In what universe would this make sense
In my universe it did. Sorry it doesn't make sense to you. Not that I have to justify my purchase but here's what I did.
At one time, I owned the following units. Odd SDO 1 Bd (1-52), Even WMH 2bd (low season), Odd PGA plat, Annual Vistana courts 2 bd, all resale - total investment about $800 to buy. MF's were over $2k a year, and I was stuck using only Interval for trading. It was impossible to ever get the starwood trades that I really wanted, namely Harborside and St John, despite depositing early, etc. I decided I wanted staroptions. Period. So I sold three on my own and still had one unit left.
So at the time I bought from Starwood, they took back the one unit that was hard for me to give away. That also lowered my MF's from at that point, $1200 a year to less than $800 a year. I had decided that what I really wanted was an EOY, since I have an EOY in another system and my vacation time has decreased.
So I ended up buying two 2 bedroom units from starwood for a total of just under $14k. They are EOY in the same year, so I get 152,000 staroptions every even year. In 2012 I am going to WSJ on staroptions in a 2 bedroom for $1600 (2 yrs of MF). Far less than the MF at WSJ. Or if I choose to deposit those units into Interval in 2014 to try to get Hawaii through the Starwood preference, I can get two weeks in a 2 bedroom unit for $1600 plus about $400 in exchange fees. Again, far less than the MF at WKORV/N.
I also no longer have to pay for my Interval account, since I have sold off all other II units but my Starwood developer unit.
I can also convert to starpoints, which everyone says is a poor value, yada, yada,yada. But with my MF's the starpoints are less than 2 cents per point, and those starpoints can buy me 2 weeks in the class of hotels I like to stay at when in middle america, so that increases my flexibility even further.
I owned resales for years before I decided to go to the "dark side" and buy from the developer. I felt the deal was good enough to make me ok with the purchase while getting the staroptions/points I really wanted. And yes, I could have bought mandatory resale and gotten a
similar deal, probably. But I wanted to be able to be starwood gold and have starpoints as an option.
So to make a blanket statement that one will not attend a presentation or buy from the developer EVER seems rather closed minded. If the deal is good, I think there is something to be said for developer purchases.