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Re: Sunterra sold to Diamond Resorts LLC

The principle behind the currency of money that makes up the US $, the European Union Euro, the Japanese Yen, etc., is that it is easily exchanged for an infinite number of goods and services - in other words, "liquid". The highly limited availability and restricted use of Club "Points" to only the Diamond System within Interval International greatly restricts the liquidity of these points. Can you easily use these Club points outside the Diamond Resorts International system, including here at Redweek? NO! What you CAN use in any of the exchange companies are the underlying basis of the points - the use of the timeshare property or properties - as long as the timeshare exchange market is able to make the time available to its members. The more difficult it is to exchange due to lack of availability, fewer number properties or slow service by the exchange representatives, then the valuation of your points become discounted versus that of competing point systems (eg RCI points vs Redweek points vs Club Points vs Westin Points, etc). This is somewhat similar to fluctuating exchange rates of various country's monetary units. I suggest you read the Timeshare Users Group forum regarding the Diamond Resorts International points: http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89924 I'm glad we did the math and determined their proposal to have US pay $12000 to have our deeded timeshare and floating red weeks 1-52 forever and irreversably deposited into The Club's point system would have resulted in the loss of our ability to reserve our annual Christmas to New Years escape. Some unfortunately did not do the math and gave into their slick sales pitch. Better for you to use exchange your week for Redweek points, or pay for RCI's "Right-To-Use" (RTU) points that do not lock you irreversably into something that is much more limiting and potentially expensive than a currently owned timeshare week (NOT Club points). Whatever you do PLEASE do your due diligence and read about the points systems from as many diverse sources as you can. Certainly, for some, they can make use of the advertised flexibility of point systems in general. However, DO shop around on which point system is best, because they are NOT all the same! Then try to buy your points on the secondary market. By doing so, you know the points at least have an available market, versus the Club points for which only Diamond Resorts evidently can buy back from you. More likely, I suspect, DRI just gets the points back when owners default on paying the increasingly high maintenance fees - then they can just resell them again to some other poor souls who are not aware of the intricacies of the timeshare sales business. So it's not just me who is saying this - there are broad groups of people who have actually experienced the negative elements of the DRI points experience. Whereas the views of Rickr99 seem to be greatly in the minority viewpoint. Finally, I've now found out from other KBC owners that DRI reps are actually being sent to people's homes to try to talk them into paying $$$ to convert their deeded property into the artificial and exchange-limited Club points. I'd certainly look for more alternatives at the very least.