I'm just going to add some detail to Use Year subject, since other posters here have covered other points well so no point in me reiterating those things
There isn't January, May, July or November Use Years.
~Ideally what you are trying to do when deciding on UY is to pick one where you will not travel during the last 4 months of that Use Year.
~You would want to be in a situation where you could bank CURRENT UY points providing you've cancelled 31 days or more to checkin OR
~where you'd be able to have the most time until the end of UY to re-utilize banked or borrowed points used in your ressie (because these points are never rebankable or returnable to UY they're originally from) and
if your cancellation happened from 30 days thru 1 day before checkin then
you'd have CURRENT UY points to use before end of UY as well because they'd then be unbankable also.
You mention April and summer months for travel; these UYs would do the following for you :
-------BANK CURRENT PTS-----------------------USE BANKED,BORROWED,Non-Bankable CURRENT--------
FEB..................9/30 ..........................1/31
MAR ................10/31 ........................ 2/28-29
APR..................11/30 ....................... 3/31
JUN .................1/31......................... 5/31
AUG..................3/31..........................7/31
SEPT................4/30..........................8/31
OCT..................5/31.........................9/30
DEC...................7/31........................11/30
Having April UY covers you well for travel during April & summer months, leaves you until Nov. 30 to bank & following March 31st to re-use points that were banked &/or borrowed in your original ressie and if any current UY points were rendered unbankable if you cancelled less than 31 days to checkin - so if for example
4/1/2009 you received your 2009 UY allotment of points to be used in 8/31/2009 reservation & also borrowed points from 2010 UY are used in reservation but you cancelled on 7/31/2009 ( 31 days before checkin ).....
then CURRENT UY points ( from 2009 allotment ) can be banked by 11/30/2009
OR re-used in a new reservation with a checkout no later than 4/1/10
AND borrowed points ( from 2010 allotment ) would need to be re-used in
a new reservation with a checkout no later than 4/1/10 - -
(same would apply if banked points from 2008 UY allotment are in this reservation)
APRIL UY gives you over 6 months to re-use points that you could
not otherwise bank on a cancelled late summer reservation.
August UY could work too but not as well as April because if you cancelled an April ressie less than 31 days or if the ressie has banked &/or borrowed you only have about 4 months before reaching end of UY to reuse those points.
. I want to concentrate on the cost and have all these issues throught through. Thanks for your help.
