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Original Message:

Re: Starwood Vacation Ownership (by Leslie B.):

Wow but I have to respectfully disagree if you are exchanging for hotels. I think there is great value and flexibility with my points. MY SPG account is tied to my Am Ex to earn even more. I love my Starpoints, and we have used them to travel to fun places, and stayed in much nicer accomodations than we would have paid for. New York City, London, Atlanta, Dublin, Nice. I have turned a week of timeshare in Phoenix into 5 nights in downtown Montreal, San Diego or New Year's Eve in Dublin.

We have owned timehare since December 1996 when we bought at Bonaventure which we exchange though RCI. Sometimes we get lucky on availability but most we end up going someplace we never thought about going and having a good time.

In response to the question of combining resale points call SPG. It is very limited on resales. We own 2 annual and 1 semi-annual Sheraton units. We were recently given the option of converting our Sheraton Vistana Florida unit we bought on the resale market into the SPG system. Of course we had just paid approx $1300 over two years in upgrade assessments.

The only other way I know of to convert to starpoints is in a new purchase agreement. You can make that part of your offer. When we bought our semi-annual I wanted to convert the unit,there was a required level we had to buy and at that time we did not want to spend the money.

Good luck.