By enrolling in the DC program, you're not giving up your ability to stay in your guaranteed weeks. By enrolling in the program, you have the option to convert your weeks to points each year. If you know that you want to use your fixed week, at your home resort, then obviously, that year you wouldn't convert your week(s) to points for the reason you state above. However, we find that the DC points, for us, are great in their flexibility, as we love not being locked into staying somewhere for 7 day intervals, and not having to go through II to trade within the MVC system. Sometimes (about 60-70% of the time) we convert our weeks to DC points, other times, we do not and stay at our home resort or trade the week through II. For our family, we love having the options that come with the DC points as a legacy weeks owner.
I hear you. From 2004, we are into Marriott for about 50 grand - that is EVERY single cost and fee that we ever spent. That comes to about 4500 a year for three or more vacations, using our weeks/days/points as smartly as we have learned how. We will not buy anything else, since we DO plan some things on our own; we feel that some packages/excursions/etc are just not as good a value as we can do on our own. We feel that we have gotten MORE out of this than we put in - I guess that is the definition of satisfied. It's just the 2 of us retired folks - no kids at home, no parents living (and we still have some professional commitments we want to be home for). We enrolled out properties, and work a mix of DC points and trades. NO trust points at all - never will be. There are places that attract us that Marriott does not have property, and places that Marriott is not a good deal - so Dead Presidents spent at their competition works just fine. We are also pretty smart about credit card usage, and again work our loyalty benefits. I am sure that sounds like a LOT of folks here - debt-free, empty nest, nice pensions/health insurance/SocSec, good investments, and a feeling that if we WANT to spend some on ourselves - now is good, before we enter The Drooling Academy.
No two of us here, however similar the demographic of a subset of us is, will have the same tastes and viewpoints. So - although Marriott stuff costs what it costs - and we will never recoup the $$ of the cost if we sold them - we still feel that this was a good thing for us. We can carp about fees, points, etc. - but nobody twisted our arms to buy any of this. Now - we play the cards we hold, smart as we can. Yes, knowing some details lets you work your plans smarter - but all this is voluntary - objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, and YOUR mileage may vary. We're STILL good with this - more than "just OK".
Just our two cents - or fifty grand - which has retained more intrinsic value than some other things in our portfolio did. Some of us have more $$ tied up in stamps, gold bars, golf clubs, boats, jewelry, or in our case ( and the HORN guy . . ) musical instruments. (Price a Steinway grand piano lately? The D - concert size - $168,000). To each their own. Nobody wins - or loses.