Keeping watch on Trendwest / WorldMark by Wyndham: October 2010

I got this question from a reader that had me confused...

I just attended a sales presentation here in Hawaii by Wyndham - was promised a $50 gift card and $100 credit on my car rental - I got the gift card but so far the rental credit hasn't materialized - if I get burned on that, c'est la vie - not a great loss.

I didn't agree to buy anything, deciding to do research and that's how I found your site. So far, it seems IF I decide to get anything, it should be on the resale market.

This is my question - the packages I was offered were in the 104,000 - 1,000,000 points range. For instance, one deal was $28,000 for 156,000 points with fee-simple (deeded) interest in the Bali Hai resort on Kauai. There were, of course, "sweeteners" when I resisted (e.g. double points for two years, etc.), but I didn't sign.

When I looked at the point fees for the resorts, the cheapest weeks were for 28,000 points up to hundreds of thousands for expensive places.

Now, in doing my research, it seems like the kind of points people are talking about, on your website and others, and on the resale market, are in the 5,000 - 15,000 - 25,000 etc. point range. Also, you mention $1 a point as being a good price - which would make the above deal worth $156,000 - I know that's not right!

Why the discrepancy? It seems like two different systems.

Any information you could provide would be appreciated. Thanks for the service you are doing by alerting potential buyers like me of the pitfalls of this whole timeshare deal.

Aloha, Stephen.

I didn't know what it could be, so I consulted with the folks from Redseason.com.au here in Australia. (The information is slightly different between regions of the world.) They said:

Wyndham sells two different systems in the USA - one is the "Worldmark by Wyndam" which is the equivalent of our system here in Australia (so 10000 credits for a 2 bedroom peak season at most resorts, etc) and the other one is the old Fairfield system which is now called something like "Wyndham Points" (just to be confusing). The Wyndham points system has a much higher point rating that the Worldmark system as you can see from Stephen's email.

Worldmark South Pacific owners do not currently have access to the properties owned by the Wyndham Points club so I don't have any direct information on what the conversion rate between the two would be.

So in short the systems are completely different and not sure what the resale value of the Wyndham Points system is (but as you would know in general you can pick up basically any timeshare on the secondhand market for around a third or less of the presentation prices) - I am sure a google search would turn up a number of brokers dealing with that system if he did want to buy one second-hand.