SFX Standard Billing Program\Preferred Billing Program

Anyone ever heard of this?
It's very pricy, $349 a yr.
Besides that it's very expensive, I have no clue what you get that is different from the diamond membership.
It almost seems that you pay that much and get nothing (a big fat zero) in return.
Even bad memberships have some benefits, which of course are not worth the money.
But in this case it really does seem that nothing is offered in return for what they charge.
Below is a list of the so called benefits, which like I said before, does not seem different from a diamond membership.


*

Exchange/Deposit benefits:

*

·*********Deposited weeks/points are good for 36 months;

·*********No advanced payments, only when your exchange has been confirmed;

·*********You can request your exchanges 24 months in advance;

·*********You can place a request without depositing;

·*********The exchange fee is a fixed rate of $149 (International or domestic exchanges);

·*********Guest certificates are free at any time;

·*********Place an instant exchange or exchange request online;

·*********Free room upgrades for exchanges (when available);

·*********Exchange your weeks/points for cruises and receive the same discount on up to 4 cabins;

*

Travel Store benefits:

*

·*********180,000 resort and hotel inventory;

·*********Access to all major cruise lines with no blackout dates;

·*********Online shopping;

·*********Concierge service – no fee for booking with an agent;

·*********Best price guaranteed policy;

·*********You are rewarded with Savings Credits for purchases on the Travel Store;*

·*********Add friends and family at no additional cost;

*

*

*- Savings Credits can be used to get you a discount on cruises, hotel stays, resort vacations, tours and our online shop;

****Savings Credits cannot be used on airfare, car rental or taxes and fees.

*

The standard billing is*$349*(subject to increase) but for*$2999*you get 40 years of all the benefits above and only pay $29 per year (fixed rate) for 38 years as we give you 2 years for free.

I'm glad I didnt renew my membership, first they get rid of platinum to make it simpler now they come up with this? Who in their right mind would sign up for 40 years?


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Where did you see this? I just logged into my account and I only see the choices of gold and diamond. I did get a mailer from them recently, but I get so much mail that I only read things that look important and it didn't look important.

I think they always had the $2999 offer. For the first several years they called it a lifetime platinum/diamond membership. I think they sell it more in conjunction with new sales- so for example at some Mexican Timeshare place like Pueblo bonito in los cabos, they would just add $2999 to the price of the timeshare and say you are getting platinum for life with SFX and ICE rewards.

A few years ago they revised the wording to 30 or 40 years rather than life. I think there may be a few tug members that have it.

I called SFX to ask about this. This is what they said:
One year SFX Diamond membership is $349.
But a 3 year membership (if you sign up right now of course!) is only $300.

In order to save $, you could buy 40 yrs of the Diamond membership for $3000, plus a $29 annual fee (which conveniently they waive for the first two years)

So, you could buy the Diamond membership for 40 years for:
$3000 plus
$29 time 38

=$4102

If you divide up the 40 years of membership by the $4102, it seems that you'd be paying $102 per yr, which is the same as if you'd buy the 3 year membership.

They try to sweeten up the deal by throwing in two Vacations certificates good for "resorts or cruises". SFX seems reluctant to explain what exactly (like what resorts, or what cruise lines and for how many people) you can redeem the vacation certificates for.

Anybody ever gotten a Vacation Certificate from SFX valid for a cruise or resort?

By the way, the Vacation Certificate comes from Travel Store & More, which is affiliated with many other companies. For example, clicking on their Cruise button routes you to ovscruise.com, which I've seen in many other websites.

dominidude said:

I called SFX to ask about this. This is what they said:
One year SFX Diamond membership is $349.
But a 3 year membership (if you sign up right now of course!) is only $300.

In order to save $, you could buy 40 yrs of the Diamond membership for $3000, plus a $29 annual fee (which conveniently they waive for the first two years)

So, you could buy the Diamond membership for 40 years for:
$3000 plus
$29 time 38

=$4102

If you divide up the 40 years of membership by the $4102, it seems that you'd be paying $102 per yr, which is the same as if you'd buy the 3 year membership.

They try to sweeten up the deal by throwing in two Vacations certificates good for "resorts or cruises". SFX seems reluctant to explain what exactly (like what resorts, or what cruise lines and for how many people) you can redeem the vacation certificates for.

Anybody ever gotten a Vacation Certificate from SFX valid for a cruise or resort?

By the way, the Vacation Certificate comes from Travel Store & More, which is affiliated with many other companies. For example, clicking on their Cruise button routes you to ovscruise.com, which I've seen in many other websites.

Click to expand...

My husband and I upgraded to an SFX diamond membership about two years ago, and it has worked incredibly well for us. There seems to be a lot of benefits that have not been mentioned in this thread, so I thought I would share our experience.

We were offered two different types of diamond membership programs. One was with a travel package, and the other without. We chose the travel package membership for around $2900. It included a cruise (We love cruises). We sailed from Seattle to Alaska on Princess Cruise lines for a 7 day cruise with our certificate, and had an outside verandah cabin. We had an amazing time and have so many wonderful memories. The Diamond membership with the travel package also included certificates for pre-paid hotels and resort accommodations. We used those in Hawaii, Cabo and Vancouver. The annual membership renewal fee for this Diamond package I believe is only $29 per year. At a guesstimate, I would say based on our travels, the deals we have gotten out of the membership in two years have saved us close to $5000, which is which is far greater than the cost of the membership.

The regular diamond membership without the travel package offer, was $349 for a one year, which is their brochure rate, but if you buy a multiple year membership it’s a lot less, something like $99 a year according to my notes.

For us, the travel package deal was much better value because of the significant amount of money it will save us over the years, not just for exchanges, but their hotels, bonus weeks, cruises and their online shopping store. Not to mention it included a cruise to Alaska. A couple of months ago, I purchased Tumi luggage from their online store saving about 55% off retail and less than the outlets. Because we travel 3-6 weeks per year, the Diamond package was a no brainer!

Juli

JuliGee said:

We chose the travel package membership for around $2900. It included a cruise (We love cruises). We sailed from Seattle to Alaska on Princess Cruise lines for a 7 day cruise with our certificate, and had an outside verandah cabin. We had an amazing time and have so many wonderful memories. The Diamond membership with the travel package also included certificates for pre-paid hotels and resort accommodations. We used those in Hawaii, Cabo and Vancouver. The annual membership renewal fee for this Diamond package I believe is only $29 per year.

Click to expand...

Are you saying that for your initial investment of $2900., you got a cruise for 2 adults completely paid for on Princess in Alaska? You also got free hotel stays? Now, you only need to pay $29/year to keep the SFX membership going? It sounds too good to be true. If it is true, I'm sure I'll be looking into this next year when I'd partake in the benefits.

To me it sounded too good to be true.

Like I said, you get NO discount on the Diamond membership itself, see my comments above.

And as far as the "Cruise" certificate, while there are no black outs per se, they said that the certificate is only good on "selected" cruises only, and they seemed very unwilling to disclose all details, but they did disclose that taxes and gratuity are not included.

Doing the math, it seemed to me that I'd spend the same if I bought their regular membership and a cruise separately.

So why commit to a 40 yr plan? Any other experiences buying this 40 yr plan from SFX with their cruise offer?

presley said:

Are you saying that for your initial investment of $2900., you got a cruise for 2 adults completely paid for on Princess in Alaska? You also got free hotel stays? Now, you only need to pay $29/year to keep the SFX membership going? It sounds too good to be true. If it is true, I'm sure I'll be looking into this next year when I'd partake in the benefits.

Click to expand...

No, not completely paid for. We only had to pay the port charges and taxes. The cheapest internet price we could find for the cruise was about $2,200 for the cabin offered to us, and we paid a little extra to upgrade to a veranda cabin. We had several free brand hotel stays, and some resorts stays we got on average about 40% less off the lowest rates we could find on the internet. All in all, we calculated for the $2900 travel package fee, we got about $5400 worth of value in just the first year, comparing to the lowest rates we could find on the internet. With this travel package, our ongoing annual membership fee is only $29 for the diamond membership.

If we were not into cruises, we would have just purchased the 3 or 5 year membership which is something like $99 a year. Like I said earlier, in doing the math it was a no brainer for us, based on our 3-6 weeks a year of travel. What we find really intriguing is their hotel program pricing. Sfx has some kind of unpublished rate deal with brand hotels with pricing lower than what you see on the internet. If you only vacation one or two weeks a year, then maybe this package doesn’t make as much sense.

The math is very simple. If the membership saves you a lot more money than what you would have paid, then the math makes sense. By the way, there is no 40 year commitment. You just pay as you go.

Juli