Now the Points people are crying too

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

No, I am responding to the contention that minis are an alternative to exchange companies.

I don't believe I've ever said they are an alternative for all people. For us, though, they have rendered RCI and II largely irrelevant. For as often as we anticipate making an exchange outside of the mini, the independents work very well.

And since most of the developer assembled minis include exchange company memberships as part of the mini-membership, the construct is flawed. For most mini owners, exchange companies are fully available.

[acesneights Member Find all posts View Profile Close acesneights]

Owners at FF/WYN are at a huge disadvantage compared to independents when owning to exchange.

They have no ability to get a really usable deposit to exchange with.

In order to exchange they must master the intricacies of reserving a week to exchange and depositing with a non-RCI/II small exchange company.

An independent can purchase a week with at least decent or reasonably well known trading power and deposit it at least a year in advance and have a fighting chance of exchanging for the best of a significantly reduced RCI Weeks inventory pool.

Stan

[opkansas Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close opkansas]

I don't think this is a case of Chicken Little screaming "The Sky is Falling" anymore. More likely the sound of Cendant imploding.

LAWREN - Cendant has already imploded as that company is no longer in existence.

[opkansas Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close opkansas]

Help!

How does owning to use within a mini differ substantially from owning to use within an independent, apart from the situation that a mini owner has more choices available?

If you want to talk about owning to use, I utterly fail to see how owning a mini is in any way worse than owning at an independent.

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle.

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle

Mini - Not sure about others, I usually refer a mini if a group of resorts has a internal trading system. I believe I first saw this term from Boca's post, don't know where he got that from. Fairfield, Worldmark, Sunterra, HGVC are some example. So to an owner, instead of one fix resort, they can see these as a floating usuage with a set of resorts. And mini system's inventories will usually control by the developer on "when it will deposit to RCI/II, or it may never deposit to RCI/II"

VEP - vacation experience profile? It is RCI term. That means your possible taste. Based on Marge, for a resort is determined by the returned RCI comment card. RCI disclaimer has a session discuss it. For any exchanger it is your first resort owned and the deposit week. So when RCI try to return the available inventories, they will get rid of resorts that has too low VEP compare to your VEP level. Not sure if they put the VEP on point or not. The purpose is to assume most owners has no idea about TS, to avoid they complain when they trade their $1000 MF resort and exchange to a no star hotel, so it is a necessary evil. In reality it may turn out really protect less if not nothing since the program really should be the exchanger experience and comment card usually is not very realiable. By the way, the bad trading experience creates TUG.

Jya-Ning

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

The secret codes cannot be revealed

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

A "mini" system is one where you buy into a group of resorts that can be used interchangeably without the involvement of RCI/II. Usually that means a syste such as Wyndham, Sunterra, Shell or others most of which are points based but don't have to be to qualify as a "mini" exchange system. These are the fastest growing type of timeshare ownership for the past decade in dollars and number of owners.

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle.

Don't feel bad, no one really knows what "VEP" is as it is just another in the many ways RCI/II hide the values of your weeks from exchange owners. It is the Vacation Experience Profile - what you said about your exchange when you filled out your rating card. Of course that is already in the mix for any ranking the resoryt may have had but in this case they use it as yet another unrevealed reason you can't see anything you want when you try to trade your time.

If you do manage to figure out all the acronyms they will just come up with a few more because the goal is to make sure you can't understand the deep dark mysteries of giving up your week for another. They have to make it sound like they've earned $150+ and a lot of wasted time for getting you a rat hole 1 bedroom for the luxury 3 bedroom you gave up.

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle.

If you look 8 posts above yours you'll see a definition for mini.

[brucecz Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close brucecz]

Some think a mini is the very short skirt Big Frank, Boca and TonyG put on when they have to much of the grape and boiled pizza.

I must confess that I just got done talking to Katiemack and she said I should give Big Frank a hard time.

But I decided not to give Big Frank a hardtime but to say something about one of the nicer things about him. So I just did.

Bruce

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

On my wish list this year is hoping that Ken can add an abbreviation dictionary so that at least I can understand what I am reading. What the heck is a mini?

Last week on the "other" group I was reading about VEP and still have no idea what this means. I called my RCI affiliate and he had never heard of VEP. I feel lost in the shuffle.

Already here, You just need to know where to look.

http://www.timeshareforums.com/forum...eviations.html

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

Some think a mini is the very short skirt Big Frank, Boca and TonyG put on when they have to much of the grape and boiled pizza.

Toga! Toga!! Toga!!!

[katiemack Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close katiemack]

Some think a mini is the very short skirt Big Frank, Boca and TonyG put on when they have to much of the grape and boiled pizza.

I must confess that I just got done talking to Katiemack and she said I should give Big Frank a hard time.

But I decided not to give Big Frank a hardtime but to say something about one of the nicer things about him. So I just did.

Bruce

Now, now, Bruce, truth be told, you said something about it being a long time since you've given BF a hard time, and I just encouraged you, since we cannot let Frank go too long, without a little "love" thrown his way.

As for the mini, when I met Frank, I was struck by how great his legs were....so he could wear a mini and make it look good!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

As for the mini, when I met Frank, I was struck by how great his legs were....so he could wear a mini and make it look good!

[shopgirl Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close shopgirl]

What in the world is boiled pizza? I like mine crunchy! That sounds gross.

Also, why in the world do RCI guides act like they have no idea what VEP is? Why do they give us goofy answers about Instant Exchange and tell us that because it is high-demand season, we can't get those weeks with 9,000 points? What a bunch of idiots they have working for RCI.

Sometimes I wonder if Madge really works for the same RCI I talk to all the time on the phone.

[BoardGirl Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BoardGirl]

Lawren -

I suspect the mini-systems are having a big impact. All of the major developers are involved in mini-systems, and each transaction inside the mini is a trade extricated from the exchange system. I further suspect that when the minis do release inventory to an exchange company (to balance out member trades thatdo occur with the exchange company) the weeks the minis give the exchange companies include a higher proportion of marginal weeks. (I.e., the minis reserve a greater number of the best weeks for internal use).

I'd say this has much to do with which mini. Bluegreen, for example, doesn't really bulk bank (to my knowledge) so deposits are from owners, not leftovers from what teh owners took from 'the exchange pool.' We book what week we want to deposit from all available inventory within the Bluegreen system, not RCI.

I would not be surprised if Bluegreen has a bucket of inventory they designate as 'promotional' and give to RCI to bring in fresh meat. But I don't think they play the game of grabbing back from RCI what an owner wants. BG keeps good tabs on their various inventory buckets and when the bucket you are looking to dip into is empty, too bad. Or, pick another bucket, like Bonus Time.

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

I'd say this has much to do with which mini. Bluegreen, for example, doesn't really bulk bank (to my knowledge) so deposits are from owners, not leftovers from what teh owners took from 'the exchange pool.' We book what week we want to deposit from all available inventory within the Bluegreen system, not RCI.

I would not be surprised if Bluegreen has a bucket of inventory they designate as 'promotional' and give to RCI to bring in fresh meat. But I don't think they play the game of grabbing back from RCI what an owner wants. BG keeps good tabs on their various inventory buckets and when the bucket you are looking to dip into is empty, too bad. Or, pick another bucket, like Bonus Time.

The trend in minis is that the owner has no interaction with the exchange company. The owner tells the mini what they want from the exchange company, and the mini executes the search.

The matter of what week to give the exchange company in exchange for the week going to the owner is then between the exchange company and the mini. The mini will generally try to give the exchange the least valuable week that they can in order to complete the exchange.

In that setup, what week the exchanger owns has little bearing on what week will be deposited with the exchange company. If the exchanger owns a primo week, it's in the mini's interest to keep that primo week in the mini's pool, and give the exchange company a lesser week.