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Lost in the cancel and Rebook game

comicbookman

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People are not out refreshing me and getting these reservations. It is a computer program. Period end of story.

Yes having a bot look for optimal bookings is probable. I am saying that it is unlikely they are running bots that cancel rebook. Bots that search are easy. But due to the unpredictable nature of Wyndham's system (which may be why we never got voyager) a cancel rebook bot would have a hard time being reliable. The bot cannot book any faster than the Wyndham system responds. Multiple people working together using multiple accounts, could easily "out refresh you". Cheaper, easier and probably much more reliable.
 

jebloomquist

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Force action by affecting sales

There is only one place that I can see that we, as owners, can get Wyndham to take some real action to determine if there is a bot or some other automated process sucking up availability. But, I will get back to that later.

Right now, Wyndham really could care less if there is a bot. Wyndham collects the maintenance fees regardless of the confusion surrounding reservations. If there is one person or one hundred persons in line for a room, Wyndham has already been paid. Whether the final rental price is $1 or $1,000, Wyndham is not part of the transaction.

So, is there a way for owners to force some action by Wyndham to truly investigate the potential abuse of the reservation system and to then institute action to correct it? I don’t know, but if there is, it has to be something that impacts Wyndham sales. I ask this as an open question to anyone with ideas and/or experience using legal means to collect enough anecdotal data to create a class action suit showing potential damages received by owners as a result of a “faulty” reservation system, or some other similar type action by us, the owners.

One consequence to Wyndham, until the system “runs better”, might be to legally require Wyndham to specify in every sales presentation that actually getting a reservation is very limited, due to the actions of mega-renters and potentially bots on the reservation system. Regardless of how loudly we yell, if it doesn’t result in a decrease in new sales, Wyndham will offer only a deaf ear.

Are there owners out there who are willing to form a group to brainstorm ideas of how to create a force sufficient to legally affect Wyndham sales? If you are reading this, are you willing to join? What ideas do you have?

Jim
 

ronparise

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Yes having a bot look for optimal bookings is probable. I am saying that it is unlikely they are running bots that cancel rebook. Bots that search are easy. But due to the unpredictable nature of Wyndham's system (which may be why we never got voyager) a cancel rebook bot would have a hard time being reliable. The bot cannot book any faster than the Wyndham system responds. Multiple people working together using multiple accounts, could easily "out refresh you". Cheaper, easier and probably much more reliable.

Im sure you are right...there are no bots that cancel and re book...but I would bet that there are bots that search and book

What our hypothetical bot builder is trying to accomplish has nothing to do with canceling a reservation he already has. What the bot would be designed to do is to make sure he doesnt lose something to me or you when he cancels it. His bot will grab anything he cancels. But more than that (and our complaint) is that his bot will grab anything that we cancel

To Jim's point Wyndham doesnt care....I think they do. It may not be the money that they care about, as Jim says they are not really a part of any of these transactions, Why should they care? I think they care because they want and need a happy owner base to continue to sell this stuff, They dont want to deal with a gang of unhappy owners that can never find any availability for their discounts within 60 days.

Im sure that they dont care that we are having trouble gaming the system for our own selfish purposes (rental profits) . Their concern is that the promise of 50% discounts for the Platinum owner that uses this stuff for his own vacations, will turn out to be an empty promise and affect sales.
 

jebloomquist

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. Their concern is that the promise of 50% discounts for the Platinum owner that uses this stuff for his own vacations, will turn out to be an empty promise and affect sales.

Wyndham will only care when sales decline. But, this will only happen if there is an educated consumer.

Right now it is still the sheep to the slaughter. First time buyers don't have a clue about reservation issues. They are told that every Wyndham resort is there just waiting for them to make a reservation anytime. You want Mardi Gras, of course it's there. You want Disney at Bonnet Creek for Christmas break, of course it's there. It is only after the purchase is finalized and the new account is finally available to the new owner that reality begins to appear.

Of course, Wyndham wants repeat buyers, but an owner with only a small biennial contract still hasn't used the reservation system enough to know much. They are still raw meat to the sales personnel.

Nothing will change as long as owners just complain. If we can't figure out, as a group, something to do beyond complaining, progress will come very slowly.

Jim
 

Ron2

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Wyndham will tell you that the points management companies are not authorized but as long as owners turn over their accounts to them, there is nothing Wyndham can do about it. This is total BS! Wyndham depends on them to send new potential buyers to the resorts. This is why they have done nothing to curb the use of bots and the extension of VIP benefits to resale contracts for VIP owners. With points managers handling hundreds of contracts and multi-millions of points, you would have to be a fool to think they could do it without an automated system. They are in it to make money so hiring enough people to monitor the reservation system would not be cost effective.
 
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mistalong

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Some of you are just being beaten to the punch. How do I know? We had a big family trip and I needed 8 rooms to a popular destination. It was my son and nephews job to start at the opening bell and finish at the closing bell to book as many rooms as they could to accommodate of family. They succeeded. It took them about a week, but it was done.

So can you imagine how many of these management companies pay people to do the same thing?
 

CO skier

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Nothing will change as long as owners just complain. If we can't figure out, as a group, something to do beyond complaining, progress will come very slowly.

There does not seem to be a "bot problem" in the WorldMark system.

Then again, WorldMark offers a "waitlist bot" to all owners for free.

Maybe if enough Club Wyndham owners complain, Wyndham will duplicate the WM waitlist in the Club Wyndham system to level the bot playing field, if there is such a thing.
 

comicbookman

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Some of you are just being beaten to the punch. How do I know? We had a big family trip and I needed 8 rooms to a popular destination. It was my son and nephews job to start at the opening bell and finish at the closing bell to book as many rooms as they could to accommodate of family. They succeeded. It took them about a week, but it was done.

So can you imagine how many of these management companies pay people to do the same thing?

exactly the point I was making. Given the uneven responses from the Wyndham online system, this seems to be the most likely answer. Hiring a few people to manually work the system is far cheaper than hiring a programmer.
 

Beefnot

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exactly the point I was making. Given the uneven responses from the Wyndham online system, this seems to be the most likely answer. Hiring a few people to manually work the system is far cheaper than hiring a programmer.

Whether it is cheaper depends on how much it costs to hire the programmer against how much and how long one is hiring paid monkeys. I might be willing to pay a programmer $20k once to develop a bot, than pay 2 people $7k each per year into perpetuity to do the same thing.
 

tschwa2

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but its not as though a bot that works today will work forever. Paying $20,000 for something that Wyndham or another company with another programmer can disable or get around in 1-6 months wouldn't be a good investment either. The monkeys can be let go the same day that strategy stops working.
 

mistalong

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IMO .. I believe the bot is more of a conspiracy theory. Between the captcha screen and the obvious throttling Wyndham applies to accounts, I believe the only bot is Wyndhams.
 

ecwinch

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exactly the point I was making. Given the uneven responses from the Wyndham online system, this seems to be the most likely answer. Hiring a few people to manually work the system is far cheaper than hiring a programmer.

Only in the short run.

The on-line reservation system operates approximately 17 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Let's assume a staff of 10 people managing the searches - based on the reports here that seems like a reasonable start pt. That is 119 hrs a week times 10. 1190 hrs of labor a week, or ~62,000 hrs a year.

Even if you got Chinese convict labor at $2 a hr, that is ~$124k a year in operating costs. After a year or so, any reasonable business would find a way to drive those costs out. More so if your labor cost is $5 hr or higher.

And those numbers do not include overhead for managing the search team, coordinating resorts and dates that inventory is needed for, etc. Given the number of pts that pts managers are reported to manage, you have to realize they have tremendous profit incentive to automate.

Just consider how long it took two people looking full-time for just one resort and one time period. Then expand that to the scale the pts managers operate on.
 
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comicbookman

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Only in the short run.

The on-line reservation system operates approximately 17 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Let's assume a staff of 10 people managing the searches - based on the reports here that seems like a reasonable start pt. That is 119 hrs a week times 10. 1190 hrs of labor a week, or ~62,000 hrs a year.

Even if you got Chinese convict labor at $2 a hr, that is ~$124k a year in operating costs. After a year or so, any reasonable business would find a way to drive those costs out. More so if your labor cost is $5 hr or higher.

And those numbers do not include overhead for managing the search team, coordinating resorts and dates that inventory is needed for, etc. Given the number of pts that pts managers are reported to manage, you have to realize they have tremendous profit incentive to automate.

minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. coordinating resorts and dates needs to be done no matter how you make the reservations, that requires humans. you can use a bot for some reservations, but cancel rebook is when you really need humans. so even with a bot, you still have to pay humans. Also, with the unpredictability of Wyndhams site behavior, bots would not necessarily be faster or more successful grabbing reservations. And you still risk having your online privileges suspended.

I don't think Wyndham views mega renters as a sales tool. If they did, then they would have a more aggressive, and appealing, Extra holidays program. If you look at renting as a sales tool, then Extra holidays is a way to make a profit on sales visits, since Wyndham gets a fee regardless of whether the renter buys or not. So I don't think Wyndham is afraid of pissing them off.

I think the reason Voyager was not deployed, is it would have given so much online flexibility and predictability to owners, that a bot would be a much better proposition for mega renters.
 
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mistalong

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At the same people bots/staff aren't always looking. I would assume that they'd only look by request.

But when you factor in the following:
-Megarenters
-Extra Holidays
-Wyndham Renters
-Shell Renters
-The New Club Pass

We have to be realistic. There's only so many rooms. 4th of July weekend in New Orleans is booked solid before the Stand Reservation window even opens (thanks Ron, LOL).

I have yet to even see even 1 day open at Harbortown Point in California. So lets calculate the estimated number of members that user their points, mind you the resell boom over the past few years, and the number of rooms per resort, and WHERE you're trying to book.
 

vacationhopeful

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...I have yet to even see even 1 day open at Harbortown Point in California. .....

Actually, saw online and booked a week in 2014 at Harbortown Point in Sept ... my sister lives very near there and I was think of doing a visit ... I cancelled before the 15 day rule ... it was gone inside of 5 minutes.
 

ronparise

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At the same people bots/staff aren't always looking. I would assume that they'd only look by request.

But when you factor in the following:
-Megarenters
-Extra Holidays
-Wyndham Renters
-Shell Renters
-The New Club Pass

We have to be realistic. There's only so many rooms. 4th of July weekend in New Orleans is booked solid before the Stand Reservation window even opens (thanks Ron, LOL).

I have yet to even see even 1 day open at Harbortown Point in California. So lets calculate the estimated number of members that user their points, mind you the resell boom over the past few years, and the number of rooms per resort, and WHERE you're trying to book.

I dont use many Wyndham points to reserve 4th of July in New Orleans at 13 months, because all my La belle Maison and CWA points go to Mardi Gras. and at 10 months there isnt much left. I got a few this year but not many. And I dont use Worldmark Credits either, because at 13 months you have to do 7 days, and it doesnt make sense to pay for 7 days when I can only rent 3. I have been able however to pick up a couple of Worldmark reservations inside the 10 month window. Dont ask me why they were available, given Worldmarks wait list...but they were.

None of this is to say however that I dont do well on the 4th of July. I do
I own 14 Avenue Plaza floating weeks that give me 56 weekend reservations, most of which go to 4th of July

I work with 3 of the points managers and they dont have a bot to do their work for them and neither do I for the reservations I make. I have no doubt that some owners have their own bots, but I dont think its a big deal. I think they turn it on at specific resorts and not all the time. This year I cancelled and rebooked a bunch of reservations and my points managers did also, and I can count the number we lost on one hand. I think that we are working where the bots arent
 
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am1

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Talking to Wyndham didn't give me warm fuzzies. When the conversation starts with surprise that I am having issues with the website (that crawls at time), talking about automated programs and asking what they do to monitor and prevent such activities seemed silly at best.

Plus a few hundred for that. They have some great agents and they have others while very nice and good at a lot of things do not see the big picture of things. Just what they are trained to do.
 

bnoble

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Folks, it doesn't matter if it is a bot or people---even if the bot behaves differently than lots of people, Wyndham putting in detection schemes would just cause a hypothetical bot owner to re-write the bot to look more like a person constantly refreshing. Then, just use several of those across the accounts that you control. You're still going to win more often than not.

The only thing that matters is that cancel/rebook is much less sure than it used to be, and will probably be even less reliable going forward.

it seems like only truly excess inventory will be available.
I have to admit, I have a hard time feeling bad about this.
 

ecwinch

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I find it very ironic that someone in the IT industry seems to marginalize the value or potential of automation in this situation.

Automation only needs to make someone more efficient than the rest of the crowd - either in terms of speed (reducing mouse clicks) or coverage (i.e. running 17 hrs a day/7 days a week).

It's like adage "You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you."
 

Xcalibur

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the reality is that the bots or megarenters are supplying fresh meat to wyndham sales. if even a small percentage of those renters buy from wyndham... it is a win for wyndham. not likely i know but wyndham sales can be slick...
 

tschwa2

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Owner occupancy is also a boon Wyndham. I've seen the statistics that they sell to a higher percentage of current owners and they sell higher $ contracts to current owners than they do to Fresh Meat.
 

cotraveller

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I think the reason Voyager was not deployed, is it would have given so much online flexibility and predictability to owners, that a bot would be a much better proposition for mega renters.

Voyager was also going to be used for the WorldMark reservation system. What I heard was that it was so buggy and crashed so often that deploying it would have been a disaster. The last estimate I heard was maybe it would be ready in 2016.
 

Ron2

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There does not seem to be a "bot problem" in the WorldMark system.

Then again, WorldMark offers a "waitlist bot" to all owners for free.

Maybe if enough Club Wyndham owners complain, Wyndham will duplicate the WM waitlist in the Club Wyndham system to level the bot playing field, if there is such a thing.

A wait list may just be what we end up with. When you ask Wyndham Owner Care about cancel/rebook they say the wait list is on its way and will eliminate cancel/rebook. They have been saying this for quite some time so if or when it becomes reality is anybody’s guess. In principle a wait list sounds like a more fair way to handle reservations during the discount period and if no one on the wait list wants it at full point value then it should be available to anyone at discount. In reality a wait list may create more problems than it fixes.
 
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