Banking vs Borrowing

[lumpydj]

I guess I don't fully understand the whole points and reservations thing. Here's my situation. I have 91 points left in this UY and will get another 210 in October (next UY). I made a reservation today for December 2010. I thought that if I had enough points (by combining what I have now and what I'll have at the reservation time), I could just make the reservation. However, when I spoke with MS, they said, it doesn't look like you have enough points - do you want to borrow? When I explained that I'll be getting another 210 in October which is before my reservation, that there shouldn't be a problem with points. She just said, so you want to bank your 91 points then. I told her - whatever you need to do to get me the reservation and to make sure they use the 91 points from this UY first, that's what she should do. So she banked my 91 points into my next UY and took the points from there.

I'm not 100% sure this is how it's supposed to be done - but I'm hoping it was the most logical - especially if we need to cancel. What's your (the experts) opinion of this. Is this how it should have been done - or was there a better way?

Thanks!

 

[MrShiny]

The CM at MS didn't explain it too well!

Your 91 points expire 9/30/10 unless they are banked. To use them for a 12/2010 reservation, you need to bank them.

It sounds like your reservation in December is for more than 210 points. You have 2 choices:

1) borrow from 2012 UY. You'll use your 210 2010 UY points, and borrow the extra from 2012. This will leave your 91 points in the 2009 UY, which ends 9/30/2010. If you might be going on vacation before 9/30/2010, you might want to to this. If it turns out you can't, then you could still bank those points until the end of the 8th month of your UY (which would be 5/30/10). They would then be good for trips 10/1/2010 - 9/30/2011.

Keep in mind that any points you borrow go into the 2010 UY, so they expire 9/30/2010.


2) bank your 91 points now and use them. The downside of this is that if you cancel the reservation, those points can no longer be used for trips before 9/30/10. The extra points you need will be taken from your 210 2010 UY points. If you needed even more, you could also borrow from the 210 points in your 2011 UY.

So the idea is you can use up to 3x your points (borrowing from the next UY, banking from the previous by the banking deadline), but these points stay in the UY they are put into and cannot be banked or borrowed again (they also can't be transferred to another member).

Hope that helps!

 

[disneynutz]

You should bank your points from 2009 into 2010 and use them first. If you don't, you will lose them. Make sure that the banked points are applied to the new reservation and then use your 2010 points to complete the reservation.

Bill

 

[DebbieB]

You need to specifically tell them you want to bank the 2009 points first, they will not do it automatically.

 

[lumpydj]

Thanks everyone for the clarification. I didn't realize they had to physically "bank" the points from the current UY to use in the next UY (when the ressie will take place). Luckily, the CM did bank my 91 points to apply towards the Dec ressie. There was no chance we'd used those 91 points this UY - since we're going to AKV in Feb of this year and the 91 points is what's left over from that. We won't be going before Dec... I did tell the MS CM to use the 91 points first (mostly because I saw posts on here previously stating that you should do this just to be sure) . I'll now have a measly 29 points left over after the Dec trip. I'll probably bank those. Although, I have until May 2011 to decide that... I'll get the hang of these point transactions one of these days. I have 47 years to do it!