New article on exchange in TST

The latest Timesharing Today magazine has a well written, logical and informative article on exchanging with RCI and how it has changed in the past 20 years. It gets into the original concept, how weeks owners may have been "spolied" by easy trades that never should have happened and how rentals and points play into the picture.

The conclusions aren't likely to sit well with the conspiracy / "sue them all" crowd but are reasonable. No smoking gun just a well presented time line and factual breakdown of where the RCI system is today and how to use it. Remember that most articles in TST are written by owners so this isn't an insiders view but what a reasonable 20+ year owner sees. Worth reading.

Article Available On Line?

timeos2 said:

The latest Timesharing Today magazine has a well written, logical and informative article on exchanging with RCI and how it has changed in the past 20 years.

Click to expand...

Is it a "dead tree only" magazine article? Or is there an Internet link where the article can be viewed on-line?

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

You can view the article online. However, you must have a subscription to Timesharing Today to view it. Minimum cost is $12 - for nine online issues (18 months) and access to past issues back to late 1997.

The article hews strictly to the RCI party line, even if supposedly written by a member rather than an employee, except that it even defends RCI on issues that RCI has admitted more than the article writer, such as where rental inventory comes from.

For those who agree with the RCI party line, I guess it is a well written article.

I read that article. It was okay, basic information.

The only reason I get the exchanges I want is because I am diligent and do not mind traveling at the last minute. If I did not have online access to RCI and II, I would not be happy with timesharing at all. It is the underinformed that suffer.

Last-minute exchanges and especially Last Call are awesome, and surprising Rick with a week in Orlando with $137 RT airfare and a $202 rental week in a GC resort make RCI a good value for me, but then again, I KNOW THE SYSTEM, thanks to TUG. Every resort should be telling their members about TUG and about online access to the exchange companies and the alternative exchange companies as well, if they want their owners' timeshare ownerships to work for them. Think of the unhappy people that could become happy. Many people here say it is an injustice that resorts do not dual-affiliate and I agree, but another thing a resort and the HOA should be doing is informing people about sites like this. Just a mention is not good enough, in my opinion.

We had our HOA meeting for Twin Rivers on November 4th. Many of the older people, most are locals that always come to the meetings, gave up on exchanging through II 20+ years ago. It is a sad story one couple told me. They own two weeks, both great summer weeks, and II many years ago told them that their weeks could not get them anywhere, so they let their membership expire. They just want to go anywhere! We go everywhere with our week and they were anxious to hear the places we went with our weeks. The two of them are going to join II and try again. I know they will not be sorry because they are retired and want to get away from Denver in the cold months with their weeks.

Of course, we cannot use any alternative exchange companies because of our management company who truly believe we are exclusive to II. But I am in charge of renegotiating that this year. We will soon see. We had the old president (of 23 years) at the meeting and he was against dual-affiliation with RCI and was extremely vociferous and even belligerent. We were in a shouting match about it, which embarrassed me terribly. I don't know if my red face was from anger or embarrassment. Probably both.

I'm not pro or con RCI. However, I agree with John that it's well written and provides a good overall view of some of the issues that impact owners and with Cindy that it was "okay, basic information". It seems to me to be more of an analysis and how to deal with some of the challenges rather than a support article for RCI. Is the article perfect? No. There are statements in the article that one could disagree with no matter which side of the debate one happens to prefer.

One of the best clues that the author isn't defending RCI is in this quote:

Resort Condominiums International, LLC, is not our club. It is a giant Delaware corporation whose real mission statement should be: ‘To collect as many dollars as possible, while spending as few as possible so it can give as much money as possible to its owner, The Cendant Corporation.’ We are not really “Members of the RCI Community.”

Click to expand...

Although spoken by an RCI member (the author), that doesn't sound like someone who uniformly supports RCI.

(Note that the reference to Cendant was written when Cendant still existed - last November!)

I didn't think it was someone in RCI's pocket at all.

I guess it would impress someone who had no idea about TUG. For a Timesharing Today article, I thought it was good and informative, too, and very different from the article in the issue before on Timeshare Relief, which was plain goofy. I guess I have lost a little respect for Timesharing Today of late, like as of two months ago, when that article came out with a corresponding advertisement for that loathesome company. I have years and years of subscription left and when it is done, I will not renew the magazine again, because of that article.

Why does Timesharing Today never talk about TUG? This magazine is constantly referenced here, yet nothing from them. I find that odd, especially given Dave McClintock's great articles in the magazine. I just think cross-referencing is necessary for helping as many people as we can. There is more to read here on any given day that an entire issue of TST provides.

rickandcindy23 said:

Why does Timesharing Today never talk about TUG? This magazine is constantly referenced here, yet nothing from them. I find that odd

Click to expand...

I would have to guess that if readers of TST , found TUG, they would no longer need a subscription to TST. Tug has more information and its free.

rickandcindy23 said:

Why does Timesharing Today never talk about TUG?

Click to expand...

Interesting question and one that I have never asked, even though I have good contacts at the magazine. I suppose the reason I have never asked is that I probably already know the answer: Competition! TUG is competition for TS Today.

TS Today is a business. Period. They try to make a profit. I'm guessing that many who subscribe to the magazine would decide to skip the subscription cost if they found TUG (and/or TS4Ms) and decided they could get almost everything they needed for free without paying for TS Today.

I still subscribe to TS Today because there is some good info (reviews, articles, ARDA info) that is different from and complements what is available here. I don't have to agree with everything they print in order to determine that my knowledge is enhanced by reading the magazine.

Actually, "subscribe" is a misnomer. With my free subscription extensions currently in hand for past contributions and additional extensions I should get for existing commitments to the magazine (principally the annual index of articles), my subscription should last much longer than I will!

I just recently subscribed to TST. I did it to check it out and have access to their back issue info also. I can see why they don't promote TUG because of competition, where on sights like trip advisor many people who like to share info promote TUG. Trip advisor is where I learned of TUG. I've only been an owner for less than 2 years and have learned a lot in a short time. I wish I knew of TUG sooner because it's driven by people who want to learn and people who have experiance they wish to share.
I've never delt with RCI and from what I hear I don't care to. When I read the article I felt it was well written and had some good points, but from what I've heard of these issues my gut feeling is RCI plays with the banked weeks. I've been satisfied with II and hope they don't get caught up in the points game.

Where the writer is hewing to the RCI party line is in defending rentals and points, and of course the reason may be that he does not fully understand all of the issues with either. The balance of his information seems to be very basic. He doesn't seem to have a clue about finding out about bulk deposits, for example.

How did your meeting at Twin Rivers go? Did you get some new blood elected to the board??

rickandcindy23 said:

I read that article. It was okay, basic information.

The only reason I get the exchanges I want is because I am diligent and do not mind traveling at the last minute. If I did not have online access to RCI and II, I would not be happy with timesharing at all. It is the underinformed that suffer.

Last-minute exchanges and especially Last Call are awesome, and surprising Rick with a week in Orlando with $137 RT airfare and a $202 rental week in a GC resort make RCI a good value for me, but then again, I KNOW THE SYSTEM, thanks to TUG. Every resort should be telling their members about TUG and about online access to the exchange companies and the alternative exchange companies as well, if they want their owners' timeshare ownerships to work for them. Think of the unhappy people that could become happy. Many people here say it is an injustice that resorts do not dual-affiliate and I agree, but another thing a resort and the HOA should be doing is informing people about sites like this. Just a mention is not good enough, in my opinion.

We had our HOA meeting for Twin Rivers on November 4th. Many of the older people, most are locals that always come to the meetings, gave up on exchanging through II 20+ years ago. It is a sad story one couple told me. They own two weeks, both great summer weeks, and II many years ago told them that their weeks could not get them anywhere, so they let their membership expire. They just want to go anywhere! We go everywhere with our week and they were anxious to hear the places we went with our weeks. The two of them are going to join II and try again. I know they will not be sorry because they are retired and want to get away from Denver in the cold months with their weeks.

Of course, we cannot use any alternative exchange companies because of our management company who truly believe we are exclusive to II. But I am in charge of renegotiating that this year. We will soon see. We had the old president (of 23 years) at the meeting and he was against dual-affiliation with RCI and was extremely vociferous and even belligerent. We were in a shouting match about it, which embarrassed me terribly. I don't know if my red face was from anger or embarrassment. Probably both.

Click to expand...

Yes, we did get some new blood, but one member who has been on the board for over 25 years will NOT STEP DOWN. We had a newer owner who wanted a board position and volunteered, but we could not get him elected. I was very disappointed but nothing I can do to remove dead weight. I even made a bit of a rude comment about board members with longevity becoming complacent, but those words went unheard by those to whom they were intended.

The new guy (and another new guy that I barely know but already like better than the old school) was aghast at the way the meeting was organized, always by the owner of the management company because we have a shy president, though he is very likable. The subject of proxies came up and it became evident that we did not have enough to even have a meeting, which was something I have inquired about myself for the past several years. I have always been dismissed with a quick, "We have plenty of proxies to have a meeting." No numbers, no discussion as to what it takes to have quorum. It takes a new guy that has already gained respect on the board with his financial experience (which is great because I really like this guy) to get some serious answers. He read through the by-laws just before the meeting and saw a mention of a 33% quorum. An argument ensued about how 10% is all it takes for quorum. The new guy said there was no such number anywhere. It was total chaos for a while. I loved the drama, it was great, because I have been arguing on the right side all along but have been ignored.

Anyway, the election, if you can call it that, was a total disaster because we had no quorum and the president had most of the votes, so he voted for the OLD MEMBER over the new volunteer, who is much more interested in the subject at hand. So we have an election with less than 10% of the vote and not the 33% we needed and a resulting board that is almost the same as before. The election is a sham and not even valid.

Another hysterical thing happened that had me laughing all through lunch with Rick, the new board member that caused the problems, plus the guy who volunteered but was not elected. The four of us had a laugh over a statement by the owner of our management company that there were at least four and maybe even six meetings of the Twin Rivers Interval HOA board over the past year. I guess I wasn't invited to any of those meetings. There were meetings of the whole owners' board and the president and secretary (the one that has given herself a life sentence to the board) from the Inverval Association have a vote, though I do not. I went to two of the meetings, which were on exterior issues and was basically told that since I have no vote, I should not worry about coming to the meetings. I knew I was not welcome at all and was most uncomfortable at the second meeting, when the secretary was rude to me in front of everyone. The president did not make it to that one, so the interval owners were not even covered fairly by decisions made that day, but I was still not allowed to vote on anything.

Of course, all of the meetings are pretty loose and do not follow any agenda. Church board meetings are always so "by the book," but not these meetings, even though we are dealing with millions of dollars in exterior and interior improvements and have everything to gain by being serious and getting as much input as possible. Very frustrating, but that will change with the new board member. Yay for him!