DVC Use Years

[Yankee626]

Almost every day I see questions about use years and how to use them. I've been a member for 25 years and never understood why DVC just doesn't have one use year in January ? Wouldn't it be easier to just replenish everyone's points on Jan 1 ? We all have to pay our dues at the same time; makes it easy to track ; why not the same process with our points ?

 

[thanxfornoticin]

I think it kind of spreads out the points, for things like banking, borrowing, and reservations. With UYs, points are allocated for member use every month or two throughout the year, not all at once. I guess dues are calendar year and reservations (where we use the actual points) are use-year. I know it can be confusing at times, but it's worked well for us after 30 years of DVC. And maybe that's why we don't mind it - we know each year what month our points are available.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

Pretty sure everyone who primarily travels Oct - Dec (or really even just the 2nd half of the year) would have a big problem with that.

 

[kanerf]

The Use Years are for inventory control. If everyone had the same then every single room would be booked by 10 AM Jan 1st.

 

[CarolynFH]

I've never actually seen much speculation as to why, and of course the Disney staff who designed the system back in the late 1980s-early 90s are long since retired and gone so not available to explain their reasoning to us.

I have inferred from various posts on TUG that Wyndham had at least two different use years for its points (January and July) - and is gradually consolidating them into a single UY beginning January 1. (This is based on posts complaining about losing points when buying a resale contract with a July UY which Wyndham changed to a January UY and didn't credit them the July-January points for that year.)

 

[Yankee626]

The Use Years are for inventory control. If everyone had the same then every single room would be booked by 10 AM Jan 1st.

Thats not true. If i want to book a room in November with my 11 month window ; ill book it in December not January. I'm quite sure nobody books their points on when their use year is but for when they want to travel and maybe the point chart . It doesn't seem to matter how you spread out inventory when you have say 2 million points to give out. People will book on a first come first serve basis year round.

 

[Yankee626]

It only matters if you have the points for time you want not if you have the points on the day your booking them. Use year makes no difference.

 

[drusba]

It only matters if you have the points for time you want not if you have the points on the day your booking them. Use year makes no difference.

Not with the banking rules. If everyone had a Jan use year and the eight month banking rule, meaning bank them by no later than Aug 31, there would be many who would be wary of booking a room for time in the fall because if anything happens to require cancellation of the trip, the points can be lost.

Over the years this site has been in existence (since the 90's), there have been many posts by newcomers asking for advice on the best use year to buy, and one of the answers given and repeated by many was that, if you have a particular time of the year you will likely go, buy a use year that begins not long before that desired time of year. Example: if you usually go in Nov, a Sep use year is a good one to have. Make a reservation for Nov that you then have to cancel and you will still have plenty of time to use the points for a different trip in the same use year or to bank them. If all were allowed only a Jan use year and one desired to book Dec all the time, then you would lose the points if you ever have to cancel.

The original banking rule when the use year months were created was that you could bank all your points by end of the sixth month of your use year, 50% by end of the ninth month and 25% by end of tenth. Those were not cumulative totals, e.g., if you banked 50% at the end of your sixth month, you could not bank anymore thereafter.

In other words, having many use years is ideal if you set up a system that allows banking while limiting the time by which such banking needs to occur. The combination of multiple use years, coupled with the banking rules, helps to spread out demand throughout the year.

Moreover, for many years after DVC first went on sale, Disney was using the varied use years as an additional incentive for sales. New purchasers, if they did not choose a use year, were typically given one that started three to four months before the time of sale. The sales pitch included that you would have less less than a year to wait to have double the points you purchased.

 

[Ashlotte]

Almost every day I see questions about use years and how to use them. I've been a member for 25 years and never understood why DVC just doesn't have one use year in January ? Wouldn't it be easier to just replenish everyone's points on Jan 1 ? We all have to pay our dues at the same time; makes it easy to track ; why not the same process with our points ?

This is one area that I think my other timeshare (WorldMark) does better. It's also a points (credits) based system, but instead of a "use year," we just have an "anniversary" month when our credits are posted into our account. So every February, I get a fresh set of credits to use. We can still bank or borrow, but we don't have to do anything for it- it happens automatically and the credits aren't "stuck" in a certain year because they have been banked or borrowed. Every night the system just refreshes, and any cancelled reservations have their credits magically return where they should be. There are no deadlines to bank because it just happens on it's own and there is no such thing as credits being held after a cancelation. It is way more flexible.

There are lots of things they do worse than DVC, but this is one where WM wins. If I could take the best policies from each system, I'd create the perfect timeshare. Lol.

 

[cdubyadubya]

Almost every day I see questions about use years and how to use them. I've been a member for 25 years and never understood why DVC just doesn't have one use year in January ? Wouldn't it be easier to just replenish everyone's points on Jan 1 ? We all have to pay our dues at the same time; makes it easy to track ; why not the same process with our points ?

I was very curious about this exact point. Thank you for starting a conversation. The replies have been so helpful.