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Re: Ripoff - Marriott Vacation Club Destinations Program - New Point System

@dennish144 I understand and respect your point. However what I strongly believe you are missing is that since a consumer signed up for Marriott Vacation Club, the program has been materially changed retroactively to the detriment of many ( probably most) vacation club owners. This is due to the impact of the Destination Points system has had on the ability for owners to make exchanges. Let's take your BMW analogy. Yes you purchased it knowing it's a high standard auto, great brand name and fully aware of the cost. If you were lucky you probably negotiated a below sticker cost. However, continuing my analogy, let's say, for some reason after a couple of years of ownership, BMW suddenly announces, for whatever reason, all owners of BMW's with a six cylinder engine must be retroactively converted to a 4 cylinder engine. It's still a BMW, an excellent auto, gets you from A to B. However you still want and paid for a 6 cylinder. Would you buy another BMW from them? Would you think that is right? Wouldn't you be pissed? This is my point, Marriott made changes to the program under the convenient overarching guise of flexibility. As pointed out by many on this board once you get into the point system, the MVC product becomes more costly to implement an exchange To continue, for MVC Destination Points program to be successful, Marriott wants/need to convert their deed owners to the point system. One of their corporate executives stated their objective is to get 95% of their MVC owners transitioned over to the DP in two years. BTW they have only been successful in convincing 25% of their owners to transition to DP so far. My point is with this shift in their business strategy and a major marketing push, Marriott has significantly reduced the ability of their MVC deed owners to make exchanges with Interval International. Their relationship with Interval is not the same, less Marriott inventory is being posted to Interval and as a result the ability to exchange has been significantly hindered as owners are being told to move to DP, for the "benefit" of greater flexibility. This product change has hindered the ability of most deed owners to make exchanges with IL as easy as before. The latest public information has Marriott having 50 Times Share properties. Interval has over 2,000 properties over 75 countries. As someone who purchased my vacation week on the basis I would be able to make exchanges thru Interval and was emphatically reassured there would be no problems as long as I gave II enough notice of my desire for an exchange, I stayed away from Hawaii in high demand weeks.....and btw, I was told, if I purchased a Platinum week my ability to make exchanges would be enhanced significantly. I have followed all instructions in the past years with great success. This year I was met with totally different results. Total disappointment. The launch of the DP program has changed everything as it relates to exchanges. This is why I feel betrayed by Marriott.....a significant retroactive change was made to the MVC program that hurts many of the 400,000 MVC owners who were reassured that through Marriott relationship, exchange flow and addition of IL global properties, exchanges would be easy to execute. As my dear MVC rep stated" I have owners who never use/stay at their home resort ever. They exchange every year". Geez he was even showing us beautiful dioramas of Capri Italy as one of the exchange possibilities. This is the point you are not considering; i.e. the ability to exchange was promoted as a key feature of ownership and it has been negatively affected. I fully understand that for MVC owners who own high point value Marriott destinations the DP program works fine. I assume you are one of them. But for the majority of owners who fall below this line of owning the most attractive Marriott properties, you're left in a situation where you are limited if you want to exchange. And please don't think for a moment this exchange factor was not a key part of the product offering at time of sale. It was and was hammered home over and over again To restate my point: The MVC deeded product has been significantly changed, retroactively to the detriment of many, if not most of their owners. I'm NOT getting what I paid for is my point. You may be, but I'm not