Marriott Destination Club Points transfer process and required fees

Please understand that this is NOT final verified information as I am not aware of any transfers that have actually been completed and it has been very difficult to obtain ANY consistent information about this subject from the developer. This is information I have received from Marriott Owner Modifications but until a completed transfer goes through, I still consider it pending confirmation. If you are a Destination Club owner, still check with Marriott prior to selling your Marriott Destination Club Points to reconfirm everything and I would also recommend that you request the transfer procedures in writing from Marriott.

For this points program, it is important to understand that there are different underlying ownership types.. If the seller is a converted week's owner (often referred to as a legacy or enrolled owner), they are only able to sell their underlying week's ownership and the Destination Club privileges do not transfer on the secondary market.

Example: John A. purchased a platinum season 2br villa at Marriott's Grande Vista in 2008. In June of 2010, he enrolled in Destination Club (DC) points. In January of 2011 he contracts to sell his ownership. Upon conveyance, the buyer will only receive the original underlying ownership at Grande Vista and will not have access to any Destination Club reservations.

If the owner purchased from the developer after June 2010, they will most likely be a UDI points owner into one of the Destination Club trusts. These ownerships can be transferred on the secondary market, but are subject to mandatory "re-enrollment" fees that must be paid to Marriott in order for the buyer to make reservations.

These UDI ownerships are individually deeded in allotments of 250 points. Marriott refers to each of these deeds as a Beneficial Interest (BI). This means that it is not unusual for a DC owner to have twenty to fifty deeds!

Now comes the tricky part!

Marriott Vacation Club requires a re-enrollment fee be paid for each Beneficial Interest or deed transferred. The current re-enrollment fee is $200 per deed (with a minimum required charge of $2,000)..

Marriott is also charging a $25. transfer fee per deed, and a $95. right of first refusal waiver request fee per transaction.

In summary, using the specific example I've been working on for a seller with 6,500 destination club points.

Estimated closing costs are:

Deeding $650. + doc stamps (with attorney placing all legal descriptions onto a single recordable conveyance)

Re-Enrollment fee of $5,200.

Transfer fee of $650.

Waiver request fee of $95.

This creates the potential transfer costs for this ownership at $6,595.

I contacted Redweek and spoke with Phyliss about trying to sell my Marriott Destination Club points. She was kind but it appears you have dealt this with before.

I purchased 1000 club points available usage every year for $10,000. I have reservations to use them this summer in Newport for four nights. I still owe $8500 on them.

What do you recommend I list them for to cover all my closing costs? I contacted marriott several times and they do not have a buy back program and suggested I check with Redweek.

Thanks. Jeannie Copple

Jeannie, did you ever get an answer to this? My daughter and her husband are in a similar situation and she asked me to help her figure out how to sell the points. She has the 1000 (4 beneficial interests) + 2000 banked points.

Susan Hill

jeanniec19 wrote:

I contacted Redweek and spoke with Phyliss about trying to sell my Marriott Destination Club points. She was kind but it appears you have dealt this with before.

I purchased 1000 club points available usage every year for $10,000. I have reservations to use them this summer in Newport for four nights. I still owe $8500 on them.

What do you recommend I list them for to cover all my closing costs? I contacted marriott several times and they do not have a buy back program and suggested I check with Redweek.

Thanks. Jeannie Copple

I feel like Marriott has misled us with these destination points. They are very difficult to book, space is limited. Owners week take priority. You can barely make your money back by renting. I don't know anyone who has anything good to say about them. And look at what Marriott is now charging to resell these points. That's like double dipping! Any lawyers out there think we could have a class action suit??

jeffreys95 wrote:

I feel like Marriott has misled us with these destination points. They are very difficult to book, space is limited. Owners week take priority. You can barely make your money back by renting. I don't know anyone who has anything good to say about them. And look at what Marriott is now charging to resell these points. That's like double dipping! Any lawyers out there think we could have a class action suit??

Jeffrey, I am not sure what you feel misled about. It's obvious that you are unhappy. I will say that weeks owners have their reservations come from a different pot than points owners. Yes, Marriott is trying to protect the points prices with their charges. However, if you bought these points, that was in the paperwork that you signed.

I would suggest that you go to the timeshare users group website and see what many Marriott owners are saying and doing with the points in the DC program. You will find many happy owners. Now if you only bought points and are a new points owner, then you may be unhappy with the price you paid and you may not have enough points to go to the places you may have thought you could go. I don't know, but check out veterans who have experience with the system and get ideas to maximize your options.

We purchased points 3 years ago. We kept our 1 week owners week too. We were grossly misled by the sales person and his manager when we bought the points. After 2 days back and forth discussing all our options and asking questions, we bought a LOT of points. The sales person and his manager told us the Marriott would buy back the points for the going rate and we should wait til the end of year (we purchased in Aug) because the price was going up like 20 cents per point (like a stock). Come Jan the following year per marriott, they never had any intention of buying back the points. We have20,000 points! I wrote to Marriott head quarters, our salesman no longer with Marriott (of course). HQ said sorry, here is contract you signed. We all know when signing contracts after a while its gibberish. We were totally swindled! P.S. That clause about additional fees was never brought to our attentions. we spoke about it specifically with the sales rep and he told us that we could sell it no problem, only lawyers fee involved.

Rule # 1: when a timeshare salesman's lips are moving he's lying. They are notorious for misleading people. The contract you signed states that nothing they say matters only what is written in your contract. They always put that disclaimer in them. Looks like they stuck you too. Get in line. This is what gives the industry a black eye.

Jeffrey,

All I can say is, "WOW!!" If I am reading this right, you bought 20,000 points from Marriott. I don't know what kind of discount you received, but that means you would have paid in excess of $150,000 for those 20,000 points. Marriott should be doing anything that you asked of them. With the amount of points you have you should priority in making reservations to go wherever you want. You are having difficulty? Points owners get their reservations from different buckets than weeks owners. Are you trying to make your reservations early? Because you are a Premier Platinum Plus member, you can make your reservations very early out with no penalty. Weeks owner have to wait for 12 months, but again they come from a different pot.

jeffreys95 wrote:

We purchased points 3 years ago. We kept our 1 week owners week too. We were grossly misled by the sales person and his manager when we bought the points. After 2 days back and forth discussing all our options and asking questions, we bought a LOT of points. The sales person and his manager told us the Marriott would buy back the points for the going rate and we should wait til the end of year (we purchased in Aug) because the price was going up like 20 cents per point (like a stock). Come Jan the following year per marriott, they never had any intention of buying back the points. We have20,000 points! I wrote to Marriott head quarters, our salesman no longer with Marriott (of course). HQ said sorry, here is contract you signed. We all know when signing contracts after a while its gibberish. We were totally swindled! P.S. That clause about additional fees was never brought to our attentions. we spoke about it specifically with the sales rep and he told us that we could sell it no problem, only lawyers fee involved.

I'm sorry to hear about problems many of you are having. Just make sure you DO NOT PAY UPFRONT FEES of any kind if you decide to sell. Your best bet is to work with a licensed real estate agent. We are part of a group called LTRBA and several brokers in this group have listed, sold and closed Destination Club points. Of course, they sell for much less than you paid for them, just like the week ownerships. Our company is Premier Timeshare Resale with RE/MAX and we're happy to answer any questions you might have regarding selling or buying Destination points on the resale market. I doubt I'm allowed to post a url or contact information here but you can find us searching Google, or even on Facebook and other social media sites.

Good Luck! Thanks for the info!

I am a weeks owner in marriott and recently sat thru a presentation where the salesman wanted to convert my ownership to the points program. I have had good luck with Interval, so did not convert. The salesman said that Marriott will be completely out of the Interval system in another 1-2 years so I would be better off converting now before the cost to convert goes up. Any thoughts on this?

As long as you own a deeded week they can't force you into the points program. You can always trade your week through any exchange company. They are just trying to pressure you into giving them more money. Don't forget rule # 1 : when a timeshare salesman's lips are moving he's lying.

I bought dcp on the secondary market and Marriott is now telling me there is a 60 day restriction which means I can only book 60 days prior to arrival. This is nowhere is rofr, contract, deed, or anywhere. If this is true it seems as a consumer I was not protected because the seller didn't know, the title company did not know, and Marriott didn't inform anyone during the process

There are limitations written in to the exchange procedures but we are not sure how MVCI would enforce them and one person was once told that while the restrictions were written in to the documentation, there was no way at the time for MVCI to enforce them. Perhaps they are now able to enforce?

Did you pay the $200 per BI (Beneficial Interest) initiation fee for the points you purchased? There is a minimum initiation fee of $2000. There is also a $300 owner education fee if you are not a previous Marriott DC Point owner (trust points).

Perhaps if you haven't paid the initiation fee, paying that $2000 will remove the restrictions.

david1722 wrote:

I bought dcp on the secondary market and Marriott is now telling me there is a 60 day restriction which means I can only book 60 days prior to arrival. This is nowhere is rofr, contract, deed, or anywhere. If this is true it seems as a consumer I was not protected because the seller didn't know, the title company did not know, and Marriott didn't inform anyone during the process

no I paid and the $2000 and $300 education fee. I also spent 40 minutes on the phone with them prior to buying and going over restrictions and policy and it was not mentioned. Lucky I have phone logs because if I knew that restriction I would never have bough They are saying its a rule but when I delved further on the 2nd market now they are now saying it is for anyone that buys under 1500 points is put into that category. Resale or non resale and if I buy 500 more points it would lift the restriction They want to take no responsibility as they did not inform the title company when they did the rofr, the seller did not know, nor did I. I looked at my documents and its not in there. I am also going to contact a lawyer about fraud because they took $2300 and didn't inform I have contacted the consumer protection agency as they can't just make a rule. I also contacted there executive office and am waiting to talk to them. Believe me I feel Marriott is trying to push this on me with no legs and took their $2300 cut and saying ha

david1722 wrote:

no I paid and the $2000 and $300 education fee. I also spent 40 minutes on the phone with them prior to buying and going over restrictions and policy and it was not mentioned. Lucky I have phone logs because if I knew that restriction I would never have bough They are saying its a rule but when I delved further on the 2nd market now they are now saying it is for anyone that buys under 1500 points is put into that category. Resale or non resale and if I buy 500 more points it would lift the restriction They want to take no responsibility as they did not inform the title company when they did the rofr, the seller did not know, nor did I. I looked at my documents and its not in there. I am also going to contact a lawyer about fraud because they took $2300 and didn't inform I have contacted the consumer protection agency as they can't just make a rule. I also contacted there executive office and am waiting to talk to them. Believe me I feel Marriott is trying to push this on me with no legs and took their $2300 cut and saying ha

I am going to share this post on TUG on their Marriott link. This is very interesting. Others should know what's happening. Plus I know Marriott people look at that site.

thanks and like I said I feel like they are implementing something that nobody else does. Disney does not as Marriott is trying to kill the secondary market and the more people that know and speak up the likely hood they will revisit this policy. I will post once I have talked to their executive office as well

I suggest you read the DC Exchange Procedures document; especially section D, page 13 titled Effect of Transfer of Member’s Interest. Here is the link to that document.

https://www.my-vacationclub.com/common/vc/en-us/pdfs/enrollment_legal_docs/exchange_procedures.pdf

This is a snippet from that section. "If the purchase of an Interest is not made from an Approved Broker, then the owner of such Interest(s) may not be entitled to Special Benefits in Exchange Company’s sole discretion, even if the initiation fee is paid."

As you can see, they are not implementing this on a whim, this or similar language has been contained in the Exchange Procedures since they launched DC in June 2010. I do agree that it a very restrictive policy that other companies simply don't have.

One other person on TUG reported buying resale DC points and not having the restriction in place. They indicated that their resale points were just folded in to their other developer points and they did not have any restrictions on use. The only issue they had was related to different use years of their resale and retail points.

There is a post on TUG where someone asked MVCI Customer Advocate about resale points and were told that there were no restrictions as long as the initiation fee was paid.

It was believed early on however that MVCI simply didn't have a systemic way to enforce these restrictions. So the system wasn't able to discern between resale and retail points. Perhaps they have updated their systems to now be able to place the restrictions that are written in to their documentation.

Sounds like you work for marriott.

you can quote that policy all you want the fact remains they took $2300 and did not inform anyone of the 60 day rule. If you consider that a special benefit it should be informed when rofr is written not after the fact. If you implement a rule you let everyone know as you don't use shock value. They also changed their tune to the fact that originally they said resale and then said the restriction goes out with 1500 points. Again not in the contract when they sold to the seller who sold to me They can change it but they need to inform which they did not as the seller, buyer, and title company are totally caught off gaurd. The snipet you point to down below is for resale of week not points as I know that restriction well The fact remains you must work for them or be a sales person for them and trying to justify the deception that Marriott is doing to the consmer when selling directly or allowing rofr to come through without alerting anyone. I also was on the phone with MVCI for 40minutes prior to buying finding out my restictions as I wanted to know what I was getting into and nobody mentioned that I will do everything in my power to alert people to this deception including using the consumer proptection agency and the forums. If Marrioott is implementing this rule this should be told up front to the person buying so when they go to resell this does not happen

"If the purchase of an Interest is not made from an Approved Broker, then the owner of such Interest(s) may not be entitled to Special Benefits in Exchange Company’s sole discretion, even if the initiation fee is paid."

Even if this were the case and using the "Exchange Company" to reserve time outside of 60 days is considered a "special benefit"; it should not prevent the resale purchaser from reserving time directly from the trust properties and not utilizing the "exchange company" to reserve legacy enrolled units.

Is there any other part of the Member's interest that address the issue?