New [DC] Ownership Levels Are Live [Owner Discount Info]

We were premier owners under the old system and were looking forward to the ability to make reservations for less than a week at 13 months out. I tested the system today and was able to do that. :whoopie:

On the downside, I checked the marriott.com website and found that the MOD and Y83 discounts are not available. I tried a couple of locations (Williamsburg and Orlando) and few different dates and got the message that the discounted rates were not available. I wonder if they will no longer allow the owner discount or if they plan to modify the discount codes based on the ownership level. Let's hope it's the second option.

Face it. Marriott has proven they will change just about anything as long as it adds to their profits.

George

The my-vacationclub.com website is not yet showing our new ownership level, we are still showing as Premier Plus - is it showing a change in yours?
As for MOD and other Marriott corporate discount levels, they are still working, for some locations anyway. I just did a quick search for Thailand and it has availability for both vacation clubs and even for one of the hotels.

bazzap said:

The my-vacationclub.com website is not yet showing our new ownership level, we are still showing as Premier Plus - is it showing a change in yours?
As for MOD and other Marriott corporate discount levels, they are still working, for some locations anyway. I just did a quick search for Thailand and it has availability for both vacation clubs and even for one of the hotels.

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The label (on the Vacation Club website) indicating our ownership level has not changed, but the functionality of the new levels has kicked in. I'm not sure when they will update the labels.

I'm glad to hear you're still seeing some of the discounts work. My test may have been an aberration. I hope so.

I'm not seeing any changes in our account; it still says "Premier Plus" with the original telephone number to contact. As for functionality, a noticeable difference for us should be the extended banking and there's no change there, it still says Points can be banked only a year ahead.

I was able to find typical low-demand (Orlando, HHI in mid-Nov and -Jan) availability using the "MOD" code but neither P33 nor P34 returned any hits.

***
For reference, dropping the "Benefits At A Glance 4/30/15" pdf here.

bogey21 said:

Face it. Marriott has proven they will change just about anything as long as it adds to their profits.

George

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AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

Okay, now that that's over with .... George, with the changes Marriott is making to DC status levels they're actually giving MORE benefits to existing DC Members than they're required to give by the governing docs. They're not always the Big Bad Marriott Machine that you make them out to be!

I'm guessing that they're still tweaking the website as well as the DC-specific discounts for cash stays. Yep, it stinks it's not all up and running today, but that's not exactly out of the norm for MVW.

bogey21 said:

Face it. Marriott has proven they will change just about anything as long as it adds to their profits.

George

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Well, as a publicly traded company, their job IS to grow their profits.

As Susan said above, this change actually is positive for most existing owners, not a negative. Even for owners like us who are at the lowest possible status level - prior to the Levels changes we would have had to become Premier Plus and have over 13,000 points to reserve shorter stays at 13 months. Now, we only need 7,000 points to do that. I'm not sure we'll ever opt to buy enough additional points to get to 7,000, but it's nice to know that it is quite a bit more accessible now than it was before.

If this change increases MVW profits, I think it is truly a win-win for the company and most owners.

I'm still not seeing any changes on my-vacationclub.com that reflect the changes to Status Tiers. Hmmmmm.

Just got off the phone with a VOA. The maintenance being done on the system tomorrow is related to the new tiers. The office will be closed tomorrow (May 3) and the online system down for the day, with all operations resuming on Monday @9:00 EDT.

Three benefits changes related to the Premier Plus, now Chairman's Club, level I hadn't heard about before are:

1. The new banking deadline is Aug 31 (vs. June 30)
2. The new points election deadline is Oct 31 (vs. Sep 30)
3. The borrowing rule has been revised so that points borrowed for a reservation that is later cancelled can be returned to year they originally came from, IF the cancellation occurs 61 or more days out from the start date of the reservation. I did not ask further questions about this rule, though now many come to mind. Hopefully, specific info will be provided when the system comes back up on Monday.

tiel said:

Just got off the phone with a VOA. The maintenance being done on the system tomorrow is related to the new tiers. The office will be closed tomorrow (May 3) and the online system down for the day, with all operations resuming on Monday @9:00 EDT. ...

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Good to know, thanks.

tiel said:

Three benefits changes related to the Premier Plus, now Chairman's Club, level I hadn't heard about before are:

1. The new banking deadline is Aug 31 (vs. June 30)
2. The new points election deadline is Oct 31 (vs. Sep 30)
3. The borrowing rule has been revised so that points borrowed for a reservation that is later cancelled can be returned to year they originally came from, IF the cancellation occurs 61 or more days out from the start date of the reservation. I did not ask further questions about this rule, though now many come to mind. Hopefully, specific info will be provided when the system comes back up on Monday.

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#1 and 2 are included in the PDF file that Greg posted here in the first TUG thread about these changes. #1 is included in the linked chart from post #5 above, but #2 was dropped from this newer version.

#3 is why I'm asking for some official information, because I asked on Tuesday when talking to Owner Services what would happen if a Chairman's Club Member banked 2015 Points into the 1/1/16-12/31/17 usage period, reserved a 2017 interval with those banked Points, and then cancelled that reservation more than 60 days out from check-in. The answer I got was that the Points used for the cancelled reservation would then be restricted to use during the 2017 Use Year only, not available during 2016 and not allowed to be borrowed back into their original Use Year.

That's completely different than what you were told. Doh! It doesn't make sense to me that banked/reserved/cancelled-more-than-60-days-out Points eligible for extended banking can be either:

- returned to the original Use Year, because what happens if you cancel the reservation after the last day of the original Use Year?

- restricted to a particular Use Year, because what Use Year would that be if we're talking about Presidential Members who are eligible for the extended 18-months usage period?

Maybe there will be related revisions to the Exchange Procedures posted with tomorrow's update and we'll all be able to figure it out from those.

Sorry I missed the previuos posts with this info (well, more likely I just forgot that I read it)! I am hoping more detailed infor for will be available on Monday, but it can clearly be a mess when it comes to canceling a reservation made with borrowed points. It will be interesting to see what options there are for handling it...maybe!

Changes are now showing this morning on my-vacationclub.com that reflect the changes to Status Tiers.
"Ownership Level: Chairmans Club"

bazzap said:

Changes are now showing this morning on my-vacationclub.com that reflect the changes to Status Tiers.
"Ownership Level: Chairmans Club"

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Same here. "Ownership Level: Executive".

Same here, the status tier is changed. And the pop-up on sign-in now directs to a new page that spells out, "... Replacement of Premier and Premier Plus with new Owner Benefit Levels as follows: ..."

I'm not seeing any Banking-related changes in the website functionality or in the Exchange Procedures or Reservation Procedures documents, and haven't yet looked further to see if any of the other status-related changes are reflected.

I was actually expecting that we wouldn't be able to access our accounts online today because of what Tiel was told about system maintenance, so maybe they're gradually making the changes without taking everything offline?

SueDonJ said:

Same here, the status tier is changed. And the pop-up on sign-in now directs to a new page that spells out, "... Replacement of Premier and Premier Plus with new Owner Benefit Levels as follows: ..."

I'm not seeing any Banking-related changes in the website functionality or in the Exchange Procedures or Reservation Procedures documents, and haven't yet looked further to see if any of the other status-related changes are reflected.

I was actually expecting that we wouldn't be able to access our accounts online today because of what Tiel was told about system maintenance, so maybe they're gradually making the changes without taking everything offline?

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That is the thing with a WEB site, you can make changes piecemeal and so these changes can be released in part over the day.

Suggestion

How about a later check out if you are in the top 2 classifications of Owners? Would a Noon check out for these folks throw things off for the resort? If it would, how about just for the Chairman's Club level, since it only 5% of Owners?

dansimms said:

How about a later check out if you are in the top 2 classifications of Owners? Would a Noon check out for these folks throw things off for the resort? If it would, how about just for the Chairman's Club level, since it only 5% of Owners?

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I think the status benefits as they stand are enough. It doesn't seem fair to anybody, actually, to put the added burden of guaranteed late check-outs on the resort staff. But if you want something, a few resorts are already receptive to owners calling and asking for a late check-out if capacity is low, so maybe that could be implemented system-wide. As well, the system used by the Hilton Head resorts (where if you're checking out of one and into another, you're allowed to stay in your unit at the first resort until the second notifies you that the unit there is ready for you) could be implemented at other closely-located resorts, if it's not already. But these are situational things, not based on status and not guaranteed.

MOD change?

Can we revisit the MOD designation for a moment? Is this something that others knew was going to go away? Does anyone think it will be replaced by something else? Or, will we have to accept the DC enrollment to receive a discount going forward?

We use(d) it a lot. Like, all the time. What gives?

sea&ski said:

Can we revisit the MOD designation for a moment? Is this something that others knew was going to go away? Does anyone think it will be replaced by something else? Or, will we have to accept the DC enrollment to receive a discount going forward?

We use(d) it a lot. Like, all the time. What gives?

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The newest version of the Benefits At A Glance still notes the MOD and other owner discounts for cash stays. I had speculated that maybe the additional 10% when using the VISA would be going away (because the new chart doesn't footnote it anymore) but Marriott allayed those fears here.

Since 4/30/15 the "MOD" code appears to be working as usual but the codes specific to the DC Member discounts don't appear to be working. It may be that the system isn't updated enough yet to correlate them to the new Status Tier names (Executive, Presidential, etc) or it may be that with the new names there are also new codes. In the meantime I've taken the codes out of the DC Points FAQ but will replace them as soon as we figure out what works. I believe that until codes are functioning online, we can call in to have the reps make discount reservations the same as usual.

SueDonJ said:

The newest version of the Benefits At A Glance still notes the MOD and other owner discounts for cash stays. I had speculated that maybe the additional 10% when using the VISA would be going away (because the new chart doesn't footnote it anymore) but Marriott allayed those fears here.

Since 4/30/15 the "MOD" code appears to be working as usual but the codes specific to the DC Member discounts don't appear to be working. It may be that the system isn't updated enough yet to correlate them to the new Status Tier names (Executive, Presidential, etc) or it may be that with the new names there are also new codes. In the meantime I've taken the codes out of the DC Points FAQ but will replace them as soon as we figure out what works. I believe that until codes are functioning online, we can call in to have the reps make discount reservations the same as usual.

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How do you get the 10% with the VISA card?

MOD rates have truly disappeared for us...

The reason I asked about this is that we had been looking at some rooms at MVCs for the fall and early winter, they were there this weekend, now they are not. I just did a search and checked 'my dates are flexible' and come up with nothing. We are theorizing that Marriott will now hold on to those rooms, previously available for 'rent', so that the DC owners will have more flexibility in their reservations.

rickxylon said:

How do you get the 10% with the VISA card?

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If that component of the discount is available you'll see it in the list of options for you to select when searching on marriott.com, or, the telephone rep will see it if you're calling in. Here's the updated Owner Discount info from the TUG Points FAQ:

***All discount rates are based on availability. There is no guarantee that any certain inventory or discount component will be available.***

Discounts for cash stays at the MVCI resorts (and very infrequently, at certain of the Marriott hotels/resorts) are capacity-controlled and based on ownership status:

• Presidential and Chairman's Club Members - 35% off, plus an additional 10% off using the Chase Marriott VISA
• Executive Members - 30% off, plus an additional 10% off using the Chase Marriott VISA
• Owners and Select Members - 25% off, plus an additional 10% off using the Chase Marriott VISA (same "MOD" code as for MVCI Weeks Owners)

*Note the confirmations for stays using these discounts indicate that at check-in the certain eligibility will be verified. If unable to verify eligibility the cost for the stay may revert to rack rates.

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I am just Select but don't really use points all that much anyway.