Made a mistake by buying BG and desperate

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

After reading your last post, I just decided to check the second week in March for you. Here is what came up on the online search for Solara Surfside and Hammock's at Marathon. As you can see, there is plenty of availability.

I can absolutely understand your frustration. And, we can help you if you want to get your reservations. If you are just beyond ticked off and don't want any help, that is understandable, too.

The statistics are the actually reported resort utilization statistics overall at all Bluegreen Resorts. It was reported at the last Bluegreen Vacation Club annual meeting. I am sure that they are accurate. And, since we call or check for Bluegreen availability just about every day of the year, we are in a very strong position to know what is possible vs. what isn't. If you would like help, we can provide it.

For your 30000 points, you can put a guest in any unit you can book for free. Or, you can book a depositable week and use RCI or II or any independent exchange company.


Solara Surfside™

Check-In Check-Out Villa Size/Type Max Occup. Season Total Points Available
3/10/2010 3/17/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/11/2010 3/18/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/12/2010 3/19/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 10,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 2 Bedroom 6 High Red 15,000
3/14/2010 3/21/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/15/2010 3/22/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000
3/16/2010 3/23/2010 1 Bedroom Studio 4 High Red 10,000

The Hammocks at Marathon™

3/10/2010 3/17/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/10/2010 3/17/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/11/2010 3/18/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/11/2010 3/18/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/12/2010 3/19/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/12/2010 3/19/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 2 Bedroom 6 High Red 18,000
3/13/2010 3/20/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/14/2010 3/21/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/14/2010 3/21/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/15/2010 3/22/2010 1 Bedroom 4 High Red 13,000
3/15/2010 3/22/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000
3/16/2010 3/23/2010 Studio 2 High Red 9,000

[Maggie863 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Maggie863]

Thank you very much. I do want and need your help. Please sent email address. Thanks :-)

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

Maggie, click on Boca Bum's name and you will be able to send him a private message or an email.

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

The absolute worse came last year when I called for a week in Hershey, PA so we could go to Gettysburg. I called the first week of January for a vacation the week of Memorial Day. I was told nothing was available, not even the weekend. Two days after I was denied a friend asked me about BG since she had just received her confirmation for the free weekend in Hershey. The same weekend I wanted to book and was told no.

When you book as an owner with Bluegreen, your choices are from the units purchased by Bluegreen owners (and sometimes those Bluegreen throws into the pot, I have heard). When the salesman books with Bluegreen, they're booking out of the units still owned the Bluegreen - those that haven't sold yet. So Bluegreen can be out of one set of units while another set is still available.

January is WAY too late to be booking a summer holiday weekend - Bluegreen is first come, first served, and holiday weekends go fast. Memorial Day 2010 at Hershey is still available now, but I doubt it will be in January.

Now we have 30,000 points in our account of which 15,000 will expire 31-May-10.

I second BocaBum's suggestion that you buy into the next year if you want summer vacations, and switch over to using next year's points instead of last years to stretch your points. It's a bit more hassle, but it isn't like you're paying extra in the long run. You pay sooner and get the use of the points sooner, but they turn over to "red season or lower" and expire at the regular time, so there's no penalty other than paying earlier and making sure you pay any difference on time. Which advice won't help you with the points that will expire this year, I know, but it sounds like Bluegreen WILL work for you, with just a bit of tweaking.

It doesn't sound to me like you made a mistake; I just think you need some more information to make the best use of your purchase.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Thank you very much. I do want and need your help. Please sent email address. Thanks :-)

Yes, click on my screen name and then on the link to send me email or private message.

I would recommend you just post what you want to do on this thread and you will get lots of help from other owners as well.

What you want to do is possible, we just need to help you on how to do it.

Regarding your 30000 points, there is lots of availability for booking it. You just need to pick a set of resorts for Jan, April or May and check decide who you want to give them to. You can get Feb, Mar or summer at many resorts as well. It's just that in the other months, you are likely to have lots of options available.

It may be that you are making your choices too specific. Broaden your search criteria by adding resorts and giving more check in date choices and you should be able to get something good.

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

Three weeks later the hard-copy reservation came and we were not reserved in Miami. The reservation was for Marathon.

These kind of mistakes are rare. And now, with computer confirmation, you can know what you got minutes after you reserve it, so you should be able to catch such a mistake before you get plane reservations in the future.

One of the biggest selling points during our 'pitch' was the flexibility of the program. The flexibility is only there if you have the luxury of booking 11 months in advance for each vacation and accepting a different resort than your first choice.

This hasn't been my experience. We bought into Bluegreen with a Sampler, so once we got our points we only had one year to use them, and all holiday weekends plus the summer were not allowed, but we got all the reservations we asked for. The only "change" was that we were told the unit we wanted in Gatlinburg was not available and were offered a different unit that slept more people and cost fewer points.

Bluegreen is flexible, but what flexible means is that you have a lot of options. It doesn't mean that you can book holiday weekends at the resorts you want a few months ahead of time. I can haul my family of seven around and stay in nice resorts for the same number of nights at the same price as someone else who prefers to rent weekends for a couple. I've got a list of resorts I can get reservations pretty easily at with a great variety of attractions. That's flexibility. But it's my flexibility as well as Bluegreen's - the more flexible you are, the more you can do with the system. The system itself is extremely flexible, but some people trying to work with it, aren't.

I've run across people who complain that Bluegreen doesn't work for them, and it turns out that ALL they want to do with their Bluegreen membership is stay at one particular resort at the exact same time every year - and it's not even a Bluegreen resort! Bluegreen is a great system because of its flexibility - but it's not going to work for someone that inflexible!

Happily, that isn't your situation. You seem okay with the Bluegreen resorts you've visited - sounds like Bluegreen will work for you fine if you can get the reservation thing straightened out.

The same way when we visited Shennandoah, we stayed in a cabin which is exclusive for the owners (and we weren't).

Bluegreen allows owners to rent out their reservations, so there is NO Bluegreen unit that is "exclusive for the owners" in terms of who stays in it. And, again, any unit or any week in a unit that has not been purchased is in the Bluegreen corporate account (or whatever it's called), and they can rent it out to whoever they want or use it for prospective customers. So, again, the cabins are not exclusive for the owners. If a salesperson told you that, the salesperson was either ignorant or lying.

I never trust anything a salesperson tells me that I can't check on my own. I am quite sure that 75% of units are not rented out to prospective buyers - if that were the case, there wouldn't be so many good units available to peons like myself.

I shouldn't have to take a tranquilizer just to call for a reservation but that's where I'm at. Just the thought of dealing with the Customer Service department makes me sick over what should be a pleasant time.

Bluegreen has not officially announced it, since they are still working out the bugs, but there is an online reservation system open to owners right now. You could go there and see what's available. It's not a guarantee, because if there's only one unit available (you can't tell from most listings how many are there, just what types), then it's remotely possible someone will grab it before you do, but OTOH it can give you a grasp of what's available when and where, which can be useful for future planning. Some resorts clear fast, other resorts have openings most of the time but certain units disappear early.

Can I give the points to someone so they can book a vacation? We've paid for them and they are not going to be used (30,000 total). Can we book a vacation and then donate it for charity or some other use like that? Can my husband give a reservation to a co-worker?

Yes, yes, and yes. Book the reservation and either at the time or later change the name to whoever will actually be staying there. But I really think you shouldn't give up on Bluegreen. One of the cool things about the new reservation system on the website is that you can look up one resort for a particular date, and if it has reservations available, you can use the "revise search" feature to the left and just change the location in order to check availability on that date. If you want to avoid disappointment, do a search for the dates you want, see what's there, then decide what you want to do from those options. Where people are most likely to be disappointed is when they set their heart on a specific resort AND date.

Bluegreen recommends you always have a couple of alternates in mind, either dates or location, every time you make a reservation; in my experience if you do some research you can be pretty sure of what you can get. Personally I've got an ongoing list of different resorts and different dates that aren't my top choices yet (right now my top choices are where the kids want to go), but that I'd like to visit sometime. Never had to use them, so I still have the same back-up choice I picked the first time: Mountain Run about the time of the Lilac Festival on Mackinac Island, which has always been available when I've been making a reservation and is in a pretty cool resort complex with an indoor water park for the kids. At this point it looks like I'm going to have to move it into top spot or I'm never going to get there.

Check out the reservation option at the website. Keep yourself in a "just want to see what's out there" mindset and just look around. For summer vacations it is best to reserve eleven months ahead, but there's some flexibility - for example, of the places I checked today for July 4, 2010, the only one that wasn't available was Big Cedar, which is about what I expected. Holiday weekends go fast, but the rest of the summer there's some time to see what's there and think about it a bit. Thing is, you won't get your money back selling your Bluegreen points, but from what you've said I think you'd end up happy with it if you can shift from, "It's supposed to work this way" to "how does it really work, and can I work with that?"

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Hobbitess,

Wow! That is a better answer than I could have given. Excellent response.

Jim

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

Thanks, Jim. I hope that Maggie863 finds it useful.

[BerryQueen Member Find all posts View Profile Close BerryQueen]

I booked as soon as I got my points Sept 1st and booked at hershey for 5 nights mon Aug 29th to Fri Sept 3rd we only had 6000 point to work with

[steveherman Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close steveherman]

I agree with what you say. All systems have their quirks that can be devastating if you don't know how to work around them. The OP's problem is a common one.

If you travel in the summer time, June 1 is the worst time to have an anniversary date. That's because if you don't know about borrowing points, you will never get a summer vacation.

so if you travel in the summer when is the best time to have an anniversary date?
my girl is a teacher and summer is the ONLY time we will travel?

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

so if you travel in the summer when is the best time to have an anniversary date?
my girl is a teacher and summer is the ONLY time we will travel?

In general, you can always prepay and borrow points to book summer vacations. However, if you don't want to borrow ahead, then you need to have an anniversary date at least one month past the month you normally travel.

For instance, if you typically travel in July, it's helpful to have Aug, Sept or Oct anniversary dates.

If you travel in March, anything after April is good.

[steveherman Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close steveherman]

since we are flexible for the 12 weeks she is out of school (early june - mid august) would we be best with a sept anniversary date then?

[mrspigdoc Member Find all posts View Profile Close mrspigdoc]

borrowing points

Jim,
I was told at my owner's update yesterday that if I borrow points, I would then need to pay the fee to save the points, otherwise they will expire. Is this true, or when I pull points ahead/borrow them, I do not have to pay to roll them over into what is their normal use year.
Thanks,
Teresa Pacey

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

Jim,
I was told at my owner's update yesterday that if I borrow points, I would then need to pay the fee to save the points, otherwise they will expire. Is this true, or when I pull points ahead/borrow them, I do not have to pay to roll them over into what is their normal use year.
Thanks,
Teresa Pacey

I am not Jim but unless something has changed, the answer is no,,,,,My anniversary date is July 1 - I plan on paying my maint fee this month and have my July 1, 2012-June 30 2013 points put into my account. If I have not used them by June 30, 2013 I would pay the new "save fee" of $35/50 and extend their use until June 30, 2014 as red/white/blue only saved points..

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

I am not Jim but unless something has changed, the answer is no,,,,,My anniversary date is July 1 - I plan on paying my maint fee this month and have my July 1, 2012-June 30 2013 points put into my account. If I have not used them by June 30, 2013 I would pay the new "save fee" of $35/50 and extend their use until June 30, 2014 as red/white/blue only saved points..

There's a quirk in BG's display of your points (if you go to the "my account" page once you log in). I have points that are borrowed that are flagged as "need to save." This is because I borrowed them last year, but BG's system doesn't change their designation to "current" once I pass my anniversary date. So, even though they're actually this year's points (and thus will need to be saved once my anniversary date rolls around in 2012), they're still marked as "borrowed" which I found odd.