Exchange companies.

Personally, I have had it with RCI weeks.! The fees have again raised and getting extremely high. Even if you do your reservations on-line, there is no break in the cost. I refuse to deposit with them. I will rent my weeks thru redweek. Thanks to Redweek for the wonderful job they do for us.! Wonet

I, too, have had it with RCI! Last year it was cheaper to stay in an RCI affiliated resort by buying a package from Cheap Carribean than to trade my week. In addition, they gave me a comp week for making a certain exchange. To use the comp week I have to pay $263.99 and so far I can only find all-inclusives to use it on. I can't even use it on available last call vacations that I can buy for $199! Just another RCI marketing scam.

I definitely agree that anything having to do with RCI exchanges has skyrocketed in fees in the last several years. Before 2000 exchanging was a viable option (cost wise) until they continued to raise their rates yearly. With the cost of maintenance fees also rising yearly, RCI has outpriced many timeshare owners. That's probably one reason you see thousands of timeshares for sale and for rent on the internet.

P.S. I don't know about II (Interval International) .... I haven't checked their website lately to see how much (if any) their fees have risen. We formerly belonged to both of the big exchange companies before we saw the handwriting on the wall and sold ALL of our timeshares. Now we rent from the hundreds of rental sites on the internet or take advantage of www.skyauction.com and similar sites.

i will "not" bank my weeks with "RCI"anymore. NO MORE! they can not get me anything that i want. SO I JUST LOSS THE WEEK ANY WAY. i rather rent it out at a lost, then do business with RCI again. also, i asked for a refund, to be put back into my bank account, for an exchange that they could not do. which they did not do. stating it had to stay in my rci account.

Has anybody had any experience with exchange companies other than the two largest? DAE, Trading Places International, Trading Places Maui, SFX, Platinum?

randy wrote:

Has anybody had any experience with exchange companies other than the two largest? DAE, Trading Places International, Trading Places Maui, SFX, Platinum?

Do people generally understand the "trading power" assigned to banked units byy the two majors?

Is the straight week for a week generally used by the other exchanges a good thing or not?

randy wrote:

Do people generally understand the "trading power" assigned to banked units byy the two majors?

Is the straight week for a week generally used by the other exchanges a good thing or not?

No Randy, I don't know what you mean by understanding the "trading power" assigned to banked units? I've also wondered if you have more priority if you bank your week and then request rather than doing a request first. Any thoughts on this? Thank you, Anita

RCI for sure ... but I think that Interval also uses a concept called trading power that is a scale that considers several factors like, the resort, the season, the size of the unit, the months of leadtime you give them with your deposited week. How they relate isn't clear and I don't think they tell you what your trading power is. But they consider it when you ask for an exchange. So for example... a "mud week" in Montana can't get you a week in Hawaii... most of the time.

Other exchange companies seem to have a simpler system... basically a week is a week. Though there are some small adjustments depending on the service you use.

Seems to me that weeks are not all the same. The rental differentials we see on RedWeek show that there's a lot of differences in the presumed values. But I'm wondering if people prefer the simplicity.

Randy

Trade power has always been a crystal ball question for owners. The main way owners figure out what their trade power is is by searching with a deposited week to see what they CAN get, and like Randy said below it depends on location, resort, season, size of owned unit and many other factors a to what an owner can get in a trade. Also, depositing your week early is supposed to up your trade power.

randy wrote:

RCI for sure ... but I think that Interval also uses a concept called trading power that is a scale that considers several factors like, the resort, the season, the size of the unit, the months of leadtime you give them with your deposited week. How they relate isn't clear and I don't think they tell you what your trading power is. But they consider it when you ask for an exchange. So for example... a "mud week" in Montana can't get you a week in Hawaii... most of the time.

Other exchange companies seem to have a simpler system... basically a week is a week. Though there are some small adjustments depending on the service you use.

Seems to me that weeks are not all the same. The rental differentials we see on RedWeek show that there's a lot of differences in the presumed values. But I'm wondering if people prefer the simplicity.

Randy

I was a member of Trading Places for awhile, but I never had any success getting a match. I believe SFX takes mostly high end, popular resorts and better weeks. They won't take just any resort, if I remember correctly.

I never had any problem getting the trades I wanted with RCI and II, it's just that RCI's fees have risen so much in the last several years that it was getting to the point where we couldn't afford all the costs of timesharing with ever increasing maintenance fees and ever increasing exchanging fees. When we first bought into timesharing exchanging was a decent deal.

vlahos wrote:

randy wrote:

Has anybody had any experience with exchange companies other than the two largest? DAE, Trading Places International, Trading Places Maui, SFX, Platinum?

had to exchange my 2 bedroom high season for a one bedroom, just to hard to get 2 bedroom unites. and you have to keep calling in "hopes" that you get what you want. cheaper, less choices, but nice. TRADING PLACES INTERNATIONAL.

anitad10 wrote:

randy wrote:

Do people generally understand the "trading power" assigned to banked units byy the two majors?

Is the straight week for a week generally used by the other exchanges a good thing or not?

No Randy, I don't know what you mean by understanding the "trading power" assigned to banked units? I've also wondered if you have more priority if you bank your week and then request rather than doing a request first. Any thoughts on this? Thank you, Anita

I had wonderful experience with II. I space banked a one bedroom at the Villas on The Green (Welk Resort) in Escondido, CA in Jaunary of 2005 and wanted Palm Springs for April of 2006. I accidently put in a request for a two week window for spring break but really it was for a specific week. They booked me one of my three choices for resorts for the wrong week. When I called, they cheerfully removed the wrong reservation and put it back in for the correct week. They called me several times to say that they were working on finding us a place (and asked if we would consider a smaller unit..I said NO). By June of 2005 (10 months in advace) they had us booked in a TWO-BEDROOM at the Westin Mission Hills. They say our resort has high trading power and that was my proof.

Mary

Count me in as one of the many who are starting to get disillusioned with the costs of RCI. But they screwed up an exchange once, and they comp-ed me with a free exchage week (not really free, they still charged the exchange fee) but I didn't use my deposited week, so it was sort of free.

Like many others, I have found that I cannot seem to get a decent exchange, no matter how much lead time I try to give, or deposit an ongoing search. It just does not seem to work.

I have used the extra vacations from them on numerous times, and that is a far better deal that actually depositing a week because there is no exchange fee, and you don't even have to have your maintenance fees paid or even have an exchange deposited.

I have done some pretty nice places for less than $275 for an entire week (Skiing in Canada, Panama, Dominican Republic). That is the best deal going with RCI.

Other than that, they always try to sell you something when you call for anything.

I will look to redweek in the future for exchaning our place.

Thanks

Bryan Weaver

I am not all that thrilled with II. The charge for just about anything you request and ( I know someone will think I am a racist for this comment) it is rare to get an english speaking person when you call. I think they have moved their offices to Cuba. This year we bought just a single year membership as a wait and see measure. If they dont shape up we will go somewhere else next year.

The II book is not trustworthy. It lists units as 4 and 5 star and in our experience we have never had a 5 star exchange. We did have two one star experiences. When I wrote to II to complain they didn't return an response.

robertorvaleriem wrote:

I am not all that thrilled with II. The charge for just about anything you request and ( I know someone will think I am a racist for this comment) it is rare to get an english speaking person when you call. I think they have moved their offices to Cuba. This year we bought just a single year membership as a wait and see measure. If they dont shape up we will go somewhere else next year.

The II book is not trustworthy. It lists units as 4 and 5 star and in our experience we have never had a 5 star exchange. We did have two one star experiences. When I wrote to II to complain they didn't return an response.

Randy

wonet1 wrote:

Personally, I have had it with RCI weeks.! The fees have again raised and getting extremely high. Even if you do your reservations on-line, there is no break in the cost. I refuse to deposit with them. I will rent my weeks thru redweek. Thanks to Redweek for the wonderful job they do for us.! Wonet

Just this week, upon receiving a call from an RCI rep about exchanging my weeks; i explained that i wasn't quite ready yet & haven't decided what i'm doing for '07. her unprofessional response was: 'well you're only hurting yourself' HIGH FEES + LOW SERVICE = RCI. renting through redweek is more successful.

I have been a member of RCI for about 17 years but I won't be renewing my membership when it becomes due next June. RCI was a great organisation when it was owned by the DeHaan family but since Cendant took them over it has gone rapidly downhill and the exchange charges are now just ridiculous. I have been using Dial An Exchange (DAE) for about 3 years and their prices are much lower than RCI. I have had some good exchanges with DAE in the UK, Canary Islands and Australia. DAE inventory is not yet as comprehensive as RCI but the more owners like me switch away from RCI to DAE the better it will become.

ian263 wrote:

I have been a member of RCI for about 17 years but I won't be renewing my membership when it becomes due next June. RCI was a great organisation when it was owned by the DeHaan family but since Cendant took them over it has gone rapidly downhill and the exchange charges are now just ridiculous. I have been using Dial An Exchange (DAE) for about 3 years and their prices are much lower than RCI. I have had some good exchanges with DAE in the UK, Canary Islands and Australia. DAE inventory is not yet as comprehensive as RCI but the more owners like me switch away from RCI to DAE the better it will become.

I agree RCI has gone downhill since it changed owership. We are retired and therefore flexible but we can still never get what we want.

I'll second DAE. I just traded a WM week for a week in Bali over Thanksgiving. I'll let you know if it lives up to the pictures. But the process was simple and only $140.

I'm a New Zealand timeshare owner, having been with RCI since 1987 and II from time to time. I have been told my weeks trading power is high with a sleep 7 villa. I find the trading process rather tedious though. My most rewarding and hassle-free experience is through Dial an Exchange (daelive.com). This year I had no success with RCI or II locating a place in Scotland in June for 2 couples. I had made my flight plans 6 months earlier to get the best price, and after having no luck with my request in for over 8 months, as a last thought I contacted DAE in April - 2 weeks later I had my 2BR resort unit, at the modern Scandinavian resort, in Aviemore national park, 3.5 star spacious and convenient to free gym, pool and shopping and exactly where I wanted to be located for hiking and tourist areas etc. This was an impressive effort, costing less that $NZ200 (US110) for the exchange - and...........no membership fee......an incredible service. This month, I have confirmed a week in December at Lake Taupo, NZ, as a BONUS week costing $NZ265. Check out their website - so easy to use. This company is on its way and I am its biggest fan. AnneJ