Post reply

Re: Reviews on Resorts (by R P.):

bryan, I'm definitely not an RCI patriot. We sold all of our timeshare weeks due to steadily rising RCI fees ... membership fees, exchange fees (from $129 to $169), guest certificate fees, and rising maintenance fees at our resorts along with a couple of special assessments. Timesharing was just not cost effective for us any longer as it had been in the earlier years.

However, I never had any trouble getting any exchanges I desired from RCI, BECAUSE I banked early and started my searches early (you HAVE to learn to do that with timesharing). Where many disgruntled RCI members make their mistake is waiting until the last minute to deposit and search for an exchange, especially hard to get exchanges. Exchanges are driven by supply and demand, period and the most popular demanded locations and seasons will fill up fast. Depositing and searching early (sometimes a year in advance) was how RCI worked for us.

Many people don't desire to plan vacations a year or more in advance, but we had to learn to do so in order to get the exchanges we desired. Timesharing and the exchanging process is probably not for them.

You have to remember that a large percentage of timeshare owners don't even belong to an exchange company. They buy where they like to go each year, so those weeks are never deposited. Someone has to deposit a week in order for it to be exchanged. Demand (for hard to get places) is greater than supply, that's for sure.

The above is the reason I believe the lawsuit is frivilous (and my former post concerning RCI surplus weeks). You have to learn to play the system concerning exchanges. A timeshare salesperson may tell you that you can exchange your week for anywhere in the RCI wishbook anytime you want to. This is the reason that so many people become disgruntled when they can't get a desirable exchange after they have been lied to by a salesperson.

Many people buy just to exchange and that's the very worst reason to buy any timeshare. Exchanging is merely an extra perk of timesharing, especially if you are flexible in your choices, but belonging to any exchange company is not mandatory for timeshare ownership.

bryanw21 wrote:

There are some people on this board that are patriotic RCI flag wavers, brag about how they do well with RCI exchanges but never really "reveal" the secrets of how they get the "RCI system" to work for them. I don't think there really are any "secrets", as I have asked for and have never received anything of substance that I had not already tried.

In summary: If you don't like the system you have two choices, 1. do something to change the system or 2. leave and go somewhere else. You chose #2.