Shawnee ownership to Wyndham point sales pitch
In answer to your question I'll share our recent experience. We were lured into the sales pitch by a caller who told us that Shawnee was going to Wyndham Points and we needed to visit the resort to see what they are doing and sign so paper work. The following is an account of our sales visit:
On 8/7/2011 9:00 AM we met with Maria. Maria explained to us that Wyndham had purchased Shawnee in 2004 and was now offering time share owners the option to switch from a fixed week to a points based system. She also indicated that Shawnee had not been maintaining the units, using maintenance fees to expand the resort (What has been going on with maintenance fees since 2004?). Wyndham is a five star resort organization and, as Shawnee needed major upgrades to its units to come up to their standards we were going to be hit with a $1,200 yearly special assessment for seven years. Upgrades meant gutting the units and converting them to 2 and 3 bedrooms, bedding change outs every three years and furnishings change outs every 5. Wyndham was going to begin renovations and the special assessments as soon as 83% of the unit owners converted to the points based system.
Maria told us that to convert us to a point based system it was going to cost Wyndham:
• $2,380 for the life time RCI membership
• $2,380 for legal and other fees to re-record the deed
• $2,380 for Plus Points
To stay with the fixed week it was going to cost us $1,200 x 7 = $8,400 over the next 7 years plus our normal yearly maintenance fees and RCI membership fees.
The deal was that Wyndham would give us the value of our units in points if we bought an equal number. Maria looked up the value of our unit and told us that it was worth 80,000 points so all we had to do was buy 80,000 points which had a retail value of $220/1000. We’d have a total of 160,000 points to use anywhere in the Wyndham / RCI system. She pointed out that it wouldn’t make much sense to change from fixed base to points unless we could buy in for less than the $8,400 it was going to cost us in special assessments. She proposed that if we wrote out a note in our own words stating that this was our first time hearing about the Wyndham point system that she might be able to get approval to sell us the points at the original 2004 prices and levels. This meant that we could convert by purchasing only 66,000 units at $100/1000 units or $6,600.
We summarized our options as:
1. Stay with the fixed week and face $8,400 in special assessments (we asked to see plans for the unit upgrades but were denied as this was “private information”).
2. Upgrade to the points system at a cost of $6,600 – we asked if that was the best offer possible. She suggested we write down a number to which we said $4,800 (Wyndham’s $2,380 for legal fees and $2,380 for Plus Points (also $189 to record and mail the new dees). As Wyndham owned RCI we figured they could absorb these).
3. Abandon our week. Maria said that that option would ruin our credit rating.
Maria took our counter offer of $4,800 to “them.” A short time later she returned to our table, picked up all of the papers we had been working with and stated that “they just sold the only block of 66,000 units available and all offers were off the table. We were then ushered into another room to receive our “special gift.”