RENTING AN EXCHANGED WEEK IS AGAINST EXCHANGE COMPANY RULES...

This is all great information.

I wish Redweek would post the latest ones at the top so you wouldn't have to scroll all the way to the bottom to read the whole thread, but I guess that's what they want you to do.

Really appreciate all this information.

Carole

Redweek is exceptional in that it posts comments instantly. You may have to look at the back story to understand the context so reading top to bottom works. MD

So could you "rent" it to someone & then put their name on the guest certificate?

amandaa71 wrote:

So could you "rent" it to someone & then put their name on the guest certificate?

The only two expenditures that can be reimbursed from your guest (not renter) is the guest certificate fee and the exchange fee .... it is not allowed to be reimbursed your maintenance fee.

We belong to 4--5?--exchange orgainizations including RCI, II, and some more we never use. They all try to rent out weeks which are close to expiration and many also get some direct deposits from resorts with extra inventory to be used for exchange or rental. We "owners" seem to have a hard time understanding that and some have been frustrated sufficiently to sue RCI. That case is more or less complete now. RCI offered a few small incentives to get the whole business over with. That would seem less than sufficient--except for the fact that RCI was not found to be guilty of wrong doing. They did agree that resorts sometimes (usually) make exchanging seem easier than it is and promised to make an effort to get salesmen to be more realistic. (Good luck with that, RCI!)

It always comes down to: If nobody deposited the week you want, the exchange company can't give it to you. We tend to hang on to our own weeks till we find what we want. So does the other guy! MD

Some interesting background info here on the RCI lawsuit, I did not know. We bought our first week in 1990 and have been relatively happy with RCI weeks. We have exchanged to Europe and Australia and various places in the USA. We now own with many different timeshare organizations including RCI points. It is almost a full time job to manage it, but we have been able to spend 3 to 5 winter months a year out of the snow. We now find we have at times too many timeshare options and are considering renting some, have not done so yet, but did try to rent unsuccessfully once several years ago (not with red week, just heard about red week at a sales/owner presentation).

Sales reps are still trying to sell us more points to get better benefits (more discounts, book further in advance, etc). It seems attractive if you have the time to manage it and have the up-front money, but....

As postings to this forum seem to have dried up you may not know these changes as a result of the RCI lawsuit. The following is just for WEEKS owners. You are now able to combine weeks about to expire with a current week. Say today is Jan 2014 and you have a banked week about to expire in 2 months, so end March 2014, and you have the week from next year that will expire March 2015 and perhaps March 2016. For a fee you can can combine the about to expire 2014 week with a future week (providing the maintenence fees are paid). This will give you an accumulated total of say 16 from the old week and 16 from the new week, now combined to 32 credits that will expire in March 2015. With these 32 credits you can now "see" resorts on the exchange network you were not previously able to "see", such as an exchange week in Italy that requires 27 credits (before you would not see it because 16 credits are less than the 27 required to exchange, but your combined total is now 32 and now you "see" it). Say you booked it at 27 and now have 5 credits left, again for a fee you can combine with the 2016 credits 5+16= 21 credits. You can continue to combine them forever.

Again for WEEKS owners, the credits also work the other way, you can use your 16 annual credits to book lesser quality resorts (but perhaps the only resort in the area) that costs 5 credits - so it gives you 3 weeks for 1 week (3x5=15 less than your 16 credits). It has worked for us. RCI gets 3 booking fees (unless you can book the 3 weeks consecutivly in the same reservation/call). Also weeks resorts are often discounted when the days before it are close (think it is 45 days out). So your credits go further.

You can find similar info on the RCI.com site but you need to be a curent memeber to use it and combine/extend the points. We learned this at a very good presentation at Vaction Village Parkway in Orlando.

For the rest of us trying to exchange into your resort, bank your week as soon as you know will not use it. The sooner you bank it the better your trading power. There seem to be lots of empty resort weeks that go empty because people are not banking.

Hope this helps.