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Club Wyndham Select vs. Club Wyndham Access

tsiemsen

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We are currently trying to assess the benefit of spending $21,000 to purchase into Club Wyndham Access (105,000 pts) when we are currently Platinum members Club Wyndham Select with ownership at Royal Sea Cliff in Hawaii (1,000,000), with additional ownership at Flagstaff (annual 105,000) and a Fixed week at Sea Gardens for every other year that adds (126,000 pts). The sales agent has suggested that we should purchase the minimum (105,000 pts) to transition our current Hawaii ownership to CWA and release the higher maintenance ownerships at Flagstaff and Sea Gardens, which would decrease our annual maintenance. We would end up with 1,105,000 pts. that would all be in CWA (according to my understanding). We would not have a deed, but be part of the "trust".
I am not exactly sure HOW we are releasing these ownerships and if that is a good thing to do or not. I would like to decrease our annual maintenance fees if it makes sense, but I am not sure it does. Any thoughts on that recommendation would be appreciated...just not sure what is truly in our best interest and if there is a better way to go about it. Secondly, is the "trust" as secure an ownership as having a "deed"? There has to be some drawback if it is costing less $$. What's the catch??

Joining CWA also appears to lower our annual maintenance in comparison to the Hawaii deed, the inflation rate would be lower from year to year and it would decrease the amount of $ potentially being charged for special assessments over the course of time. Are these advantages verifiable by anyone that has gone this route?

Beyond the above questions, is the concern that I really won't benefit in any other way, since we book the vast majority of our reservations when we are able to utilize our platinum benefits which is within 60 days to arrival. We take advantage of 50% discount on available inventory and free room upgrades when booking. My understanding of CWA is that it allows you to have Advance Priority Booking rights (13 months out) at the 60+ resorts and still 10 month booking at all others. We live in the Orlando area and mostly staycation in the area based on availability. Since the new reservation system was instituted, it has been more difficult to find availability, but I am not sure what factors are causing that decrease in availability. Is the decrease related to the percentage of rooms held in the CWA category, is it that more people have VIP benefits thus leading to more competition for last minute reservations, are the resorts in our area more highly sought after these days, are refurbishments at the area resorts leading to decreased availability, and so on???
Basically, I am wanting to verify, before purchasing, if being a part of CWA will open up availability for additional rooms that I currently am not seeing as a club wyndham select member? The sales agent claims this to be so, but I am doubting there is a differentiation in the reservation system where CWA % of rooms can only be seen by CWA members at all times, but rather it all goes into the same "pot" once you are inside of 10 months at which time all resorts are open to bookings by both CWA and CWS. Thus the question of the year is...Do CWA VIP members have additional availability at the 60+ resorts based on their membership when within 60 days to arrival or is it all the same?

Any and all thoughts provided would be helpful, as I am trying my best to make a sound financial decision here based on our use of the membership. I would love to save money on the annual maintenance, but based on my calculations it would take us 20+ years to be able to justify the cost of transitioning to CWA on that fact alone. If my description above is skewed in any way...hopefully someone will be able to clear it up for me. Thank you in advance.
 

ecwinch

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Marriott Harbour Point (HP), Kauai Beach Villas, Riverside Suites, WorldMark Pts (WM), Wyndham Pts
Basically, I am wanting to verify, before purchasing, if being a part of CWA will open up availability for additional rooms that I currently am not seeing as a club wyndham select member?

It will open up availability during the ARP period. Other than that - No. That CWA members can only see CWA inventory is only true during the ARP period. At the 10 month mark, all CWA and Select inventory is available to everybody.

I am a Platinum Club Select member and when I kicked around something similar, it did not line out from a cost standpoint.

Yes, CWA will give you ARP privileges (13 month booking window) at CWA resorts. But only for the CWA inventory at those resorts - which can be limited, and only up to the amount of CWA points you own. You cannot use your Select points for the CWA ARP. They sometimes... like always... gloss over that fact when pitching that strategy. And 105k would not get you much ARP in CWA.

And by "transition", I assume them not to mean "convert". That only that the additional pts purchased would be in CWA.

EDIT: I have a rule - if they lie about something - then they are lying about everything. This reinforces my impression that your 1mil pts will remain in Club Select.

Also - here is a list of CWA resorts.... it confirmed something I heard but was not certain about - that there are no Hawaii resorts in CWA. Something about how Hawaii DRE will not allow it a pure points system to be sold in Hawaii. Maybe someone else has some insight.

https://www.myclubwyndham.com/mycw/resorts/cwa-resorts.page
 
Last edited:

tsiemsen

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It will open up availability during the ARP period. Other than that - No. That CWA members can only see CWA inventory is only true during the ARP period. At the 10 month mark, all CWA and Select inventory is available to everybody.

I am a Platinum Club Select member and when I kicked around something similar, it did not line out from a cost standpoint.

Yes, CWA will give you ARP privileges (13 month booking window) at CWA resorts. But only for the CWA inventory at those resorts - which can be limited, and only up to the amount of CWA points you own. You cannot use your Select points for the CWA ARP. They sometimes... like always... gloss over that fact when pitching that strategy. And 105k would not get you much ARP in CWA.

And by "transition", I assume them not to mean "convert". That only that the additional pts purchased would be in CWA.

EDIT: I have a rule - if they lie about something - then they are lying about everything. This reinforces my impression that your 1mil pts will remain in Club Select.

Also - here is a list of CWA resorts.... it confirmed something I heard but was not certain about - that there are no Hawaii resorts in CWA. Something about how Hawaii DRE will not allow it a pure points system to be sold in Hawaii. Maybe someone else has some insight.

https://www.myclubwyndham.com/mycw/resorts/cwa-resorts.page

As I suspected...the only booking benefit would be for ARP...not helpful to us since we use our platinum benefits for reservations within 60 days to arrival. I wasn't sure about the number of points that would actually be in CWA upon purchase...they made it seem like it would be 1,105, 000, but I was thinking more along the lines of what you just stated. I would only have 105,000 pts in CWA. What I am unclear about is why I would no longer have a deed to Hawaii in this case. Very confusing...which usually means it is not advantageous.

Thank you for the link to the listing of CWA resorts. They were not able to provide a current list at the sales meeting...only a picture under glass that has an awful glare when trying to take a picture. It seemed ridiculous that they couldn't provide documentation as requested for the item they were selling!
 

Sandy VDH

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Wynd VIP Plat GF, HGVC Elite, WM, HICV, +
You have $21K to cover MFs if you buy nothing. What else is there to get your already VIPP.
 

OutSkiing

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Columbus, Ohio
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Midtown 45, Bali Hai, Margaritaville
As I suspected...the only booking benefit would be for ARP...not helpful to us since we use our platinum benefits for reservations within 60 days to arrival. I wasn't sure about the number of points that would actually be in CWA upon purchase...they made it seem like it would be 1,105, 000.
I agree it would not be worth it. Also, CWA is no longer the lowest maintenance fee .. it is above average now. But I do believe they would convert all your Royal Seacliff and other points into one giant CWA contract .. a service they can do drawing from large contracts in their inventory .. as long as you do the incremental 105k (or 84k)purchase.

We have had offers to convert to all CWA in the past, and then in more recent times the offers have been to turn in our CWA in exchange for a lower maintenance fee Club Select contract. Always with a 'small' purchase. Our answer has been no in both cases.

Bob
 

Jan M.

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Wyndham Presidential Reserve at Panama City Beach
Club Wyndham Access
Grandview Las Vegas and Discovery Beach Resort - Both in RCI Points
Woodstone and Summit at Massanutten - Both in RCI weeks used as Wyndham PICs
Are your combined maintenance fees more than $5.99 per thousand before the program fees or to make it simpler more than $6.59 per thousand after the program fees? As other people pointed out CWA doesn't have low maintenance fees. There are resorts that do have low maintenance fees if you wanted to spend the money and reduce your maintenance fees.

CWA history of increases over the last several years is:
2015 - $4.90
2016 - $5.14
2017 - $5.60
2018 - $5.76
2019 - $5.99

If you would no longer have a deed in Hawaii or anywhere else then the salesperson was talking about making all your points CWA. With CWA you have a contract with Wyndham for the use of xxx points per year but you aren't deeded. Wyndham owns those deeds for CWA, you have a contract with them for the use of the points and own nothing. And you would only have ARP at the resorts and inventory that are in CWA. Some people care about being deeded, others don't and many people own a mixture of both.
 

HitchHiker71

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Outer Banks Beach Club I (PIC Plus)
Colonies at Williamsburg (PIC Plus)
CWA VIP Gold (718k EY)
National Harbor Resale (689k)
As I suspected...the only booking benefit would be for ARP...not helpful to us since we use our platinum benefits for reservations within 60 days to arrival. I wasn't sure about the number of points that would actually be in CWA upon purchase...they made it seem like it would be 1,105, 000, but I was thinking more along the lines of what you just stated. I would only have 105,000 pts in CWA. What I am unclear about is why I would no longer have a deed to Hawaii in this case. Very confusing...which usually means it is not advantageous.

Thank you for the link to the listing of CWA resorts. They were not able to provide a current list at the sales meeting...only a picture under glass that has an awful glare when trying to take a picture. It seemed ridiculous that they couldn't provide documentation as requested for the item they were selling!

My best guess without seeing the paperwork is that they are converting your current deeded ownership entirely into CWA via a contract conversion. Basically the strategy from any sales weasel is to convert CWA to CWS and CWS to CWA - solely for the benefit of a commission and really nothing else. I'm a current CWA VIPG owner with 210k CWA points and 508K PIC points annually. At our latest AC stay we attended an update, we received an offer to convert from CWA to deeded CWS Midtown 45 ownership. The numbers broke down as follows:

Selected Inventory: Midtown 45 at New York City
Developer Price: $79,700.00
Total Discount: $21,605.00
Net Purchase Price: $58,095.00
Incremental Net Price: $28,165.00
Traded Contract Net Price: $29,930.00 (these are the two CWA 105k contracts traded in each at $14,965.00 - full value)

Under the Club Wyndham Plus section:
Total Points: 315,000
New Incremental Points: 105,000 (the net new purchase amount to take us from 210k to 315k)
Gross Price / 1000 Pts: $253
Today's Price /1000 Pts: $184.00
CWP Monthly Fee: $136.50

I have attached a picture of an excerpt of the proposal as well.
The typical ploy used by sales for existing CWA owners is to say you are paying high MFs with CWA and it's going much much higher in the years to come because the cap is 20% annually for MF increases - whereas the deeded CWS properties like Bali Hai, NH, Midtown, etc., are very low and will stay low in comparison. You'll also periodically hear that you don't have to pay any Wyndham program fees if you convert to CWS like you do with CWA (a lie) - I was explicitly told this during my AC update twice. All they do is bury the program fee into the MFs on the paperwork to make it look this way. You simply have to do the math to deconstruct their dishonest sales tactics.

The typical sales ploy used for existing CWS owners is to say you are not able to ARP into 70+ resorts without CWA and you will not be able to book any of the popular resorts as a result. You need CWA to book 13 months out now. I'm sure there are other ploys used as well, but this seems to be the one used the most. It's all BS aimed to get you to spend more money for no good reason other than to line the pockets of the sales staff.
 

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raygo123

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We are currently trying to assess the benefit of spending $21,000 to purchase into Club Wyndham Access (105,000 pts) when we are currently Platinum members Club Wyndham Select with ownership at Royal Sea Cliff in Hawaii (1,000,000), with additional ownership at Flagstaff (annual 105,000) and a Fixed week at Sea Gardens for every other year that adds (126,000 pts). The sales agent has suggested that we should purchase the minimum (105,000 pts) to transition our current Hawaii ownership to CWA and release the higher maintenance ownerships at Flagstaff and Sea Gardens, which would decrease our annual maintenance. We would end up with 1,105,000 pts. that would all be in CWA (according to my understanding). We would not have a deed, but be part of the "trust".
I am not exactly sure HOW we are releasing these ownerships and if that is a good thing to do or not. I would like to decrease our annual maintenance fees if it makes sense, but I am not sure it does. Any thoughts on that recommendation would be appreciated...just not sure what is truly in our best interest and if there is a better way to go about it. Secondly, is the "trust" as secure an ownership as having a "deed"? There has to be some drawback if it is costing less $$. What's the catch??

Joining CWA also appears to lower our annual maintenance in comparison to the Hawaii deed, the inflation rate would be lower from year to year and it would decrease the amount of $ potentially being charged for special assessments over the course of time. Are these advantages verifiable by anyone that has gone this route?

Beyond the above questions, is the concern that I really won't benefit in any other way, since we book the vast majority of our reservations when we are able to utilize our platinum benefits which is within 60 days to arrival. We take advantage of 50% discount on available inventory and free room upgrades when booking. My understanding of CWA is that it allows you to have Advance Priority Booking rights (13 months out) at the 60+ resorts and still 10 month booking at all others. We live in the Orlando area and mostly staycation in the area based on availability. Since the new reservation system was instituted, it has been more difficult to find availability, but I am not sure what factors are causing that decrease in availability. Is the decrease related to the percentage of rooms held in the CWA category, is it that more people have VIP benefits thus leading to more competition for last minute reservations, are the resorts in our area more highly sought after these days, are refurbishments at the area resorts leading to decreased availability, and so on???
Basically, I am wanting to verify, before purchasing, if being a part of CWA will open up availability for additional rooms that I currently am not seeing as a club wyndham select member? The sales agent claims this to be so, but I am doubting there is a differentiation in the reservation system where CWA % of rooms can only be seen by CWA members at all times, but rather it all goes into the same "pot" once you are inside of 10 months at which time all resorts are open to bookings by both CWA and CWS. Thus the question of the year is...Do CWA VIP members have additional availability at the 60+ resorts based on their membership when within 60 days to arrival or is it all the same?

Any and all thoughts provided would be helpful, as I am trying my best to make a sound financial decision here based on our use of the membership. I would love to save money on the annual maintenance, but based on my calculations it would take us 20+ years to be able to justify the cost of transitioning to CWA on that fact alone. If my description above is skewed in any way...hopefully someone will be able to clear it up for me. Thank you in advance.
You already have ARP at 11 months with select. Instead in the ACCESS TRUST, from the select trust. 50 that are both in the Access trust and select trust plus the handful of select only resorts like NYC. You have 3 booking a year.

Sent from my Lenovo TB-X103F using Tapatalk
 

schoolmarm

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Wyndham CWA, Bali Hai, and National Harbor; Summit at Massanutten
And don't forget that Outrigger membership goes with Hawaii deeds...

I'm keeping my deeds. You should check your MFs against CWA. If Royal Sea Cliff in Hawaii has a high fee, you need to think about whether you want to go to Hawaii or not. Outrigger makes it much easier to go to Hawaii. I have Bali Hai, with low MFs so it is a no-brainer to keep my deeds.

They are trying to roll ALL of your contracts into CWA (including the Hawaii).
 

CCdad

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My best guess without seeing the paperwork is that they are converting your current deeded ownership entirely into CWA via a contract conversion. Basically the strategy from any sales weasel is to convert CWA to CWS and CWS to CWA - solely for the benefit of a commission and really nothing else. I'm a current CWA VIPG owner with 210k CWA points and 508K PIC points annually. At our latest AC stay we attended an update, we received an offer to convert from CWA to deeded CWS Midtown 45 ownership. The numbers broke down as follows:

Selected Inventory: Midtown 45 at New York City
Developer Price: $79,700.00
Total Discount: $21,605.00
Net Purchase Price: $58,095.00
Incremental Net Price: $28,165.00
Traded Contract Net Price: $29,930.00 (these are the two CWA 105k contracts traded in each at $14,965.00 - full value)

Under the Club Wyndham Plus section:
Total Points: 315,000
New Incremental Points: 105,000 (the net new purchase amount to take us from 210k to 315k)
Gross Price / 1000 Pts: $253
Today's Price /1000 Pts: $184.00
CWP Monthly Fee: $136.50

I have attached a picture of an excerpt of the proposal as well.
The typical ploy used by sales for existing CWA owners is to say you are paying high MFs with CWA and it's going much much higher in the years to come because the cap is 20% annually for MF increases - whereas the deeded CWS properties like Bali Hai, NH, Midtown, etc., are very low and will stay low in comparison. You'll also periodically hear that you don't have to pay any Wyndham program fees if you convert to CWS like you do with CWA (a lie) - I was explicitly told this during my AC update twice. All they do is bury the program fee into the MFs on the paperwork to make it look this way. You simply have to do the math to deconstruct their dishonest sales tactics.

The typical sales ploy used for existing CWS owners is to say you are not able to ARP into 70+ resorts without CWA and you will not be able to book any of the popular resorts as a result. You need CWA to book 13 months out now. I'm sure there are other ploys used as well, but this seems to be the one used the most. It's all BS aimed to get you to spend more money for no good reason other than to line the pockets of the sales staff.


Wyndham's fuzzy math again: If you're being offered a 105K retail purchase for $28,165 after the 210K CWA equity trade, that works out to to a price of $268.24 per K.

Now it may be only $184 per K to buy all 315K today, but your equity trade wasn't even given their net purchase price of $184 per K.

And folks see the net price on the sheet of paper and assume that it's a deal.
 

lprstn

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No way I would do that. The only, only reason why I would is to add PICs from my other resorts in there. When I last upgraded with them, they took resales and rolled them up too with my PICs all into VIP gold. Now I have all my points with Hawaii and will only get resale with Hawaii since that's where I want to be most of the time. Really consider how you use your resort/timeshare before upgrading.
 

HitchHiker71

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Outer Banks Beach Club I (PIC Plus)
Colonies at Williamsburg (PIC Plus)
CWA VIP Gold (718k EY)
National Harbor Resale (689k)
Wyndham's fuzzy math again: If you're being offered a 105K retail purchase for $28,165 after the 210K CWA equity trade, that works out to to a price of $268.24 per K.

Now it may be only $184 per K to buy all 315K today, but your equity trade wasn't even given their net purchase price of $184 per K.

And folks see the net price on the sheet of paper and assume that it's a deal.

Was wondering if anyone would catch that! :) It's not really fake math - but that $184/1000 doesn't represent the cost of the new points - it represents $58095/315k=184/1000 points. It represents an average price I would have paid across all of my points. The actual cost of the additional $105k points is $284/1000 points as CCDad pointed out.

The lesson learned here is ALWAYS run your own math on these sheets. A lot of people assume that because it's on an official looking document that it must be correct. My experience has shown me they can pretty much do anything they want on these worksheets.
 
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