BOGO scam

[Dividends]

Loop hole?

Slightly immoral... But if you are okay with walking, this is just a bit more advanced and a bit more shady.

So if you like VGF buy a few direct points there,
Reserve at 11 months with home VGF($150pp)
Cancel at 7 months
Rebook same time with VB($30pp) or whatever other low cost point resort.

then either rinse and repeat with premium points or bank them for next year or use them for another stay.
Sort of a BOGO...

 

[bwvBound]

FWIW, you have no guarantee that the reservation you cancel will be available for re-booking with your other points. Once canceled, it might get picked up by the waitlist or by another owner.

To increase certainty:
a) Book the desired reservation at 11 months
b) At 7 months, book a new reservation for same location/dates/unit type using your other points (if the reservation is available)
c) .... then cancel the first reservation

 

[Msmithmd]

Many members who booked at high-demand resorts and tried to change at seven months to another high-demand location have reported canceling their first reservation, not being able to book the second location, and then finding no availability back at their original reservation within just a couple elapsed minutes.

You might be able to do this on occasion, but you might also get burned if you employ it at a high-demand season.

Also, before you describe VB points as cheap, do a total cost assessment of this resort versus other choices and add in a couple decades of respective maintenance fees. Then re-analyze whether these points are truly "cheap"...

 

[Dividends]

I didn't mean to slander VB but you can get contracts resale assuming they pass rofr for$30 true the mfs are the highest but an SSR at $60 is still cheap too and works in the scenario.

I'm just wondering how many people employ this "scam" since many admit to walking.

You buy the most expensive resort and also the least expensive resort

Book with premium pts at 11 months and then at 7 months cancel and with the other account(cheap pts) quickly book at 7 months.

So you can always circumvent the 11 month rule. And get twice the stays at the premium hotel at 1/2 the points cost.

 

[bwvBound]

I'd say your approach is a 'strategy' more than a 'scam.' One can't always be certain of the discounted reservation but it is worth a shot.

 

[Kidanifan08]

I didn't mean to slander VB but you can get contracts resale assuming they pass rofr for$30 true the mfs are the highest but an SSR at $60 is still cheap too and works in the scenario.

I'm just wondering how many people employ this "scam" since many admit to walking.

You buy the most expensive resort and also the least expensive resort

Book with premium pts at 11 months and then at 7 months cancel and with the other account(cheap pts) quickly book at 7 months.

So you can always circumvent the 11 month rule. And get twice the stays at the premium hotel at 1/2 the points cost.

So then what do you do with the "premium points" that you did not end up using? Do you try to book another stay at the premium resort at the 11 month mark? You eventually have to use those points, and their only good for 24 months going forward. Frankly, I enjoy staying at my home resort, and if I can't get into another resort at 7 months, premium or not, that is fine with me.

As stated by others, those cancelled points can be scooped up by someone else in seconds. Although, in my experience with canceling a 1-2 night stay to use another contract, I have had 100% success within 30-60 seconds of cancellation. A longer stay may be more risky.

I don't own at two different resorts, but for this to work, it would probably have to be contracts with the same UY so they both appear on the same DVC member website login. If you had to log-in, cancel the "premium" reservation, log-out and then log-in with the "bargain" points contract, the likelihood of success would be very low. Lets face it, you are dealing with Disney IT; you may actually need to add the steps of closing your browser, cleaning your cache and restarting your computer to make this work!

I think that in the end, it is easier to just buy where you want to stay. So far, we have found it fairly easy to switch to other resorts as 7 months, other than BWV and BCV during F&W for an extended stay. I was able to get a Friday night BWV BW view studio for this October at less than 7 months, so it is not impossible.

 

[Msmithmd]

Oh, I think if I were an owner at VGF who got shut out of, say, a standard view studio reservation at ten months, had a wait list that hadn't filled, and then read in here that someone was intentionally doing this at seven months, "scam" is exactly the word I would use.

To be fair to the original poster, though, that's DVC's fault and not his. He is suggesting an exploitation of the unfair and inefficient wait list system. If that system worked correctly, his strategy would less likely work, because the system would check existing wait lists before putting the points out there for anyone to book with "non-home" points.

This is one of those "don't hate the player; hate the game" scenarios. And yes, it might in practice work for the OP at least some of the time. But it sure feels ethically questionable to intentionally bypass other home resort owners in this manner.

 

[sssteph]

I don't get why you would do this at all. You still paid either DVC or a resaler to buy both sets of points and you still have both sets of points to use, as someone else noted.

 

[LauraLea]

I don't get why you would do this at all. You still paid either DVC or a resaler to buy both sets of points and you still have both sets of points to use, as someone else noted.

Yes, and if you do not use those premium points for an 11 month reservation, they become the same value as the cheap points.

Laura

 

[nabi]

I go to Disney, not Vegas, for a reason.

 

[Lorilais_mommie]

I don't get why you would do this at all. You still paid either DVC or a resaler to buy both sets of points and you still have both sets of points to use, as someone else noted.

I 2nd this.. I don't get it..
What's the difference than just using your VB points at 7mo. Out?

Saving your GF for something else.. Altho I don't know what, since any other place you would use them would be a "step down" in price..
Thus losing your $155p evaluation..

If GF is your home resort, book at 11mo. If you want..
If not, you may get lucky enough at 7mo. And get in.. No scam..

You have already paid you upfront cost and MF, its just a matter of trading points for the resort you want..

 

[3littleangels]

I am surmising OP's original intent was to point out the possibility in which someone could simply purchase half of his/her desired points at VGF at $155/point while purchasing the same set of points at VB at $30/point, thereby saving the difference of $125/point X number of desired points (MF not under consideration for this example) while conceivably enjoy the same advantage as if the entire purchase was made of VGF points. I can see this scenario playing out if I were to be interested in staying at VGF every year, since staying at other properties other than VGC would be not as cost effective (from initial purchase perspective). Of course this assumes the tactic of booking at 11 months out and swapping with VB points at 7 months out works every time. Then again, if staying at VGF is a must for me every year, I could probably save myself a lot of headache in just taking the upfront cost hit and purchase 100% VGF points. Hopefully this makes sense. I am sure there are others with more brilliant deductions than I could ever imagine.

 

[Tink2312]

I just can't see this working. The cancelled reservation days would likely be picked up by a waitlist (or at least some would). If those days were still open for booking anyway at VGF at 7 months, then why bother buying VGF points at all.

If you hope to stay at a premium resort every trip but buy an off-site location then chances are you'll end up disappointed.

 

[rlovew]

I actually did something like this with my July trip with my BLT and VGF points. I had reserved my July reservation at VGF during the 11 month window (but closer to 8 months actually) and then at about 6.5 months in the middle of the night I canceled the standard studio with the VGF points and used my BLT points to reserve the same studio. Then I used the VGF points to book a room in November which was still in my home resort priority and available. If it hadn't worked I simply would have booked BLT tower for July and been fine with that and if the room hadn't been available in November at the time I was changing I would not have bothered changing. Since I like both resort but we prefer VGF I can see doing this on an occasional basis but I do not see that switching at 7 months exactly would be good. As I said I waited until we were a few weeks into the 7 month period (partly because I wanted to know the Nov dates I wanted were open) and then when it was less likely someone would be trying for the same room at the same time as me I took the chance. I actually also had a 1 bedroom booked with my BLT points in case the studio was gone when I went to book it.

 

[kristenrice]

I guess I am curious as to what the plan is for the "premium" points if you aren't using them at GFV? This plan makes no sense because booking at 7 months is still booking at 7 months. It doesn't matter that you made a reservation with home resort points at 11 months. To use the non-home resort points, you still need to make a new reservation and there must be availability. If it worked the way it should, if you cancel your GFV reservation at the 7-month window with the hopes of creating an available room to use your VB points to book, that room should go to the first GFV owner on the waitlist instead. I know, the waitlist doesn't always work that way in practice, but that is how it is supposed to work.

 

[tjkraz]

Loop hole?

Slightly immoral... But if you are okay with walking, this is just a bit more advanced and a bit more shady.

So if you like VGF buy a few direct points there,
Reserve at 11 months with home VGF($150pp)
Cancel at 7 months
Rebook same time with VB($30pp) or whatever other low cost point resort.

then either rinse and repeat with premium points or bank them for next year or use them for another stay.
Sort of a BOGO...

As policy, DVC Member Services reps will not do what you describe UNLESS there are vacant, unbooked rooms available at 7 months. I don't know if you're speaking from experience or merely speculating. If from experience, your encounter was the exception rather than the rule. If you ask a MS rep to cancel a reservation booked at 11 months and immediately re-book using non-home points, typically they will decline to process the transaction.

As for doing it yourself online, there's always the risk that another member will grab the room between the time it is cancelled and re-booked. At any given time there are dozens-to-hundreds of members and MS reps searching inventory. It takes a few minutes to cancel one reservation and then re-book. If the room disappears during that period, nothing you can do about it.

 

[curan69]

For my Feb trip I was able to have MS move points around so that some transferred in points were used for an existing reservation so I could see and use left over points online. (Transferred points don't show up online) if they are able to move points around what would stop them from just changing where points come from without cancelling and rebooking?

On another point I got the Impression the OP was talking about buying a small contract at a resort to gain the 11 month booking not realizing you need the full amount of points for that advantage.

 

[DizBub]

As policy, DVC Member Services reps will not do what you describe UNLESS there are vacant, unbooked rooms available at 7 months. I don't know if you're speaking from experience or merely speculating. If from experience, your encounter was the exception rather than the rule. If you ask a MS rep to cancel a reservation booked at 11 months and immediately re-book using non-home points, typically they will decline to process the transaction.

Isn't this called circumventing the home resort booking advantage? I know they won't let you do this unless there is availability at that time.

I had banked points from a BCV resale that I wanted to switch out at 7 months for a BLT reservation I had made at 11 months. Then put the BLT points back in my account. Sweet, if it could be done, right? I asked about if it could be done here and got jumped on, hard. How dare I try to circumvent the home booking advantage?!!

Well, I did try to do this and was told by MS that this could not be done as it would be circumventing the home resort booking advantage.
CM did check availability but there wasn't any so we just kept it the same.

So what I want to know is, where is the outrage?

 

[Kidanifan08]

Isn't this called circumventing the home resort booking advantage? I know they won't let you do this unless there is availability at that time.

I had banked points from a BCV resale that I wanted to switch out at 7 months for a BLT reservation I had made at 11 months. Then put the BLT points back in my account. Sweet, if it could be done, right? I asked about if it could be done here and got jumped on, hard. How dare I try to circumvent the home booking advantage?!!

Well, I did try to do this and was told by MS that this could not be done as it would be circumventing the home resort booking advantage.
CM did check availability but there wasn't any so we just kept it the same.

So what I want to know is, where is the outrage?

I got the sense that OP was talking about doing this transaction all online, which would require canceling the "premium" reservation first and then going back into the reservation system within a minute or two and snapping up with the less costly contract points. That is a little different that asking MS to simply swap out the points. I think that there is a chance that doing the cancel/re-book online could actually work most of the time. The cancelled room goes back into the inventory within 1-2 minutes and if you search for it again, it often shows up. But there is the real risk of losing the reservation altogether and having nothing.

Hopefully you found a way to use those banked BCV points, somehow! I hate when points go to waste!!

 

[curan69]

I must admit that the reservation they switched the points for was made less than 7 months. Perhaps that's the difference, I gained no booking advantage by them switching the points.