Why buy Trendwest from Wyndham?

I received this very straight-forward question from a reader:

I came across your quite informative site, and was curious about one thing. If there are alternatives to buying the Trendwest program, such as eBay and RedSeason, then why buy Trendwest at all? I mainly want to know what advantages do you get from purchasing directly from Trendwest in comparision to RedSeason?

Thank you in advance for your response.

Alex

Ah, the crux of the matter!

One of the benefits of purchasing credits, Wyndham will tell you, is that you can re-sell them anytime, or gift them to your family in your will. Wyndham will tell you how easy they are to re-sell, making it a sound investment.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find them being openly hostile to the concept. They don't assist people in selling (eg they won't combine two accounts into one credit pool), they do not make any attempt to encourage a resale market (eg an online exchange where people can buy/sell), and they'll suddenly make claims that purchasing credits from an existing holder will not give you access to certain 'premium' facilities (which may or may not be true -- it's hard to get clear information out of them in this area).

So, there's basically two reasons to buy direct from Wyndham:

• Their strong-arm sales tactics that make you want to buy on the night, without having time to really think it through (they'll say that the deal won't be available if you come back, which is baseless, since they'll try to sell exactly the same thing to another group of people the next night)
• The buyer's gullibility which lets them purchase without doing adequate research (eg without actually reading the Contract)
  

Put simply — you'll buy exactly the same thing for half price via eBay or Red Season. That means double the value. Whether that value is still worthwhile (after annual maintenance fees) is still questionable, but many, many people think Trendwest is worthwhile. So, why not get it for half price? That's the logical question, but keep in mind one simple fact — humans are not always logical.

That's why there's no Wynham on the Planet Vulcan. Spock would never fall for such a scheme.

-- Fabbo
Tags: trendwest worldmark