Weeks Enhancements

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I will break my break to say that my deposits see more ( 1 for 1) than they did before the enhancement.

What does that have to do with $2700 exchanges?

BTW, your tone is extremely derogatory and insultive. R U that way in real life, or does the internet give you nads? (smilie)

Does RCI pay you per post or R U on retainer? (smilie)

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

If anyone cares, I believe we are suppose to call them Trading Power Units.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

To repeat something I've said, since some seem to have missed it, we can get two, maybe three, weeks in very nice SW FL resorts in the next two months (Surf Club, Eagles Nest and Seawatch on the Beach ***) with just one of our Slimey Slough studio deposits and we can get them with our fleabag, worthless, over-hyped, over-priced, over-sold 2-bedroom Gold Crown woofers. (Hey, tell Escapes! they're piece-a-crap resorts the next time they call to upgrade us, bragging about how great they are. Actually, they are very nice.)

I'm not sure how we go about about doing that (getting multiple weeks with one deposit), but there are enough TPUs in the deposits.

So, not all about the new system is unfair. I said that.

But, $2700 expense for one crappy studio, anywhere, any time, is BS. Even The Manhattan Club type of resorts are not worth that.
- - - - - -
***Add South Seas on Captiva to the 6 TPU short-term exchanges.

[odaddy Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close odaddy]

I was a little surprised that there was not a larger inventory of the mysterious hard to get stuff, I guess we were seeing most of everything all along.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I was a little surprised that there was not a larger inventory of the mysterious hard to get stuff, I guess we were seeing most of everything all along.

Me, too. Makes you wonder if we are still seeing everything, huh?

Anyone do the math on 4 million exchanges a year? Will the new system make more or less?

Let me know when you figure it out.

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

One thing I did to check if trading power was the same as it has been was to look at both sides of the equation on even trades I have made in the last year or two.

What I found on three trades with SA weeks was that the actual week assigned (floating weeks) would have come up 5-6 points lite short of what I traded into. However, going through the grids for the SA resort, there are weeks I could select that would give 1-3 points more than the weeks I traded into. Going forward, I could use that the same on those trades, although based on actual weeks assigned, it is clear that they have moved the goalposts. Also, now all exchangers owning at this resort are going to be after a limited number of the floating weeks so that is likely to be a scramble.

I am glad I did my very last RCI exchange to zero out what I had before this calamity of Points Lite descended on us. That even trade now has an 11 points lite difference in trading power, and that was using one of my summer UK weeks. I would never have made that trade in having to come up with 11 extra points lite, as at that total price point, I could rent in the area cheaper. Clearly the goalposts have been moved there.

My other even trade with a summer UK week would have meant coming up with an extra 3 points lite, something that in the past would been encompassed with trading within a band or range, but now with the extremely aggravating and annoying exact number system would mean coming up with a handful of extra points lite.

I suggest others to go reverse engineer your own actual even trades under the good old days and see if they would have worked under the Points Lite regime.

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

Here's the math on that last post . . . to get one exchange:

4 maintenance fees @ $600: $2400
One Exchange Fee: $179
RCI membership fee: $80
At least one fee to combine weeks: $99

$2758

That's to trade four 2-bedroom Gold Crowns for one studio at a crappy resort.
....

JLB, when you use just one of your 2-bedroom Gold Crowns, do you see less than you saw from 6/1/2009 to 11/12/2010, or do you see the same as you did since the 5/30/2009 changes?

I honestly can not tell whether you are saying that your 2-bedroom Gold Crowns have less trade value than they did a week ago, or not. (I do understand that the only new thing you see, in the time and area that you want, is a studio that you feel is very overpriced at 29 points.)

Also, will you say where your 2-bedroom Gold Crowns are? They are in the Escapes! system, is that correct?

It looks like the cost to obtain an RCI Weeks Exchange Point varies widely, much more than the cost to obtain RCI Points varies. I think the worst cost I've seen for RCI Points is about 2 or 3 cents a point, and the best is around 0.5 cents a point. So, figure RCI Points vary by a factor of maybe 5.

The cost for an RCI Weeks Exchange Points, though, seems to be all over the map. Units at Alhamabra at Poinciana are worth as little as 4 points each when deposited more than 9 months out, but I think their Mf is $600 or more. So, that's maybe $150 per Exchange Point. On the low end, a poster on TUG says one of his weeks costs only $7 per Exchange Point. So, we have a range of maybe $7 to $150 for Exchange Points -- a factor of about 20.

I don't think there's much point (no pun intended) in lamenting the high price of Exchange Points at some resorts. Find another use for that resort, or dump it if you can. Then, buy something with a lower cost per Exchange Point.

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

One thing I did to check if trading power was the same as it has been was to look at both sides of the equation on even trades I have made in the last year or two.....

I don't know how useful that is.

For example, a couple of years back I traded a crummy blue one-bedroom in inland Texas for a Grand Mayan Riviera Maya in February, about 1.5 years before check-in.

Now, RCI is saying my crummy blue Texas week is worth 8 points, and a Grand Mayan in February 2012 costs 24 points. Do I feel ripped off? No. My crummy Texas week was never worth a Grand Mayan February week. Grand Mayan had done a bulk bank, and I ended up with a huge trade up, that's all.

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

I don't know how useful that is.

For example, a couple of years back I traded a crummy blue one-bedroom in inland Texas for a Grand Mayan Riviera Maya in February, about 1.5 years before check-in.

Now, RCI is saying my crummy blue Texas week is worth 8 points, and a Grand Mayan in February 2012 costs 24 points. Do I feel ripped off? No. My crummy Texas week was never worth a Grand Mayan February week. Grand Mayan had done a bulk bank, and I ended up with a huge trade up, that's all.

I went the "other way" = my trade into the Cotswolds has a value of 31 - and the SoCal fall week is a 26 - the week I used to trade in has a value of 48.... I want my "change" back!

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

I don't know how useful that is.

For example, a couple of years back I traded a crummy blue one-bedroom in inland Texas for a Grand Mayan Riviera Maya in February, about 1.5 years before check-in.

Now, RCI is saying my crummy blue Texas week is worth 8 points, and a Grand Mayan in February 2012 costs 24 points. Do I feel ripped off? No. My crummy Texas week was never worth a Grand Mayan February week. Grand Mayan had done a bulk bank, and I ended up with a huge trade up, that's all.

Well, obviously you have to exclude bulkbanks which in the past have been a special case of idiot resorts flooding the market at one time and members being able to take advantage of it, With the new grid system of valuation replacing dynamic supply and demand, the days of any advantage from bulkbanking is over.

If you look at normal, non-bulkbank exchanges, as all of mine were, what you can actually exchange for is a far better test of what has happened to trading power than the mere raw number of weeks you are offered.

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

I went the "other way" = my trade into the Cotswolds has a value of 31 - and the SoCal fall week is a 26 - the week I used to trade in has a value of 48.... I want my "change" back!

The Cotswolds is one area that has gotten hosed on value, as generally the UK has. There is only one timeshare there, with limited units, Gold Crown, and in a very popular tourist area - Stouts Hill. It does not show up online very often any time of the year. So, I suspect you got a fair trade in spite of Points Lite's numbers racket. Indeed, I suspect that blue weeks at Stouts Hill would have a much better supply / demand curve than most red weeks in the overbuilt areas.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

There will be tons of quirky things to be revealed as we do searches. Here's one:

2 Bedrooms 6 (6) Full Sat 07-Jan-2012 Sat 14-Jan-2012 Exchange Fee 19
2 Bedrooms 6 (6) Full Sat 14-Jan-2012 Sat 21-Jan-2012 Exchange Fee 21
2 Bedrooms 6 (6) Full Sat 28-Jan-2012 Sat 04-Feb-2012 Exchange Fee 28

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

JLB, when you use just one of your 2-bedroom Gold Crowns, do you see less than you saw from 6/1/2009 to 11/12/2010, or do you see the same as you did since the 5/30/2009 changes?

That's another good point.

I don't have one of them deposited right now (because I already knew they are sucky). So, I can't see how many they could get relative to all that are available.

That was my understanding of what disclosure would mean, that, for instance, next to each prospective deposit there would be something like 115000/143979, which would be nice for those that are deposited, too.

I prefer not to bad-mouth the specific resort and resort area other than to say what I have already said, that it is one of those that has been ballyhooed in an area that has been ballyhooed, making hundreds of millions of dollars for the ballyhooer.

My point is that it could be any of many.

Even inadequate disclosure reveals truths/lies.

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

My deposits see basically the same things today that they did on Thursday. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed.

Looking a little bit more carefully, I'm no longer sure this is true. It looks like there was a bit of "upward forgiveness" that is no longer there. On the other hand, looking across the full spectrum of my exchanges, I would have been getting more change back than had been forgiven. The new system has a bit more friction in the form of the combination fees, but the additional flexibility may be worth it in the long run.

Edited: now I'm not even sure of that. Calculating deposit values for weeks in the spacebank sometimes turns up higher values, and sometimes matches. I haven't yet seen an instance where a calculated deposit value is lower than the value assigned in the spacebank. There doesn't seem to be much of a rhyme or reason as to which is which.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

In the spirit of disclosure , I admit that the $2758 example is using the worst of our 2-bedroom Gold Crown weeks. The best of them are similar to our studios @ Slimey Slough.

So, we could get one crappy studio with two 2-bedroom Gold Crowns, more like $1570. Well, if was still available.

Now I feel better, you know, disclosing and all.