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Re: Sunterra timeshares

[Q=maryloue2] [Q=amyr8] We purchased a week from a private party at Sunterra The Ridge at Sedona Golf Resort. It is a beautiful resort and we enjoy going there but wanted a change so tried to deposit our week with Interval International since we have a gold membership with other timeshare we own. We were told that II could not accept the deposit directly from us because we owned a "week" and did not participate in the point system. The point system did not even exist when the original owner bought it. We have no intention of paying more money to use a week we already paid for and don't understand how Sunterra has control over our week. Does anyone know how we can find out about the trust that was previously mentioned.[/Q] Sunterra which was recently bought out by Diamond Resorts started selling in trust in 2004 because it is considered to be the highest and most secure form of real estate to own but it also hedges against inflation of maintenance fees. Sunterra dropped RCI for many reasons years ago the main one being lack of availability as well as quality. If you bought a traditional week on the resale or even from Sunterra before they went to points in 2000, your useage is still the same as when you purchased it. Meaning you can either go to your home resort or exchange through RCI which was what you purchased as did I because I bought in 1996. You are in control of your ownership and nobody else but traditional week owners cannot go through II because even though II is not a point system, Club owners trade through II with points. I have had many wonderful vacations using my points both within club and II and points give me a far better value than when I had a traditional week. I was given the opportunity just as I am sure the person who you bought your week from to buy equal to what I owned when they went to points and they converted my traditional week to points. I used to own a two bedroom annual at the summit which is equal to 10,000 points so I purhased 10,000 points from Sunterra in 2002 and they attached 10,000 points to my deed at the Summit for a total of 20,000 points per year. I recently purchased more and upgraded everything into the trust for the reasons that I already stated and I now own 31,000 points per year and am a very happy owner. It is like anything else, you bought one model and it still works exactly like when you purchase it but if you want it to work like the new model then you have to purchase just as all owners who purchase prior to 2000 like myself had to do. You can find trust on the resale market but purchasing that will not merge your ownerships. It would give you the right to use the trust points within the 19 trust properties and exchange through II however in your case, that would complicate things even more for you. You would be paying membership fee to RCI and II and you would have two different types of ownerships. RCI has also gone to points which you would have to buy into as well however I would strongly suggest that you do your due delligence before doing so. It is not only expensive to buy into their point system but there a lot of hidden fees as well and they currently have about 1000 resorts available with points. I have yet to talk to an RCI member traditonal or points that are happy with the way the system works, it is complicated and the availability has not improved much over that of the traditonal week. Hope this info prooves to be helpful to you.[/Q] ========= I'm an II member and an RCI points memeber, I don't feel either system is any more "complicated" than booking exchanges through the "Sunterra" system. The only feature I do not like (and do not use) is RCI's deposit first system. Last year I went to a Sunterra presentation and their point system peaked my interest, but I wasn't about to spend over $14000 and several hundred dollars/year maintenance fees for the number of points that were being alloted. Have a great weekend