points. Member defaults are built into the maintenance fees. The resorts get paid by the Club, so the Club has to collect enough from paying members to pay the resorts and other expenses.
5. Most of the eBay listings you see for EVTC contain misinformation. Most list all of the former Equivest resorts as being available, when only about half are. Some state that the points can be deposited into RCI. They cannot. These sellers are desperate right now, as the maintenance fee bills will be coming out at the end of the year, and they don't want to be stuck with the high fees.
Lisa, I am sorry you accepted the free small interest. I have tried to warn people about EVTC here and on TUG for the past several years. They are being given away for a reason. If your points are tied to a deeded week, you can escape the program, but I understand that it takes a couple of years. Unfortunately, most of my points are not tied to a deeded week. There is an Equivest group on Yahoo, although it is not very active.Comment
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Equivest
Thanks Lisa SOS8260456 and somerville for taking
the time to update me on Equivest Points ProgramComment
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Equivest Yahoo Group
Since I was originally thinking about bidding on the auction
I submitted my request to join the - Equivest Yahoo Group
After careful evaluation and feedback from others
I discovered it was not a good idea to buy into the program
Anyhow - I just wanted to let everyone know that
I just received an email back from the EO -YG Moderator
(My) Request to join EquivestOwners (YG) (was) denied!
Message:
Your request to join the EquivestOwners group was not approved.
(No other reason was given)Comment
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Marti, They may want to limit the group to owners. I included that info more for Lisa's benefit.
However, If you ever want to discuss EVTC, you can call me. I live in the DC area and attended one of your get togethers a couple of years ago. Send me a private message if you want my number. FYI, I am on a detail in Kansas fo another month.Comment
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Thanks Somerville for that information. I have been a member of that group for a while now.
I am lucky that it is associated with a deeded week. I should start the procedures for taking it out of points because they did say (& you just confirmed) that it will take several years to complete that process. I have been just lazy.
Lisa
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I saw the deeds when Equivest/Peppertree sold off some of their points club weeks at OBBC. I wonder how much else they are selling off from the program.Comment
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I suspect that was to MROP since they picked up a number of weeks at OBBC and Atlantic Beach a couple? of years ago.
Somewhere I saw the purchuse price and was amazed at how little it was.
That seemed to be somewhat of a bulk dump and I wonder how they are doing it now as membership decreases.Mark B.Comment
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I assumed that bulk dump was a result of the membership decline. What irked me is they were sold after the first of the year. I assume that club members had already paid the maintenance fees for those intervals that year, but didn't get the use of them. The units sold for well under the maintenance fee that had already been paid.
FYI, as of 5/31/06, there were 10,701 members in EVTC.Comment
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