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Wyndham versus BG
I know I should already know this, but if we buy a resale of Wyndham, do we forfeit the offers for Plat, Silver, and Gold? I think I heard this before. Also, what are the special offers for these levels. I guess I really need to find the paperwork I got on this just thought yall would be quicker. Toured the Sevieville, TN location and loved the size just not the price. Really liked it better than Mountainloft in Gatlingburg, TN. It is a BG resort. Trying to decide on which one to go with, BG or Wyndham. Thanks for any and all info. We own DVC and want to add a closer place to our timeshare ownership. Also, wanted the RCI option of quick trips. DVC doesn't give you this option with II. I know II offers it, but DVC chose not to give it to us. Thanks, Merilyn
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Hi Merilyn,Originally posted by Merilyn View Post
I'm not real clear what you are asking about "forfeit the offers for Plat, Silver and Gold?"
If you buy resale FSP points, in general they do not qualify for VIP benefits that Platinum, Gold and regular VIP owners have. In my opinion the best of those benefits are no housekeeping charges, unlimited transactions (Plat & Gold only), unit upgrades and points discounts within 60 days. There are some other benefits but are more superficial to me.
However, even a regular ole FSP points owner has the opportunity to get point reservation discounts at certain resorts within 60 days. There are Wyn/FF resorts that have discounts for all FSP owners due to excess inventory available and are published on its website within 60 days of check in.
Other than those major differences, you are treated like the original owner of the FSP points, you get the RCI account (or II account depending on where you purchase first), you get all of the published magazines, directory. You can use your account in the same ways anyone who buys directly from Wyn/FF. You can rent out your points to other owners and make transfers. You can rent from Wyn/FF under its guidelines and rules.
If you are asking a different question, please clarify and I will try again.
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mshatty, so are you saying it really isn't an issue to buy a resale from Wyndham. A resale will give me what I want? How much do you pay for cleaning? On a resale, do we pay every time for cleaning? I have heard there are many fees associated with Wyndham. Is that true? I just don't want to make the wrong move. We want to be able to go on short trips, at the last minute. Will this work for me? I want the point system because I like going for a long weekend and not an entire week. Does the "unlimited transactions" mean we can only make reservations so many times a year? Is there a fee to cancel a reservation or make a reservation? I really liked what I saw in Sevierville, TN compared to the BG in Gatlinburg. Thanks again for the information. I think I will check out your website about Wyndham.Comment
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cancellation does not cost you. Make reservation will cost you 1transaction credit, but you can string transactions together. Unless you cancel your trip within 15 days to the travel day, the worse case is you may complete loss the transaction credit you used to make that reservation. If you cancelled within 15 days, you may loss all your points (this rule is newly added, they have not yet figure out under what situation you can get your points back. And we will see if this new rule really help anything they want to achieve. It can be revert back to old way, which is you loss nothing, we will see).
If you always take week long vacations, then you will not run out of transaction credit and HK credit.
Depends on how short your short weekend trip is and the unit size. If it is like 4 night or more. Or if it is stdio or 2BD you are looking for, you should be fine with or without VIP or Glod+ VIP. If you constatly want 2 night or 1 night stay, then you will used your free housekeep credit first. The transaction credit will depend on the time slot. If you are looking at shoulder week, you usually can find it within 6 month period with enough options, so if you string 4 short trips at say 1 month apart, then you can call to make reservation at the 10th month of your last trip, which will be 9th month of your 3rd trip, 8th month to your 2nd trip, and 7th month to your 1st trip, and it will only cost you one transaction credit. However, most people feel uncertain about this and would rather take the all the trips at their seperate 10 month window, then it will cost 4 transaction credit. Unless you are looking at holiday long weekend, it usually not need to make reservation at 10 month. Yahoo group has an occupancy statistic which will give you some idea if your place need 10 month reservation or you can wait maybe 60 days for Wyndham to give out discount to every owners or maybe even try to check if RCI give out special deal so you would not need spend points if your trips covers Friday and Sat plus at least one more day.
FF charges more points (close to double) for Fri and Sat stay. And it charges only 28 HK credit for stdio but 63 for 1BD and 77 for 2 BD. but the point cost is about 1:2 stdio to 1BD and 1 to at least 1.5 1BD to 2BD. So if you are looking at places that only have stdio, or you usually travel with 2BD in mind,and you always take Fri plus Sat together, even if you take short trips, you will not have too much problem to manage the HK credit.
Otherwise, I usually mixed external exchange deposit (e.g., deposit some red stdio 70k points with 28HK credit, so give me 42 HK to use in othe trip) to help me get the HK barrier.
FF also allow you to borrow next use year's HK credit to this year's trip to move HK from next use year to this use year, in the process, it will move some of your next use year's point toward this use year.
For example, in last trip, it costs me like 72K points and 77 HK credit, I have 80 K point but 66 HK credit, so it pulls my next use year 6K (this I still has yet to figure out what is the exact point number and how the number come out and what is the constraint of it, but my memory told me it is very close to this amount, but it is not like 1K per 1HK credit) points to move the next use year's HK toward that trip, so I end up 14k and 0 HK credit.
FF also allow owner to transfer HK between each other. And if you rent points from other owner, you can ask them to transfer the equal value of HK with it.
I believe most people will tell you that maybe at least 1 in 3 years they found they have a few HK left but they already used all their points.
FF will charge $1.5 for HK if you run out of it. I have done it once before they allow us non-VIP owner to move HK from next use year. I do wish they can allow us to save the HK to next year, but that maybe ask a costly operation.
I know few owners own both BG and FF, hopefully they will give you a better comparison.
I don't own BG, so take my comparison with cautions. I believe MF wise, BG is cheaper than FF. But overall, FF usually has better quality then BG (you do pay more). BG allows you to get cheap rent subject to availability which FF does not, FF does has discount if there is a lot of available. BG's program is newer than FF, so it maybe a little bit more flexible. But as year goes by, it has to be see if some can be maintained that way. Purchase cost at this moment, I believe BG is higher than FF. FF's internal exchange resorts cover more area than BG's internal exchange resorts, but BG has exchange agreement with Shell, don't know the availability of that though. I believe BG's MF struture is close to WM's which is stepped. FF is depends on the resorts, and only the FSP fee is stepped but IMHO is actually very close to 1 single price.
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