A point to note in questions to DVC is that none of us actually bought *points* when we signed a DVC contract. We bought a % ownership of a unit, and that % ownership is represented by points. It is stated as such right in the legal contract.
So what I’d like to understand is that if they are increasing the total number of points needed to book a resort that is more than the total sold points, doesn’t that decrease my % ownership? That is the reason why in order to increase one unit in a time period you need to decrease it in another unit. The points need to balance, and looking at these charts, that’s not the case.
The issue is annual changes in total points that result from usual calendar changes.
The total points applicable to a 365-day year need to equal the total points applicable to the total ownership interests of the resort in the "base year," under the terms of the Membership Agreements for all resorts since BRV was created in 2,000. In other words when a resort first went on sale, DVC was supposed to choose a base year in which the total points for the year to reserve all rooms equaled the total points created by all the ownership interests.
Under the Membership Agreements and Product Understanding Checklists, outside of the base year, total annual points can actually increase for any calendar year but only for increases caused by normal calendar changes. When we had the 5-season charts, Easter and Thanksgiving would change dates annually but that had no real impact on total points to reserve all rooms for any year because it did not change total number of days in any particular season. Instead total points could increase as a result of other normal calendar changes, e.g., leap year adds an extra day to the year and thus points are added for that day in leap year; also some years have more weekend days than others or more weekend days in a high season which could increase points for the year above those in the base year.
Thus, those normal calendar changes allowed some increases in total points needed to reserve all rooms for some years above those in the base year, with the highest increases usually occurring in leap year.
What is happening with the new 7-season charts is that you can now have huge annual point changes other than those that occurred with the 5-season charts, and DVC can blame it mainly on a "normal" calendar change -- the annual change in the date for Easter.
The earliest possible date for Easter is March 22 and the latest possible date is April 25. Under the 7-season charts, the Sunday before Easter through Easter is in the highest season. The days in March (and April) before Palm Sunday and the Monday through Fri after Easter is in season 6 just below that highest season. Then all days in April thereafter are in the lower fifth season. Thus, when Easter is mid-March, you have a lot more days added to season 5 coming out of season 6, while when it is later in April you have more days added to season six that come out of season 5, e.g., when Easter is April 25, its latest possible date (which will occur in 2038), season 5 will actually disappear entirely, and all of March and April will be in season 6 or 7. In other words, annually, due to the annual Easter "normal calendar" change, you can have major changes in total points applicable to reserving all rooms for the year.
Added to the floating Easter issue created by the 7-season charts is that DVC seems to have purposefully chosen 2035 as the base year when Easter will be March 25. It could not reasonably have chosen a year when it could be earlier, e.g., the last time it was March 22 was 1818 and the next time will be 2285 more than 200 years after the current expiration date of all current DVC resorts.
The earlier Easter is in the base year, the greater the varying increases in total points can be from year to year. In other words, if DVC had chosen a base year with, for example, Easter on April 9, the annual possible increases caused by the annual Easter date “calendar” change would be significantly less than having the March 25 base year, and, in fact, there would likely be some years that total points are somewhat under the total ownership level of points. And maximizing the ranges of total points for the future calendar years maximizes DVC’s ability to gain more profit from the rental of rooms due to breakage.
In conversations with DVC that have been reported in this thread, it appears that DVC has claimed, inconsistently, that the base years for the resorts cannot change, that resorts have different base years, and that the base year for all resorts is 2035 and was changed when the new charts were created. It is the last of those I actually believe likely occurred, and, if so, one can seriously question whether DVC has acted properly in the best interests of the members by creating
point charts that rely so heavily for total annual points on the change in Easter's date, and whether it even has the right to change base years once they are chosen for a resort when it first goes on sale. Moreover, there is also the issue whether the base year concept can even be legally applied to OKW and BWV because the first appearance of the use of a base year occurred in the POS for BRV in 2,000.
