so- what are people here doing about joining the new DC?

[m61376 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close m61376]

Thanks Emmy, but I'm not sure there was an clear answer in those post. They seem to be contradicting each other.

I think if you are a Legacy owner and purchase additional points from Marriott, your intention is to combine those points with your existing Legacy points in order to have more exchange power. If you are unable to do this, Marriott is going to have a whole bunch of very unhappy owners.

Yup...those new points don't convey access to the trust pool by the legacy points. Legacy points can only access trust inventory placed in the exchange pool, and buying some trust points doesn't convert legacy points to the same as trust points. Ultimately, when there are enough weeks in each pool, we may not see the same functional difference that people are seeing now. Time will tell.

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

Just joined, looking thru old threads.....interesting info about the gift card for Maint fee payments...

There is also a rather lengthy thread on TUG discussing the use of a Marriott Gift Card ("A Gift for You") to make partial payments on your maint. fees. You get a 10 points for every dollar up to 25,000 MRPs so many people are buying a $2500 gift card and using it against the balance of their maint. fees. Again, directions for use are in the TUG thread]. I used one last Friday to pay my online fees and it worked like a charm. Also, using my Marriott Premier VISA card to pay for the gift card and the balance of the maint. fees netted me 40,000 MRPs.

As to the DC, I finally bit the bullet and joined for $695. I have three developer weeks. I don't expect to break even anytime soon and the 800 plus points are of questionable worth to me. My real reason for joining was to hedge any increase in prices and to avoid any additional charges that Marriott might be thinking of adding in the future. With the current 'skim' in place I don't see converting any weeks for point in the foreseeable future. It remains to be see if I made the right choice or not. I'm not holding my breath.