Original Message:
Re: Should We Pay an additional amount to transfer our floating weeks to points? Is it worth it? (by Richard E.):
We have owned 2 even year weeks at the Maui Ocean Club for over 20 years. We always stayed at that resort until Covid when we deposited with II and ended up staying at Tahoe and letting a bunch of points go to waste. We agreed to the usual meeting with Sales because we wanted to discuss possibly selling one of our weeks. We were pitched on the Destinations program and were subsequently fraudulently induced into buying some points with the big benefit of added flexibility. First we were lied to, being told we had to buy points to be able to enroll our existing weeks and have the option of converting them to points. Of course this requirement was not documented so the fraud could not be proven. Then the things they don’t tell you: if you convert weeks to points you lose your home resort booking advantage if you decide to stay at your home resort. Then, if you don’t know what you’d like to do by the conversion deadline and chose points for the “flexibility” and then you decide to take your regular home resort vacation, the points given for your week aren’t enough to book that week (at least in the case of Maui). We had been very happy with our timeshare ownership up to this point. Now retired and living in a beautiful area with no need or desire to “escape” every other year, plus the added burden of having to find care for our horses, a two week resort vacation has become more of a burden. Hoping for some ideas from Marriott only to be lied to has left a sour taste. So, this lengthy post is to warn anyone to be very careful dealing with sales guys. Our recommendation if you want a timeshare ownership at a specific resort you should look for a resale week or weeks and avoid the resort sales sharks entirely.