Banking/borrowing/transfers/last minute trips

[Raenstoirm]

Finally ready to bite the bullet and buy a resale, so now I am debating use year. Where are the cutoff dates for banking? (4 months?) What if we want a last minute trip, but we have already banked for the year, can we borrow from next year and use immediately? What about transfer points? Once you have them, are the just like the yearly points? Do they pick up your use year or the one they came with? Can you bank them and if so do they expire on your use year or their original? (trying to decide how many points we would need and if doing an occasional transfer is better than buying a larger contract).

Secondary issue, if you have a ressie after the banking date and have to cancel, what do you do? Rent the points on here? Do you have any recourse with Disney? (two small kids and an elderly grandmother in a nursing home makes any trip a bit tricky if someone gets sick. Only had to cancel one trip in the past and we had already arrived at WDW when a family member passed away, but still a bit gun-shy.)

 

[disneyberry]

See my replies in blue.

Finally ready to bite the bullet and buy a resale, so now I am debating use year. Where are the cutoff dates for banking? (4 months?)

Take a look at CarolMN's great post about Use Year:
http://www.disboards.com/threads/understanding-use-year-updated-january-2-2015.1942668/

What if we want a last minute trip, but we have already banked for the year, can we borrow from next year and use immediately?

Yes.

What about transfer points? Once you have them, are the just like the yearly points? Do they pick up your use year or the one they came with? Can you bank them and if so do they expire on your use year or their original? (trying to decide how many points we would need and if doing an occasional transfer is better than buying a larger contract).

When you transfer points into your account, they retain the home resort and Use Year of the owner who transferred you the points. Transferred points can be banked, but cannot be borrowed. See my thread for all the (somewhat complicated) details:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=491988

Secondary issue, if you have a ressie after the banking date and have to cancel, what do you do? Rent the points on here? Do you have any recourse with Disney? (two small kids and an elderly grandmother in a nursing home makes any trip a bit tricky if someone gets sick. Only had to cancel one trip in the past and we had already arrived at WDW when a family member passed away, but still a bit gun-shy.)

Disney will not help you deal with the points that you didn't get to use. If you're worried about the value of your DVC points in that situation, you should purchase the custom DVC travel insurance administered by Travelex. You must buy this at the beginning of the calendar year to get pre-existing conditions waived (important if you're concerned about elderly grandmother causing cancellation of a trip).

You can also try to recoup the costs by renting the points out, but it may be hard to do if the last few months of your UY fall during "DVC peak times", for instance December UY owners have a harder time renting distressed points because October and November are usually booked up everywhere.

 

[Raenstoirm]

Good call about the distressed points and busy season! Never even considered that problem. Ugh, so much to think about! lol

 

[pmaurer74]

Can you use transferred points for an existing reservation? Let's say you have a trip reserved and you see an offer for $8 points because they are distressed but you have a trip next month. Can you purchase the points and use those instead of your points?

 

[CMNJ]

Member services can reallocate points you own for existing reservations. So if you booked a reservation with your own points and then transferred in points to your account you could switch them out as long as you didn't use the home resort advantage for that reservation (or the transfer points would have to be from the same resort). However keep in mind if you used banked or borrowed points for the reservation you would still have to use them before the end of your current use year as you can't bank them again or return borrowed points. Another thing I am not sure about (hoping someone else knows the answer) is whether you can switch them out inside of the 31 day window without the original points going into holding-I would think they wouldn't go into holding since you aren't canceling the reservation but I personally haven't done it so not sure.