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Re: Marriott Going to Point Syst (by Kathy W.):

rickk116 wrote:

Just got out from the presentation today. My gut feeling is that Marriott is running into a hard bottle neck that the sales is so bad that they decided to make profit out of the current owners. What a pitiful decision to destroy their own kingdom of timeshare.

We were there for almost 2.5 hours. At first, when we were contacted about this before our arrival, we were told it's an explanation of the new system. The rep were full of smile and chat with us in the beginning, asking questions about our experiences and our destinations in our mind. He kept throwing out pretty pictures and dream travel plans to the desinations that he heard from us.

This kept going for about 1.5 hours until we got bored and realized that this is a sales presentation, not an informational meeting. This is the first red flag raised in my mind, the "honesty" we trust in Marriott is not here. So we cut into the point : How it works and how much it costs? Our questions were not answered to what we want to know, but again he just talked about how good the new program is and how flexible it can be, and how good our future Hawaii trip could be by using this new point system. He is using our friendly answers to trap us into his sales practice "This is what you told me you want, so now you have to buy it so you are not lying to me". This is the 2nd flag raised, how come Marriott sales practice becomes like this?

We tried to understand how the new point system works while he was pushing us to buy 1500 points ($15000) and enroll our weeks ($695) so we can be at the "Platinum" level and our Hawaii trip will become so easy and becomes reality under the new system.

But we realized something is not right. We asked about the destinations we frequently went, and found out the new points we get from our weeks will not be enough to exchange there anymore. But the sales immediately pointed to another facility and told us if we stay there, we can stay for almost 2 weeks. When we point out that facility is not our interest, he told us "the one you normally exchanged to is a very expensive one and you were just lucky that you got it".

He also kept ensure us that the new system will keep all our options as before, if we prefer, we can still do the old exchange as before, nothing will change, but will get better. Later when he was trying to push us to enroll, he revealed that II will no longer have Marriott facilities available for exchange. So if we don't enroll but still use II for exchange, it will be almost impossible to get a Marriott facility. That obviously is conflicting with his statement that nothing will change. This is the 3rd red flag raised. He obviously is lying to us.

We quickly became suspecious about what he said, since so many red flags raised, especially when he guaranteed us that the exchange fees such as II membership, reward points, deposit fee, etc, will all be history, "no more fees", it will be a big saving for owners. And we later found out Marriott charges $199 exchange fee. Before if we exchange to our home base, then there is no fee at all, now it's $199 no matter what. That's the final red flag that made us decide to walk. The honesty in Marriott sales is gone.

We asked for literatures that we can study and analyze so we can make educated decision, not on impulse. But he refused to give us any printed material. We asked to borrow the booklet he looked up points for the facilities, but he claimed that "the booklet is so expensive to print, he would not allow us to borrow it".

Marriott Marriott, why you are so greedy on your loyal owners? You want to lie to us in order to squeeze more money out of us? Why you change your sales practice to the kind that all the others use? This makes you no difference from others.

We will be getting ready to sell our weeks if we found out that Marriott is playing tricks on owners. It's doesn't worth it to own it anymore.

All of the information you are saying that they would not "give" to you is all online on the Marriott Vacation Club web site. I was very upset after reading a lot of these blogs, thinking that we were not able to know what we may purchase until after we purchased.

However, then I found out that all of the information is online!!! You can look up EVERY resort and find out how many points it take so for every week of the year - and the points vary depending on the week, or the number of days, and the time of year as well as the view. These documents sure helped us and I hope they will help you!