Is It True? Can Someone Be A Club Wyndham Plus Member and Not Pay Maintenance fees?

I am a new VIP owner with Wyndham, just last week I was at Glacier Canyon Inn, Wisconsin. A sales rep. from ‘Regional’, told me that if I joined club Wyndham by purchasing 105,000 pts. for ($17,000) that I could immediately sell those points back to Wyndham and have no maintenance fees for live.

He also told me that I could sell an additional 100,000 pts. and this would cover the cost of my loan. I would have a zero cost basis and 200,000 pts. left. to vacation on.

I could find no written documentation to verify this, so I immediately cancelled our contract by certified mail. This sounds very fraudulent to me..

Is there any truth to this???, has anyone found a way around maintenance fees??? or had similar experience?

Do NOT regret cancelling that contract. Expect the Sales staff/manager to call to "help" them understand why you cancelled. Expect a message saving you MUST return their call to finalize your cancellation. DO NOT believe either - they are just trying to save the sale.

You can get the same number of points for less than $500 on resale (TOTAL) - just do a quick search on eBay. VIP levels are benefits that the sales department hypes and regularly get downgraded; by saving $$$$ in your purchase costs, you can buy these same "benefits" for years and years. Discounts and upgrades are for small windows in time; many here plan 13 months in advance and VIP levels are of very little benefit.

Here the general recommendation is to read, ask questions, and LEARN about 6-12 months before buying anything. Timesharing is complex and is easy to buy & hard to get rid of (either by giving away or reselling). Many of us enjoy our TS vacations.

Welcome to TUG.

Added info: How the sales staff has implied to me on letting the points work to pay for the MFs:
A: Rent a high demand week for 3X+ the cost of the MFs.
B: Let them thru Extra XXXX rent your high demand week.
C: Refer your friends and family to the sales staff and earn Reward Points which convert to pay MFs.
D: Use the Wyndham Credit Card for all your daily purchases which earn Reward Points which convert to pay MFs.
E: Buy more points to do A thru D above to pay the original MFs.

Let's say you had a 10 year loan, at 10% for that $17,000. Let's also say that your 400K points had an average MF/K of $5.25. Your loan payment is about $2,700 per year, and your MFs are about $2,100. That means that your 200K points have to generate a payment to you of $4,800---that's $24/K---after any fees to Wyndham, etc. So, they'd have to be getting something like $36/K for them.

That's a lot of money. A 2BR week at Bonnet Creek would have to rent for $8,000 for the week in Peak Season. That's more than the Disney resorts get for that time.

If it were so darn profitable to rent out these points, why would Wyndham ever sell them?

Right. They wouldn't.

You did the right thing by rescinding.

I guess this is their latest scam because I was just at Mountain Vista and the sales rep tried telling me that I should be getting MF refund checks and that most owners don't pay MF's. Yeah, right.

He never bothered to call me back after he found out how many TS's I own and how most were purchased resale so I never got the details, but it sounded too good to be true to me too. :annoyed:

The nonsense, bs & lies they tell never cease to amaze me.

Timeshare Von said:

The nonsense, bs & lies they tell never cease to amaze me.

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That why we routinely refer to the sales reps as Weasels...

Timeshare Von said:

The nonsense, bs & lies they tell never cease to amaze me.

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That is one of the reasons I really really try to avoid the "owner update". Even though I'm informed, know it is BS, I have to admit they are pretty good and make you think hmmmmmm are they really going to do something "insert BS statement here" to resale owners. So far in the 2-3 years we have owned and the dozen trips to GC and other stays thru RCI I have had no issues and can't believe I got something so cheap. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop so to speak.

You know, I should figure out what my wife makes hourly in her private practice. Then, add that to my hourly consulting figure. The next time someone wants me to come to an update, I can write down that number ($X/hour) on a piece of paper, hand it to her and say:

"If you can offer us this for our time, I'll consider it. But otherwise, we'd be better off working."

That would be fun.

NEVER buy Wyndham retail. NEVER.

dgil120 said:

I am a new VIP owner with Wyndham, just last week I was at Glacier Canyon Inn, Wisconsin. A sales rep. from ‘Regional’, told me that if I joined club Wyndham by purchasing 105,000 pts. for ($17,000) that I could immediately sell those points back to Wyndham and have no maintenance fees for live.

He also told me that I could sell an additional 100,000 pts. and this would cover the cost of my loan. I would have a zero cost basis and 200,000 pts. left. to vacation on.

I could find no written documentation to verify this, so I immediately cancelled our contract by certified mail. This sounds very fraudulent to me..

Is there any truth to this???, has anyone found a way around maintenance fees??? or had similar experience?

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Total baloney. Be VERY glad you wisely rescinded. If you want to own/use Wyndham Points - a system we like very much - pick up some resale points & use them for the cost of the annual fees. You can find them cheap to free for purchase. At those prices they are a real deal for a very good system.

You did well & figured out you were being told a very twisted tale.

Wyndham timeshare talks

My husband and I just went to an owners update at Wyndham Oceanside last weekend. We got the same salesman that we got last time. He is such a joke. Talks fast, throws out numbers that don't make sense ( my husband is an accountant!) , tells us we should get more points so we can rent out our units and get our MF paid for, AND tells us we NEED to get into access or be left out in the cold!!! My feeling is, if Wyndham has changed their program so drastically that your property is worthless after purchasing in 2008, whats to say they won't do that again. (BTW we purchased on TUG, thank goodness! But they don't know that!!). Access is a pooling of (in my opinion) the properties that don't trade as well mixed with a few that do to make it appealing. I am sure most TS owners cannot afford $20-80,000 to purchase more points to become Access ( mind you this is a deed transfer. You are really just purchasing more points from the broker... period. Transferring the deed doesn't cost much. Simple paperwork but they act like EVERYONE in Wyndham will be doing it making inventory disappear!!). I can't believe these guys. We have had no problem getting what we want with wyndham. We have been to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Chicago, Oceanside california, and Tahoe with NO problem!! So there access!! About making your maintenance fees go away with rentals, too much trouble. Buy on the used market in the first place and you won't mind maintenance fees when you didn't pay anything for the property in the first place!!

Culli said:

That is one of the reasons I really really try to avoid the "owner update". ....

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Try to avoid?? I've never attended one in almost 20 yrs of timesharing. They are easy to avoid and takes next to no effort to avoid.