Ripoff - Marriott Vacation Club Destinations Program - New Point System

If you can’t figure out why it was DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE AFTER we were successful in the 9th circuit court of appeals etc then I will not explain-actually I cannot. You go figure it out.

I figured it out. Marriott 5, Flynn 0. Game over.

Ok-if that is what you want to believe. Live in your ignorance. You obviously didn’t read everything or you don’t understand the law.

No wonder you still “own” Marriott

michaelf666 wrote:

Ok-if that is what you want to believe. Live in your ignorance. You obviously didn’t read everything or you don’t understand the law.

No wonder you still “own” Marriott

I read the whole document and Judge Kobayashi’s ruling and FULLY UNDERSTOOD it. The problem you had in court was the same problem you have here. You don’t have facts and evidence that support your claims. You made a lot of claims about breach of contract, how you are negatively impacted by the points program, how you can’t get reservations, etc., etc., etc. Judge Kobayasi states almost complaint after complaint how you have not presented sufficient evidence to support your allegations. He threw out some of your complaints all together, but for some he gave you an opportunity to come back and replead your case in the appropriate manner. However, it will be all for nought if you don’t have any proof.

Court is different than the internet. You can come here and make up all kinds of fabrications and people may even agree with you. However in court, you must add proof to the pudding. That’s where you fell extremely short in your case. There are lots of weeks owners who still find themselves in the same position as they did before the points program. Those who try to get their weeks at 12 months out still have the same ease or challenge they did before the points program. Like you, I own at Ko Olina. I have used it with points to upgrade my view/size, as a weeks owner and trading it with Interval International. I have no problems when I do things in a timely fashion. There may be a time I won’t be able to get what I want, who knows. However, I know what I signed up for so I want be but so disappointed.

sandym14 wrote:

There is a difference. Previously access was based on the amount of ownership, regardless of where you got it. Since the points program began, MVC has identified who bought direct vs resale and now direct buyers get the priority - as it should be. We paid the big bucks and should have that right. I have 3 weeks direct and 1 resale. I can use the resale or trade it for rewards points or through II but I have to pay the fees as we did in the old system. My 3 direct weeks plus a small amount of points put me at Chairman level. The resale doesn't count towards ownership level unless you buy it up to the point value in the destinations program. That's cheaper than a direct buy but not by much. I only bought it because it trades annually for 130K rewards points, which covers my airfare. As strictly a resale week it's not eligible for the destination program or any of the benefits within it (Pulse resorts, thirdhome, etc)

Back when I had 2 oceanfront platinum weeks that were bought direct, I was up against owners that bought 1 week direct and 9 - 12 resale. They got the priority because it was based on how many weeks you owned, regardless of how you got them. Even though I have oceanfront units, I would wind up on the first floor looking at gas grills (technically oceanfront). I would call at 9 am on the first day that I could and was told "sorry nothing available". Now everything is available and they call me and ask what room I want. If I book a lesser room and oceanfront becomes available, I get it. Again, I paid the big bucks. It was/is worth it.

The only complaint - maintenance fees. They are high but it's a different way to travel. I have good properties. I can rent 5 nights (low point nights from Sun-Fri) to pay for the maintenance fees on 2 of my weeks and still have some great vacations. I typically check in on Sundays and stay for 12 nights (Friday checkout) to avoid weekend nights which are higher points. It balances out.

Maintenance fees aren’t bad when you compare the hotel prices. My two bedroom at Ko Olina gets me 2 weeks if I choose in Hawaii. The cheapie hotels in Oahu are going to cost at least $149 during summer when I go. I’’ll pay my maintenance fees. However, I’m an enrolled weeks owner and don’t own points. I rent to not have the continuously increasing maintenance fees that adding points would bring.

Our initial two weeks purchased had separate Maintenance Fees for each full week. We bought a week of destination points and our Maintenance Fees are sky high, almost doubled. Not worth the value. Also Marriott didn't build more "suites" in Europe as promised. I am Platinum Lifetime and Presidential. Since the merge, service is terrible for points. 20 minute phone waits.

Maintenance fees at the Marriott Destinations are going up as much as 5% per year, thus double the inflation rate. Now using a $1,500 one bedroom maintenance fee the average cost per day before you open the door is $214.00. For a two bedroom before you open the door it's $1,900 per week or $271.per day. Unless you are using the kitchen and are just a couple better renting a hotel suite type room. Add $70.00 more per week in Aruba for utilities and latest taxes. A point to ponder is this .Marriott rents out their excess timeshare rooms to anyone and not even Marriott rewards members. Every year you as a member receive the annual budget. That includes necessary improvements, room upgrades, external repairs and sometimes special assessments. Is there a breakdown that can show owners the amounts Marriott contributes from their rental incomes? As a timeshare owner we get a tidy down free for the week. As a renter you get a room cleaning every day. Also what about this discrepancy if you buy 2000 points then we were told that for $24,000. payment a maintenance fee of about $1,150. is included and as shown in our eyes at the presentation forever.

Is it reasonable to expect any entity to guarantee to hold prices for ever?

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My website: hình ảnh xăm lông mày

The average US inflation rate past 10 years is under 2.5%. Marriott Maintenance fees average over 5%. Maybe mismanagement of reserving too much for the class action lawsuits against them? Also add in Aruba "utility" fees which went from "0" to over $10.00 per day. If I could not use my vacation points one year I should be able to pay the maintenance fees by unused vacation points. Why should I pay maintenance on unused vacations where I do not touch a room for anything?

Really? If you owned a condo anywhere you would have to pay maintenace whether you used it or not. This is no different. If youre not using it, book it and rent it. Them pay the maintenace fees with what you earn. You would do the same if you owned a condo anywhere.

Yes if I owned a condo I would pay maintenance fees. With Marriott I pay maintenance fees and Marriott also rents out the same timeshare condos while I am at the resort. I asked our Marriott Aruba Ocean Club Board for a breakdown of the rental maintenance cost and the maintenance cost applied to the timeshare owners. There is a "Commercial Units B-Members"' section of the budget but Marriott chat nor the Marriott Board of Directors have come back to me explaining this section. A Marriott Aruba Ocean Club timeshare owner gets a once per week free "tidy' cleanup and a renter receives a cleanup every day. Timeshare owners get a budget that includes repairs, utilities , possible assessments and a renter just pays the per day rental charge.

Marriott gets units to rent out a number of ways. Everytime an owner converts his/her unit to hotel points, marriott gets the unit in exchange. Marriott then keeps 100% of whatever they get when they rent it out. Marriott owns and pays MF on unsold inventory. Some of this they use for discounted packages to get people to Aruba and then give them the sale pitch. If they don't "rent" it out this way, that inventory also goes into the Marriott.com inventory. Just like you can rent out your unit and keep whatever you get. Marriott does the same. They do in both these cases have to pay from their rental income for the daily housekeeping if they rent out on a nightly basis and include daily housekeeping. A third way that Marriott gets inventory to rent out, is if owners convert to destination points on a particular year and then use the destination points for airfare, cruise or other non timeshare stay. Marriott provides the alternate use for the timeshare and in return takes ownership of the week for the year.

Marriott also at some resorts rent out inventory for guests at there request. I don't know if they do this in Aruba. Years and years ago they did this by having an owner reserve a unit and then if Marriott rented it out the owner would get the amount minus a 30% commission and any additional fees that went to housekeeping for the daily clean. Marriott might only rent out a night or two or they might rent the whole week. Sometimes owners made more than their MF's, sometime just covered them and sometimes only received $100-$200 for giving Marriott their whole week. My understanding is this is the way rentals are still done in Europe. In 'the US, for the last several years, an owner would not make a reservation just ask Marriott for a quote of how much they would get if they gave Marriott the week to rent out. My experience is if you owned a gold or lower week your offer was usually less than the MF for the week. So on a $1200 unit you might be offered $950. Your choice take it or leave it. Platinum weeks usually were offered close to MF and if you had an ocean front unit or holiday ski weeks, you might be offered $200-$300 over MF and for ocean view platinum weeks you might be offered $100-$200 over MF. In either case if you accepted the offer, you were paid right away and Marriott then controlled the week and kept 100% of whatever they made on the rental minus paying the extra housekeeping.

The only inventory that Marriott rents out that they would need to compensate the HOA for is if the HOA has inventory that an owner does not pay MF and therefore can't reserve the week for the year. In that case the HOA gives the week to Marriott to "rent" out on the owners behalf. Marriott like most developers charge a 30-40% commission to rent it out off of the top of the rental fee they charge. Next the daily housekeeping charges come out of the rental income. The remaining goes to the HOA to help defray the cost for the non paying owner. In some cases it covers the while amount that owner owed and in some cases it does not.

There might be one more type of rental that Marriott would need to compensate the HOA for and that would be on the same terms as the non paying owner. If an owner cancels last minute and is not entitled to reserve another week or deposit in an exchange company, the HOA could give the week to Marriott to rent.

Timeshare owners always point to commercial renting by the developer to "prove" that the developer is cheating by taking inventory that belongs to the timeshare owners without understanding the variety of ways that the developer gets inventory that they can do with as they want to.

This.

The whole program is a complete scam. My wife and I bought in (at over 10% interest mind you so financing it is even more of a rip off) about seven years ago. We went to St. Thomas and stayed at the Marriott there...the ones lower, down along the beach, not the time shares as we weren’t members yet. We loved the room and were having a good time. We were gonna do a Kat trip and could get like $100 off if we sat in on the Vacation Club presentation for an hour. The biggest scam was believing what the scumbag presenter (I forget his name, I wanna say Scott, but I remember his face) as, and this was the selling point for us, that Marriott would buy back the timeshare at 65% of the cost at any time. Well, we have 3,000 points and when each point was worth about $11.30 a year ago, I called to see if we could sell. They offered us right around $10,000. Not nearly 65%. More like 30%. Listen, it was our own fault for signing any paperwork without seeing that very important detail anywhere in the fine print. I take ownership of that. But it’s bullshit that one of their reps would flat out lie like that. And he wasn’t some noob either. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Even if one can brush that off as my own fault, it becomes equally as laughable to buy one when one considers the annual maintenance fees that have to be paid. When we signed up, they were $1,200. Two years ago, they were already up to $1,800+.

So yeah, we own the time share outright (we ended up paying it off in cash about 4.5 years ago) and yet still have to pay what is now probably about $2,000 a year for maintenance fees. Lulz. And keep in mind you are limited to their Vacation Club locations. And it’s not like they’ve added a bunch of locations in the past seven years (NYC and SD, the latter of which is a mile from the beach) or have a wide variety of great locations.

We will soon be cutting our losses with the MVC. It’s a joke and I intend on spreading this word to as many websites as possible. Instead, we can stay anywhere we want in the world. Hell, at $400 a night, we could stay somewhere for five nights. Except that could be anywhere in the world, not just a MVC locale, where the rooms quite frankly aren’t even that nice or well kept.

I recommend CANCELING YOUR PURCHASE NOW!!!!

wow, wow We are asked to pay $10.00 each year to the ARDA-Roc Corp. This is the same group that is trying to get legislation in Florida which would squelch the lawsuit brought on behalf of Marriott Timeshare owners. I will have a lot to say about not paying that $10.00 "contribution" to a company lobbing to go against the timeshare owners.

Would you please describe the essential nature of the lawsuit mentioned.

With respect to ARDA contributions, I wish someone could show me something this organization has done for the "timeshare owner." Unfortunately, I suspect that if we don't pay voluntarily, the cost to maintain this "trade organization" will just be passed to timeshare owners in another way. Marriott Vacation Club has mastered the art of billing.

Why in the heck should my timeshare be rented out if I cancel and cannot use it anywhere else? I should get compensated for Marriott renting the unit. Where is my consideration for giving Marriott the privilege of renting out something I paid $1,500. maintenance on? So a timeshare is a contract that gives no consideration to the owner of the timeshare. Now am I an owner with a deed or just a concept of points?

michal3092 comments reflect mine EXACTLY. I bought into Mariott Desert Springs about 10 years ago for about $30K cash. Even with no loan payment the 'maintenance fees of ~$1,500 per year plus property taxes of $300 offset ANY value. Despite being 'Platinum' I have never been able to book the one week I want. The real litmus test of any investment is the 'resale' value. The value of mine is ~$7,500, best case. MVC does not allow a transfer of any benefits, and they make it difficult to transfer a title. I'm embarrassed to admit I bought this, don't make the same mistake.

The ARDA is lobbying in the Florida legislature to change the law so that the timeshare owner lawsuit against the Marriott Corporation cannot go through. In effect this organization which we contribute $10.00 to every renewal is working against us to quelch the lawsuit thus they are really a puppet of the Marriott corporation. How can timeshare owners back up with money someone stopping their lawsuit???

How do you rent it with five weeks to go in the year? No one wanted it even at $500.00. charge, The maintenance costs me $1,465.00