value of our points

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

Hello everyone,

I've been a very VERY happy RCI points member for the last 2 years. I'm beginning to get frustrated and hopefully I'm just doing something wrong.

I rarely use the RCI website. My points get added in January and soon as they hit my account I book like 3-5 weeks of vacations for the entire year and that it is for website use until next January.

I remember the vacation searches were broken down into different categories. Standard points, weeks, home resort, home group, etc. etc.

I would click on weeks, pick a city, search the list of resorts, pick a resort, and a huge list would pop up with all the different dates. Simply click on a week that works for you and check out.......not rocket science.

There would be some sweet deals in there. They were actually so good that I would gamble and try somewhere new just to give them a shot. We just got home from 7 days at Vacation Village in Orlando and was pretty shocked how much I enjoyed that place. We booked it last year and got it for 17,700 points for the week. I remember even seeing resorts for 8k-12k for a week.
We stayed in Wisconsin dells for 10k and I could go on and on.

So......where are all these deals now?

now everything is all clumped into one cluster of madness. I don't know what "exact date" I want to travel. Now you pick a date.....if nothing is available....you pick again....and pick again.

I checked out the extra vacations section and I truly LMAO.
I see units in there at $294 for a week. So I used this magical Willy Wonka tunnel of a new RCI search engine. I wanted to do an apples to apples comparison for what it would cost me. After calculating MF, RCI points membership, and the $189 RCI weeks reservation fee I nearly double what I can just buy it for with extra vacations. Something just isn't adding up with the prices some of these units are selling at.

I get about 100,000 points annually and for the past 2 years have gotten 3-5 weeks of vacations a year with that amount. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed my time at Vacation village but at 92,500 points a week I'm not gonna pull the trigger at that cost.

So hopefully someone can fill me on what has happened with RCI in the past 12mos.

[philsfan Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close philsfan]

There are definitely expensive resorts, points-wise, these days. The resorts that added points contracts more recently seem to cost more than the resorts that have been around a while. The web site is glitchy, too. If you set the number of nights filter to 7 or 7+, you will eliminate the shorter stays that you don't seem to be interested in.

I am surprised you were able to book that resort for 17,700 points. Vacation Village at Parkway has been a points resort for a long time so you should have been making a standard reservation to stay there. Those are usually more points than if you took something from the weeks pool.

[fishingguy Member Find all posts View Profile Close fishingguy]

You have missed a lot

About 3 months ago, RCI implemented an "enhancement" that was touted as making points searches easier. Before that time you essentially had to search by month, but with the latest change you essentially have to search by day now. Regardless of what RCI claims, many (most?) feel they went backwards from an "enhancement' perspective.

If you are just looking for opportunities without a specific date window in mind, then you will likely be spending a lot more time paging through calander days for what is available. If you already have a window in mind, then it isn't nearly as bad, but it can be if you are looking for less than 7day exchanges.

Booking your points home resort is still broke since the "enhancement", so you'll need to call rather than use the website. Other parts of the website may work better with some browsers than others; it's a crap shoot IMO as to what browser works better at any specific time. (Bear in mind that if you do have to use a VC to make an exchange because the website doesn't work, then you'll pay a higher exchange fee; even though the problem is on their end. You can ask to be transferred to Web Services and they will give you a credit for the difference in the fee; that can be used sometime in the future. ) Oh yeah, they also increased the exchange fees again recently, and more resorts are now charging weekly cleaning and/or amenity fees with an exchange.

Lastly, RCI is sitting on a lot of inventory right now, I think more than last year at this time. Because of that they have been running some very aggressive rentals to reduce inventory.