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Diamond Resorts International (DRI) "THE CLUB" Points Program & Converting your Week to Points

I must say that I can feel your pain. You have a whole lot of points so those maintenance fees are killing you. Yes, DRI has increased them quite a bit over the last few years. I too have been hurting from them. I thought the 30,000 points were going to be reasonable, but when they started increasing them at crazy rates, it got to be very, very difficult. I have been trying to save each month so that I could have enough at the beginning of the year to pay the MF's. You will not really get the true value of your points if you use them for maintenance fees so I don't do that. I really have not had problems making reservations for places when I want to go because I make them pretty far in advance especially for prime areas at prime time like Hawaii or California. I have seen a lot of the places improve under DRI. I am not new. I was with Sunterra too. However, I did notice that things were going down under Sunterra. DRI has added more resorts and I have been to quite a few of them and they have made improvements. I too was concerned about the points losing value. However, I have looked at the points needed for accommodations and they have not changed. I compare the books from Sunterra from back in 2002 to the current points needed for now and they are the same. However, they have added new types of rooms and that's how they get you. A good example of this is Sedona with their Mesa and Sunset rooms. I have to admit that overall I have been happy with DRI. I love the flexibility within the system. I plan on using them even more when I retire. Hopefully, the cost won't get so expensive that I won't be able to afford to use them by the time I retire.