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We're on vacation here in Kauai and got $500 off of our whale watching boat tour and helicopter ride to attend a Shell Vacation Club TS seminar. Of the few TS seminars I've been too, this one didn't set off any red flares for me. In the other, I just flat out knew they were going to take me for a ride. This one I just didn't know.
My golden rule is if they throw out the "But you must buy it right now to get this great deal", I walk. They did it here too, but it was hard to walk away from. Especially the wife pulling the Puss-in-Boots look from Shrek2 on me! <grin>
So, we got them to commit to giving us till 9:30am on Jan 2nd to think it over. I'm a quick learner, I just need a push in the right direction. I'm not adverse to reading up on the subject, so if there's already some well written stuff out there, please shoot me to it. I'll gladly read it provided I can understand it! :-)
So here's the deal they have on the table.
Shell Vacations Club
4,550 points per year which apparently covers a two bedroom.
Can bank points for up to four years.
Can buy/rent points (more on this in a bit)
Can exchange on the RCI properties
"Mini-vacations" which is like three bedroom cottages for $250 or so for the entire week stay.
Can use points for just about anything. Massages, plane fare, car rental etc.
Only have to deal with the Shell folks. i.e. I call their 1-877 number and they do the plane, room, car reservations. They'll deal with RCI to do the exchange for us. etc.
The price was $25,000 with 10% down and we could get our own financing which I would expect to be around 8% (haven't really looked yet). We were looking at about $1,050 in yearly HOA (I forget what that stands for) costs. All in all, I believe we were looking at around $350 or so per month to buy into this thing.
Where this really appealed to me is I married into a family which formed a corporation eons ago to buy a beachfront property in Akumal Mexico. My wife's mother gave us one week to use the house and the times are fairly flexible. The house is utterly fantastic and the location so close to Cozumel and Cancun is unreal. I'm guessing that I've been spoiled beyond belief with this arrangement (it costs us nothing). Well, heck, see the pics for yourself.
http://www.pcwize.com/galleries/mexico_06.php
http://www.pcwize.com/galleries/mexico_07.php
Of course the only downside (if you can call it one) is that it's our only location. Granted, we could trade with someone on a one-on-one basis (our week at the house for a week of theirs somewhere else), but we've never done it.
I would ultimately like to have some more flexibility. We're not giving up our week in Akumal as her mother has given us that forever, but I'd like something of our own which we could use to go other places too.
At any rate, I kind of got off on a tangent there, what really appealed to me is that we could buy/rent points through Shell to pay for airfare which they said would run us about $460 per person for the plane tickets. This is about $300 to $350ish less than we normally pay for airfare there.
Obviously, it's a no brainer that paying $350ish per month for Shell timeshares just to reap the lower airfare to our house in Akumal isn't worth it, but it gives use the 4,550 points to use for vacations elsewhere when we want to go.
Just in the short time I've been reading this forum, I believe the ultimate answer I've gleaned is to never buy from the "dealer" and to buy it from someone who wants to sell their TS. I'm not looking for a long-term investment in the sense that I want to sell it later and make boatloads of money. I'm blond, but I'm not that dumb. I'm looking for a TS solution that isn't all that expensive, and gives us options to go anywhere in the world for a week or two every few years. It's something that I would like to keep for a very long time and either give to the kids, or buy them in (if that's possible) so that they get to use the TS for their needs.
Sorry for the long post. Unfortunately, verbosity is a failing of mine.
Looking forward to getting to know you all. I think I hear a Mai-Tai calling my name so I'm going to end this. If it would only stop raining long enough to go hang out at the beach. If you've ever heard Kauai is rainy in the Dec - Jan timeframe, better believe it. Especially near Princeville! <grin>
My golden rule is if they throw out the "But you must buy it right now to get this great deal", I walk. They did it here too, but it was hard to walk away from. Especially the wife pulling the Puss-in-Boots look from Shrek2 on me! <grin>
So, we got them to commit to giving us till 9:30am on Jan 2nd to think it over. I'm a quick learner, I just need a push in the right direction. I'm not adverse to reading up on the subject, so if there's already some well written stuff out there, please shoot me to it. I'll gladly read it provided I can understand it! :-)
So here's the deal they have on the table.
Shell Vacations Club
4,550 points per year which apparently covers a two bedroom.
Can bank points for up to four years.
Can buy/rent points (more on this in a bit)
Can exchange on the RCI properties
"Mini-vacations" which is like three bedroom cottages for $250 or so for the entire week stay.
Can use points for just about anything. Massages, plane fare, car rental etc.
Only have to deal with the Shell folks. i.e. I call their 1-877 number and they do the plane, room, car reservations. They'll deal with RCI to do the exchange for us. etc.
The price was $25,000 with 10% down and we could get our own financing which I would expect to be around 8% (haven't really looked yet). We were looking at about $1,050 in yearly HOA (I forget what that stands for) costs. All in all, I believe we were looking at around $350 or so per month to buy into this thing.
Where this really appealed to me is I married into a family which formed a corporation eons ago to buy a beachfront property in Akumal Mexico. My wife's mother gave us one week to use the house and the times are fairly flexible. The house is utterly fantastic and the location so close to Cozumel and Cancun is unreal. I'm guessing that I've been spoiled beyond belief with this arrangement (it costs us nothing). Well, heck, see the pics for yourself.
http://www.pcwize.com/galleries/mexico_06.php
http://www.pcwize.com/galleries/mexico_07.php
Of course the only downside (if you can call it one) is that it's our only location. Granted, we could trade with someone on a one-on-one basis (our week at the house for a week of theirs somewhere else), but we've never done it.
I would ultimately like to have some more flexibility. We're not giving up our week in Akumal as her mother has given us that forever, but I'd like something of our own which we could use to go other places too.
At any rate, I kind of got off on a tangent there, what really appealed to me is that we could buy/rent points through Shell to pay for airfare which they said would run us about $460 per person for the plane tickets. This is about $300 to $350ish less than we normally pay for airfare there.
Obviously, it's a no brainer that paying $350ish per month for Shell timeshares just to reap the lower airfare to our house in Akumal isn't worth it, but it gives use the 4,550 points to use for vacations elsewhere when we want to go.
Just in the short time I've been reading this forum, I believe the ultimate answer I've gleaned is to never buy from the "dealer" and to buy it from someone who wants to sell their TS. I'm not looking for a long-term investment in the sense that I want to sell it later and make boatloads of money. I'm blond, but I'm not that dumb. I'm looking for a TS solution that isn't all that expensive, and gives us options to go anywhere in the world for a week or two every few years. It's something that I would like to keep for a very long time and either give to the kids, or buy them in (if that's possible) so that they get to use the TS for their needs.
Sorry for the long post. Unfortunately, verbosity is a failing of mine.
Looking forward to getting to know you all. I think I hear a Mai-Tai calling my name so I'm going to end this. If it would only stop raining long enough to go hang out at the beach. If you've ever heard Kauai is rainy in the Dec - Jan timeframe, better believe it. Especially near Princeville! <grin>
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