I purchased a 2 bedroom, one week time share at Orange Lake in 2004 for $14,000.00 which I was told was ALWAYS A RED WEEK. I then joined the RCI group inorder to be able to exchange my week for other travel locations.
I have just arrived at my 'home' location for a week's stay and was invited to an 'owner's update' 'meeting' while I was here. I was promised that it was not a hard sell and just an informative meeting about the upgrades and new things at the resort.
When I arrived and was greeted by my 'associate' I knew there was going to be a sales pitch.
I was told how smart I was to buy when I did because today a 2 bedroom at this resort sells for $36,000 today!
Then I was asked about my travel style which is to primarily use my timeshare to exchange and that I was currently waiting for an exchange to Hawaii. My associated then announced that I will never get that exchange because sneaky RCI assigns a POINTS VALUE to my property and that points value is only 24,500 points because I bought a BLUE week (what happened to everything here is a RED week?) and it would take 81,000 points to exchange into an equitable Hawaii property. But lucky me, Orange Lake is changing to a points system instead of a weeks system, and if I "upgrade" by buying ANOTHER week, or TRADE UP my week by spending more money, I get the privelage of moving to a points value. Buying an additional week in a 2 bedroom today will give me 150,000 points! No one could explain to me why what I currently own does not have the same "points" value or why I have to "buy into" their points program. It was further explained to me that after I made such an investment, my 150,000 points would only equate to 75,000 points with RCI so I could BUY more point.
This whole points issue is just a bunch of crap to hard sell by telling people that all resorts will eventually be on a points systems and at that point, my only option will be to stay at the resort I bought at on the week I bought at. So, the only reason I bought a time share in the first place becomes a worthless waste of money.
I was so mad at that point, the sales rep got her manager, who continued to try to hard sell me. They finally got the message that I wasn't buying, but brought in a 3rd person to give me the "best deal" of paying just $4000 to buy into this B.S. Points sytem.
AT this point I just want to dump the whole time share property and pay as I go for my vacations, but because Orange Lake is now only selling points, no one even want's my week.
I HATE Orange Lake and think the whole thing is just a scam because they can't build anymore properties so they have to make money by gouging the people who already bought their pack of lies in the first place.
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