How honest should you be if RCI makes a mistake?

I think you are confusing "legal" with "fair".

rickandcindy23 said:

getreal: Taking advantage of the system is different.

I take advantage of sales at the grocery store, I never pay full price for anything. Does that make me dishonest? No. I am taking advantage of the system.

RCI has sales. I take advantage of low points weeks. That makes me smart, I am not playing "unfair." Who is hurt by my getting a great exchange for 7,500 points at an Orlando GC resort?

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I think you are confusing "legal" with "fair".

At a grocery store, you are trading money for goods. Both you and the store know in advance what you are giving up and what you are getting, and that makes it fair, because it is a trade between 2 willing parties, with no coercion.

The monopolistic RCI forces everyone to deposit weeks in the hope of getting something. It is a kind of lottery, run in secrecy and folks from TUG run trade tests to try and understand it.

In this lottery, some people make out great, others do ok, some get nothing. Yes, nothing. That is why RCI have weeks left to rent out.

RCI trading is not fair. It is legal, but not fair. In the same way, buying goods produced in some far away sweat shop is legal, but the ethics are debatable.

The internet makes it possible to create a much fairer trading system.

In fact, the internet has revolutionized the travel and hospitality industries. It put many middlemen out of business, where the fees they collected were out of line with the value they added. Timeshare is the last remaining travel service dinosaur that somehow has not embraced the conveniece, transparency and efficiency offered by the internet.

RCI Mistake

Since RCI regularly reads these posts, you'll probably find the problem resolved for you.

getreal said:

Timeshare is an ugly and dishonest business. We all knowlingly participate in this scam and enjoy our wonderful trades, that basically is screwing somebody somewhere, but because the victim is faceless and unknown, we do not care.

So any moral superiority on this board is misplaced. We are all complacent in this nasty business called timesharing. Even if you "play by the rules" you are dirty, because the the rules are completely unfair.

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I hadn't considered that my vacationing in timeshares could be viewed as a morally bankrupt enterprise.

Is it OK if we purchase only to use and not exchange?

I thought this thread would spark interest.

As for the 150$, I am not even sure I got a credit for the fiasco... I have a lot of 150$ transactions. Did they take money for a hold fee and give it back? Was it the fiasco? I barely balance my checkbook so this is beyond me. It would be helpful if they had a summary of your billing transactions.... or even an email that you've been billed or credited.

But it is another exchange they have not taken my points for. I am honest, so I was suprised when I was temped to let it ride.... I still expect they will process the points (they said they are busy with summer stuff), but I will give them a call if they don't take the points within a few weeks. I had a time management class today and can even set myself up with a task to follow up on this item!

huestous said:

I hadn't considered that my vacationing in timeshares could be viewed as a morally bankrupt enterprise.

Is it OK if we purchase only to use and not exchange?

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That is not for me to say ... I objected to some people posting their morals onto this thread, so I will refrain from doing the same. Do whatever you feel comfortable with.

Alan's response -- the initial one -- was the best. You need to do what your conscience requires you to do. Anything else is irrelevant.

I am a very honest person. I also owned a business that required me to be extremely reputable.

But will I take advantage of a mistake by a big and badly organized compay?.... Absolutely, because there are just too many times those companies made mistakes to their advantage and it takes forever to get them back, sometimes never! I am currently trying to cancel an iphone service, it has been a month and I am being ignored. In the mean time, they continue to charge me for the service that I no longer use. If this company made a mistake and gave me extra refund, hey, I will definitely keep it.

Will I keep the extra $20 given to me by a supermarket cashier by mistake? .... Absolutely NOT, because the cashier that earns minimum wage is responsible for the $20 shortage out of his/her own pocket.

I used to get people using stolen/fraudulent credit cards in my business at least once a month in the amount of thousands of dollars. Because I am HONEST, when I spot them, I always alert the credit card company of a possible fraud situation. With the exception of American Express, the other credit card companies couldn't care less when I try to tell them that the card is suspicious. 9 times out of 10, the merchant customer service agent will just tell me that I already have an authorization and I shouldn't worry about it, just take the card. Several times I have to insist before they will do anything. It is extremely frustrating when I am trying to save them money and they think I am being bothersome! However, I continue to do so simply because I want to discourage those people from coming into my business, if they can steal a credit card, they can steal my merchandise, I don't want them to think they can get away with these actions in my place.

Do you think they appreciate my efforts? NOT AT ALL. Once I took a card that I have a suspicion but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the problem is with the card. I made the guy sign it 20 times and the signatures all match the card! So I took it with proper authorization. A month later the credit card company told me this card was stolen from the mail, and because technically it was not activated at the time the card is used, even though the card was swiped through the machine and the signature match what was on the back of the card, they refused to pay me. I lost over $1,500 on that transaction even though according to their rule I am entitled to the money. I simply gave up arguing with them. I had to take them to court to get my money back and that is just too much of a hastle at that time. So will I give back the money if in the future the same CC company mistakenly give me extra money in my account? well, you know the answer to that....there must be a balance in this equation, they took wrongfully from me and when the give, even though also wrongfully, I will keep to offset my loss!.

What I have learned from all these and my experience in business is that when companies overcharged you, they RARELY make the correction automatically, you always have to chase them. When they undercharge you, I can pretty much guarantee they will come after you sooner or later, and with penalty and interests added on top!!!

If I was in OP's case, I will keep my mouth shut and let them figure out their mistakes. It is almost a certainty that they will figure it out, so why bother waste any time in trying to correct their mistake? It is their problem.

You may not owe them a dime ...

RCI's accounting is horrific and I occasionally they give me a migraine when I see the mess on my credit card statement due to exchange fee charges and refunds because RCI accounting can't figure out a better way to do it.

I once could not believe all the charges and tried adding them up -- I could not make rhyme or reason of my statement, so I called RCI and requested their accounting records because I felt they owned me money. After 2 months, I finally got a piece of paper was manually cut and paste and did not prove anything to me.

Now I try hard to do ONE exchange at a time to keep it all organized. RCI certainly can't do that for me.

With all the money we have spent with RCI, where are the statements and records??

travelhound said:

I thought this thread would spark interest.

As for the 150$, I am not even sure I got a credit for the fiasco... I have a lot of 150$ transactions. Did they take money for a hold fee and give it back? Was it the fiasco? I barely balance my checkbook so this is beyond me. It would be helpful if they had a summary of your billing transactions.... or even an email that you've been billed or credited.

But it is another exchange they have not taken my points for. I am honest, so I was suprised when I was temped to let it ride.... I still expect they will process the points (they said they are busy with summer stuff), but I will give them a call if they don't take the points within a few weeks. I had a time management class today and can even set myself up with a task to follow up on this item!

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I had a similar experience. I booked an exchange and they forgot to deduct the points. I agonized over telling them but they were in the process of messing up a refund from insurance I had cancelled and had double charged me instead of giving the refund. Did I tell them about the points? No. (Don't shoot me ) I was too mad about taking 4 months to get the money mess they made straightened out. But eventually they figured it out and deducted my points. Don't know how they finally decided I owed them points but in the end we were all squared away. Would I have felt guilty if they had never figured it out? Maybe it would have bothered me just a little as I was laying on the beach in St. Maarten!

I can see both sides but if I were convinced it were truly a mistake, rather than a purposeful bonus for the original problem which I suspect is actually the case, I would call it to their attention. But i could definitely see them taking the $150 then catching their mistake and taking another $150 as well.

It took six weeks for RCI to deduct my points for one very large transaction. They are slow with points, for whatever reason.

TravelSFO said:

RCI's accounting is horrific and I occasionally they give me a migraine when I see the mess on my credit card statement due to exchange fee charges and refunds because RCI accounting can't figure out a better way to do it.

I once could not believe all the charges and tried adding them up -- I could not make rhyme or reason of my statement, so I called RCI and requested their accounting records because I felt they owned me money. After 2 months, I finally got a piece of paper was manually cut and paste and did not prove anything to me.

Now I try hard to do ONE exchange at a time to keep it all organized. RCI certainly can't do that for me.

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Exactly - me too. I'm sure they overcharged me once - and when I finally got their ppw (after requesting it about 5 times), I couldn't believe they didn't tie any charges or credits to any specific thing - no control #, exchange week, confirmation, nothing. What kind of accounting is that? And they insisted credits didn't show up the same period, but did later. The $$ didn't add up, but it was too messy to prove it. So I try to not exceed 1 transaction per billing period.

I have felt more than once that RCI had doubled charged me.
RCI makes it very confusing the way they handle the accounting.
Its been very hard for me to figure out a few times going thru all the exchange fee charges and then credit backs when I cancelled a online hold or exchange request.

When I cancelled ($109 fee) and rebooked an exchange by paying $149, and $40 balance appeared in my account. I thought it's a credit until I held something else, and my balance becomes $189. Still haven't bothered to call them yet, maybe I should.

We all know RCI monitors this board! They are probably trying to find you as we discuss this. They probably can't figure it out either, which means they will charge you another $150.00 and let you prove you were overcharged.
JMHO.
Steve
www.lsfhome.com

My experience with these kinds of situations is that eventually RCI will find the error and take the points out of your account.

If you try to fix it you will wind up paying twice and be trying to get back the points you were so conscientious about giving back.

The grocery store operates on a cash basis and the $20 will come out of the cashier's pocket at the end of their shift.

Aces

Play it straight with most people and most people will play it straight with you.

NEVER be the first one to start playing games.

BUT....

Being honest towards people who have already demonstrated their dishonesty towards you first makes one a sucker in my book.

I would tell them and let them starightene it out or not, they know they can deal with it effectively or bungle it but you told them! You cannot force them to fix the problem but I would let them know the problem exists so I can sleep at night.

My conclusion . . .

Beyond this discussion revolving around ethics, I am convinced never to do business with RCI. We're new to timeshares and do have a membership with Interval. Are they as screwed up as RCI?