DRI Maintenance Fee Protection and Platinum Level

Just had our membership "update" with DRI. The story this time is that there will be a Special Assessment coming and members should take advantage of a Plan to protect one from that and future maintenance fee increases. The cash back II credit card is part of the plan and then there is the Enhanced Travel Services (ETS) which will allow a member to deposit points with that entity for cash based on the market value of the time the points would purchase. If a week reservation at a resort was 2500 points and one deposited 7500 points with ETS, if the market value at a resort was worth $1000, ETS would send $3,000 cash (7500 divided by 2500= 3 weeks @ $1000) which one could use to pay maintenance fees. Going to Platinum level would allow one to freeze the cost per point at 14.1 cents for annual maintenance fees. Platinum would also have access to the reserved units at resorts which are held back for Platinum owners. I am curious as to any DRI platinum owners experiences and experience with ETS returning money for points deposited with them. We were told that Platinum owners would get superb special customer service.

When will this happen ?

???

you have got to be kidding.

I promise life will be good as long as you keep sending me more money.

Which collection are you part of? One of the features they pitch for buying points is that when there is a special assessment at one resort, it's spread out over all the resorts in the collection. All the members in the Hawaii Collection had to pay part of the Point at Poipu SA, but only a fraction of what P@P owners had to pay. If you're in the US Collection, there are so many resorts, that a SA at any one resort shouldn't have much effect on the annual fees.

I wonder what resort they think you can reserve for 2500 points that would have a market value of $1000 and would have enough availability for all the platinum members. :hysterical:

I am sure after their fuzzy math you would still have to pay some kind of annual fee for the service on top of MF's and then maybe you would be able to deposit $100-500 for your 7500 points

tschwa2 said:

I wonder what resort they think you can reserve for 2500 points that would have a market value of $1000 and would have enough availability for all the platinum members. :hysterical:

I am sure after their fuzzy math you would still have to pay some kind of annual fee for the service on top of MF's and then maybe you would be able to deposit $100-500 for your 7500 points

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n example how

This is an example..how much money are they making on, just on new membership into their point Club?

pedro47 said:

This is an example..how much money they are making on new membership into their point Club?

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Double post

artringwald said:

Which collection are you part of? One of the features they pitch for buying points is that when there is a special assessment at one resort, it's spread out over all the resorts in the collection. All the members in the Hawaii Collection had to pay part of the Point at Poipu SA, but only a fraction of what P@P owners had to pay. If you're in the US Collection, there are so many resorts, that a SA at any one resort shouldn't have much effect on the annual fees.

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I am part of the US collection. Implication is that SA would be in 2015.

Sounds like more salesman spinning tales - in the US collection with all the resorts there will almost always be a special assessment every year but the impact will be minimal. So that is really probably a safe guess rather than real knowledge.

They used to pitch there were "no" special assessments with points ownerships - now it is with platinum memberships.

I am sure perpetually freezing maintenance fees for platinum memberships would never be put in writing.

tschwa2 said:

I wonder what resort they think you can reserve for 2500 points that would have a market value of $1000 and would have enough availability for all the platinum members. :hysterical:

I am sure after their fuzzy math you would still have to pay some kind of annual fee for the service on top of MF's and then maybe you would be able to deposit $100-500 for your 7500 points

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Yes - I am sure the "market value" would be a very creative number.

Ah yes, the old special assessment scare tactic at a sales presentation. They like to use F.E.A.R. (False evidence appearing real) to sell product. I heard this story FIVE years ago. I told them I'd take my chances. So far so good.

I've seen 2 SA's at our resort. One was I significant for around $100. The other a little more major at ~ $1,100. A well run HOA should never need a SA. I just pose the question as to why I would want to buy more if the HOA's are run so poorly that I have to worry about a significant SA.

The situation with the huge SA at Poipu is a little different and unique. I wouldn't use that as any gauge for future SA's at other resorts.

Have anyone read the new newsletter from DRI ?

Were the salesman's lips moving?

newsletter

yes. what are you trying to point out?

stephen

I was referring to the page called: "Diamond Loyalty Benefits" page.

pedro47 said:

I was referring to the page called: "Diamond Loyalty Benefits" page.

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Here's the page: http://communications.diamondresorts.com/18891/images/17151_US_DIAMOND_LOYALTY_TIER_BENEFITS_REVISED_WEB.pdf

artringwald said:

Here's the page: http://communications.diamondresorts.com/18891/images/17151_US_DIAMOND_LOYALTY_TIER_BENEFITS_REVISED_WEB.pdf

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For the most part, it appears the being Silver Elite means very little. That's all right by me. I don't feel the urge to spend a few thousand more to elevate ourselves to Gold elite and the pay several hundred more in MF's + the trust management fee.

Doug, I feel the same way; why pay more for the gold status & mf's

dougp26364 said:

For the most part, it appears the being Silver Elite means very little. That's all right by me. I don't feel the urge to spend a few thousand more to elevate ourselves to Gold elite and the pay several hundred more in MF's + the trust management fee.

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A few thousand and several hundred more?!?! :hysterical:
To move from Silver to Gold is a doubling of the base line number of points to reach the threshold; 30,000 versus 15,000 points. The "List" price of 15,000 points is now around $120,000 based on a per point cost of about $7.90. Buying those won't cost anywhere near that because they'll make you a very special offer that's much lower than that, so maybe they'll ask for $50K or a little less. The Maintenance fees for the increased points will go up more than $2,000 because you're only paying the maintenance fees and not the club fee that was already in the fees that you're paying.

There are a ton of benefits that you receive at the gold level over the silver but someone would certainly have to weigh the cost out before making that jump.

edboyd59 said:

A few thousand and several hundred more?!?! :hysterical:
To move from Silver to Gold is a doubling of the base line number of points to reach the threshold; 30,000 versus 15,000 points. The "List" price of 15,000 points is now around $120,000 based on a per point cost of about $7.90. Buying those won't cost anywhere near that because they'll make you a very special offer that's much lower than that, so maybe they'll ask for $50K or a little less. The Maintenance fees for the increased points will go up more than $2,000 because you're only paying the maintenance fees and not the club fee that was already in the fees that you're paying.

There are a ton of benefits that you receive at the gold level over the silver but someone would certainly have to weigh the cost out before making that jump.

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I guess I should have added that we have 26,500 THE Club points at the moment, so it's not as big of a jump as it would be going from the minimum of 15,000 point to 30,000 points.

We've actually considered going to Gold but, there are a couple of things that have kept us from doing it.

1. The cost of the points, having to buy trust points which includes paying trust management fee's we don't currently pay.

2. We have difficulty using the points we currently own.

3. DRI keeps changing the rules to improve Platinum owners experience while degrading the lower levels. I suppose this makes reaching the higher levels more attractive to the masses but it does the opposite for me.

4. Those extra benefits aren't worth the additional cost in MF's and trust management fee's, let alone the buy in cost.