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VA_Traveller · 11-01-2010, 09:16 AM

Not sure what your point is here. I have totally enjoyed my BG points, and every vacation.

The lawsuit is old news anyway.

Hobbitess · 11-01-2010, 09:55 AM

Most everyone here is unimpressed with the Bluegreen sales department, or at least with individuals within it. OTOH, most of us are quite satisfied with the Bluegreen resorts and our ownerships. In a perfect world, sales would be as great as the rest of the company, but we don't live in a perfect world.

stevec · 11-01-2010, 10:37 AM

Someone on the other forum said Wyndam have a simalar rating
Disney vacations have an A+ rating
Not sure how big Disneys timshare is compared to BG but it seems obvious that they care about their reputation.

BocaBum99 · 11-01-2010, 11:27 AM

Originally posted by stevec

Someone on the other forum said Wyndam have a simalar rating
Disney vacations have an A+ rating
Not sure how big Disneys timshare is compared to BG but it seems obvious that they care about their reputation.

Disney has done a great job to date managing the Disney Vacation Club. They have integrated it into the theme park experience to the point where the rental market for DVC villas has been very strong. That strong underlying rental market has provided for a very strong resale market as DVC points rent for a huge margin over maintenance fees. And, they have kept maintenance fees fairly stable.

To date, Bluegreen's reputation with organizations such as BBB has been driven by their sales and marketing practices. If you take out the sales process, Bluegreen has had very high customer satisfaction. The crack in that armour is the increases in Maintenance fees over the past few years. For the first time, I am seeing owners very upset with Bluegreen in this area. Since Bluegreen sells primarily to current owners. Bluegreen will need to fix this problem or they will have a hard time selling more points to current owners. I wouldn't be surprised if next year's increases will be relatively modest for this reason.

Hobbitess · 11-01-2010, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by BocaBum99 View Post

Disney has done a great job to date managing the Disney Vacation Club.

DVC is showing some of the stresses of the current income as well. This year more than one DVC owner has characterized buying into it as "drinking the kool aid."

And there are gripes about aggressive DVC salespeople, which surprised me. Still, stevec is right that Disney was very concerned about their rep going into timeshares, and for all some DVC owners characterize it as "just another timeshare," there are still some pretty clear boundaries they won't cross.

However, I'm not sure I agree with you that it's just location keeping DVC rentals up. Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but the point at which DVC exercises its ROFR seems to me to have more influence on the resale prices than the fact that you can rent out DVC points fairly easily. Although if you were just saying more people are interested in buying resale because the resorts are onsite, then, yeah, I agree. But DVC exercising ROFR is keeping resale prices higher than they would be otherwise, IMHO.

BocaBum99 · 11-01-2010, 02:08 PM

Originally posted by Hobbitess View Post

DVC is showing some of the stresses of the current income as well. This year more than one DVC owner has characterized buying into it as "drinking the kool aid."

And there are gripes about aggressive DVC salespeople, which surprised me. Still, stevec is right that Disney was very concerned about their rep going into timeshares, and for all some DVC owners characterize it as "just another timeshare," there are still some pretty clear boundaries they won't cross.

However, I'm not sure I agree with you that it's just location keeping DVC rentals up. Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but the point at which DVC exercises its ROFR seems to me to have more influence on the resale prices than the fact that you can rent out DVC points fairly easily. Although if you were just saying more people are interested in buying resale because the resorts are onsite, then, yeah, I agree. But DVC exercising ROFR is keeping resale prices higher than they would be otherwise, IMHO.

ROFR is a false propping up of the resale market. Marriott is probably the best example of this concept. For several years, owners felt that the resale value of their Marriott timeshares were protected due to ROFR. However, when the resale market tanked, Marriott just stopped exercising and prices plummetted much more than expected. Same thing will happen to DVC is real resale rates tumble. The reason they don't tumble is that a rational investor can pick up those points at a price point where they have an acceptable rate of return on the rental of their points. That puts a floor on the resale value of DVC points.

Let's do a thought experiment. What if DVC points started renting reliably at $50/point. There was a market for those points as far as the eyes could see. What that encourage you to purchase DVC points? Also, what if DVC points started renting at $2/point. How would that impact your potential purchase decision?

stevec · 11-02-2010, 07:24 AM

My wife seems to think there was some mention of ROFR When we first bought
This of course would be Airtours and not Bluegreen.
However the fact that Disney operate this system proves as you say keeps the resale price higher.
Marriot removing this I guess caused a panic amongst its owners with people rushing to sell.
So if it artificially props up the market, or not it seems to work.
I would say that it gives owners peace of mind knowing that they can always sell back their TS to Disney.
Unlike the mayhem we have to put up with in the open market where you are just as likely to get robbed by the resale agent as the original seller.

SoundQ SVT · 11-14-2010, 09:55 PM

I have no problem with the 'F' rating after reading this... I am glad Bluegreen does not waste their money to "pay to play".

BBB Ratings Improve by Doing Business With Them: Bostonist: Boston News, Food, Arts & Events

I also saw the news investigation report by ABC News.

Tom in GA · 11-15-2010, 12:08 PM

BBB - You buy it?

I saw the ABC investigation and it brought up an interesting point. I've dealt with a small family owned precious metals company for years. I have received excellent product and service. They always had an 'A' BBB rating until last year when it all of a sudden turn into an 'F'. Duh ????

Hobbitess · 11-15-2010, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by SoundQ SVT

I have no problem with the 'F' rating after reading this... I am glad Bluegreen does not waste their money to "pay to play".

I'm not impressed with the grade ratings with BBB, but then I had problems with the "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory" ratings years back. A neighborhood bookstore I and many people I knew had been dealing with for years and were very happy with got an "unsatisfactory" based on one guy who had a grudge against them. Seems to me the BBB ratings are ultimately based on hearsay. Even back then they tended to favor the person who "played" them the best - if the company said, "This is our policy, this is what we did" and didn't talk up the BBB people, while the complainer made a big noise, the company would lose unless their policy was "the customer is always right" to a ridiculous degree.

There comes a point where "the customer is always right" means that the employees -- and sometimes other customers -- get abused and the company says nothing. As long as they're following the written policy, I'd rather the company be a little hard-nosed and tell some customers "no, you can't do that" at some point, myself.

A bad BBB rating on a company I've had no troubles with just means I need to do more research. In the case of Bluegreen, all the BBB problems I've researched and consider substantive relate to the selling practices, which I already knew did not excite me but personally don't consider abusive.

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