While other timeshares may also use point type systems, none of them are nearly as complex as
DVC's.
Most others base everything on a calendar year, so everybody uses their 2005 points in calendar year 2005, etc. Other timeshares do not have the 'classifications' on points as DVC does.
With DVC everyone has different Use Years with different use year months. Points have a home-resort identification which gives them an 11/7 month booking window. Points may be classified as regular, banked, borrowed, holding, reservation, transferred. Each of these classifications places restrictions on the points themselves, affecting anything from type of resort (Reservation points cannot be used for a DVC-resort reservation), Banking or Borrowing (banked, borrowed, holding, reservation, transferred points may not be banked or borrowed), booking dates (not only the 11/7 month windows but also restrictions on Holding points)
Now throw in that there are 7-resorts, all with different point structures, and even with point structures that change dates according to Disney Seasons, and change between weekend and weekday points.
Other systems have point structures based on a 7-day week. For example in one system you can split it into two separate reservations of a 4-day stay, and a 3-day stay. But unlike DVC, you can't use just any days. The 4-day stay must be MonTueWedThu and the 3-day must be FriSatSun, or some other combination.
In another system you may be able to split a 2-B/R into a 1-B/R and a Studio, but each reservation must be the full 7-day week (Our Marriott is like that)
It's the full latitude of options you have with DVC that makes an on-line system very complex. In other systems they only have to check if week # 26 is available, for example. With DVC they have to see if specific days are available. With everybody checking in and checking out on different days of the week it can get very complex.
As mentioned in my prior post, checking your account status is the first step. I would imagine checking availability only, would be the next logical step. (This would at least eliminate some calls to MS), and the 3rd step would be to actually make reservations on line. (This is the biggie, and most complex step to incorporate).
On a typical day there are anywhere from about 80 to 120 MS agents handling the phone lines. So the amount of computer inquiries can be tremendous with banking, borrowing, reservations, checking availability at 5 different resorts, and maybe 2 different categories of room types. Now add something on-line where you might get several hundred people trying to check availability at the same time, and trying to keep everything in real time could be a big problem.
You might check for a reservation now, but in just 15 minutes from now, everything has changed.
Plus, the real question many of us ask of MS is not if a specific date is available for us, but more of just how open is that date currently. If there's only 2-more rooms available I want to book it right now, but if 80% of the rooms are still available, then I don't need to be in a hurry. Putting that kind of capability on line, in real time, adds more complexity.
to a CM about my ressie, not leave it to a computer to screw up. 
