FYI re: online reservations and points allocation

[PrincessV]

I discovered today that through multiple bookings/cancellations/banking/borrowing and several changes made online, my points were not allocated to use banked and borrowed up first, leaving me with 4 leftover borrowed points that would have to be used in my current UY. Those 4 leftovers should have been current UY and eligible for banking. A quick call to MS took care of it, but I'd have been out of luck had I not noticed and called. Keep an eye on your points!

 

[wdrl]

Was part of your problem due to making multiple changes at the same time, resulting in the unintended consequence of having the borrowed points not applied to a reservation? Or did the Online Reservation not use the points in order that it is supposedly programmed?

The Online Reservation System is programmed to use Borrowed points first, Banked points second, Transferred points third, and Annual Allotment fourth. If the Member has multiple contracts, it lets the Member choose which contracts to draw points from, and it lets the Member sequence the contracts. The Online Reservation System then displays a chart showing how the points will be drawn from the specified contracts. Before finalizing the reservation, the Member can make changes to the contracts being used and/or the order that the contracts are sequenced to fulfill the reservation.

I recently used the Online Reservation System to book 7 nights at Aulani. The reservation required 161 points and I wanted to make sure that it used 124 banked points that I had in three of my contracts. I also wanted to make sure that none of my 2012 BLT points would be used for this reservation (we have a big Family Gathering planned for June 2013 and I'll need to use my 2012 BLT points for that reservation).

To fulfill the reservation, I selected four of my contracts: Three BLT contracts that had Banked points and one of my AKV contracts. The System then displayed the following chart to show how it was drawing the points from by four contracts. In my case, it had to go to Step #13 to draw the 161 points needed for my reservation.

Initially, I had sequenced the three BLT contracts ahead of my AKV contract. However, before finalizing the reservation, I noticed that the 13th step in the allocation process would have drawn Annual Allotment (2012 UY) points from one of my BLT contracts, which I did not want to happen. So I changed the sequence of my contracts and placed by AKV contract ahead of my BLT contracts (Note: in hindsight, I now realize I could have banked my 2012 BLT points into my 2013 UY before I signed into the Online Reservation System. That would have made my 2012 BLT points unavailable to the Online Reservation System).

 

[PrincessV]

Nope, I already had a couple reservations before online booking opened; those had been modified at some point. Then I booked a few more online. And canceled 1 online. And re-booked online. There's been much banking and borrowing at different times in different amounts. Somewhere in there, a reservation that entailed borrowed points was canceled and re-booked using fewer points, leaving 4 borrowed points left over. The system didn't automatically swap those with another reservation that was using current UY points, so MS had to do it manually to "free" them for future banking.

ETA: I only have a single contract, so there was no chart, no pulling form different places.