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@those who may be interested, part II - My conversation with Marriott Vacation Club Customer Advocacy. * in a previous post I described my difficulty in getting an exhange and a description of my first encounter with Marriott Consumer Advocacy, a Ms Rhonda Robinson. * We had our follow-up conversation today. We spent close to an hour on the phone with what sounded as her sincere intent to clarify and address a lof of negative claims being discussed on the boards regarding the Destination Points. * The conversation helped as we both realized that everyone's vacation/exchange desires are individual. We agree until I received the Destination Points chart/booklet we can move our discussiuon along. She agreed to send me booklet. She send me one chart for my property only. I pulled the entire booklet down off the web myslef. I should have pulled the booklet PDF myself, but it's buried hard to find. * Using this Marriott Destination Point booklet and getting onto the owners section of the vacation club website I found: - My premium week 2 bedroom unit at Fairways Villas destination point value was assigned a value of 2,075 points. - If I exchanged this deeded week into Destination Points and then for some reason I wanted to get it back, within lets say 30 days,a week, I would be charged 2,750 points; i.e. I would have to purchase an additional 650 points just to get my original, week back. * That is in effect a 650 cost penalty to convert to the DP, plus the $695 one time fee involed. How much is a point? Whoever made this point about being penalized is right. Ms Rhonda communicated to me I would be able to get my week back if I needed for the same number of points I provided Marriott. - I then compared what this Fairways Premium week 2,075 would be able to be exchanged based on a 2 bedroom unit during week #52 in places our family would consider ( so. florida, palm desert, phoenix etc). These are places we have never had experiencing problems in the past through Interval...Unlike this year....so for context here are the point value for several of the Marriott properties for which I looked up the destination points: Marco Island Crystal shores 5,900-7,900 pts/wk/2bd/wk#52 Miami Doral 2,675 Ft Lauderdale Beach Towers 4,175 Singer Isle Oceana 6,400 Palm Beach Ocean Pointe 5,175-6,400 Phoenix Canyon Villas 4,175 Desert Springs Villas II 3,775** Desert Ridge Shadow Ridge 4,000** Desert Spring Enclave 4,000 Newport Villas 4,950 So given I would receive only 2,075 pts for my Premium week, you can see, as many here feared, I would be sucked in for substantial more dollars just to effect an exchange I replicated several times before the DP program was launched through IL. Yes, I understand realtive to my Marriott timeshare week value and the week desired for exchange, I'm asking for an upgrade. But please understand these are comparable exchanges I have made with no difficulty in the past; i.e."apples to apples" before and after the DP program was launched. remember as many have indicated on these boards, I was reassured by my MVC sales rep in 2008 that these type exchanges would be easy accomplished as long as I gave Marriott/Il sufficient time, location options , "and stay away from Hawaii". Reasonable advice that worked and was actually confirmed over the years by the experienced my Owner Vacation Planners who always had a good pulse on what was resonable exchange request to turn into IL.....they would know..... and they did. MY point is, and has always been, I understand what Marriott wants to do; needs to do, by moving to a point system. Go for it Marriott. But these are material changes that I want no part of and released from, as I am not willing to pay more to obtain the exchange power. Exhange power I once had and reassurred I had with a Marriott property and a Premium week. I guess I should look on the posititve side; the discussion with Ms Robinson and the point exchange information provided today confirms some of our fears. And for me it confirms that the product I purchased in 2008 has gone through significant "material retrocative changes" Stay tuned......