Guess I'll jump in because I see both sides.
1). Without this board and some of the people in this thread, my husband and I wouldn't have bought
DVC. Let alone resale in 2012. We just would have assumed timeshare=bad. We bought AKV at $68 in 2012 after about 3-6 months of reading this board extensively. We saved a ton versus direct! But my point here is two fold, this board convinced us to 1) buy but also 2) buy resale.
2) We did catch add-on-itis in 2014 and bought VGF direct. Was it as cheap as $68, heck no. But again, due to this board, I figured out 50 points would work for us. When I amortize out the $ upfront, the maintenance fees, and the years left I do find AKV to be cheaper but VGF isn't as terrible on a per-night basis as you'd think:
$7.81 per point for our re-sale AKV contract. So a 10 point a night room cost us $70.81 last year.
$8.42 per point for out direct VGF contract. So a 10 point a night room cost us $84.20 last year.
3)So yeah, re-sale
can save you a lot, especially upfront. And the people here mean well when they tell people about it. Many don't know resale is an option!
4) But...you also
can still save money with DVC even at $150 direct.
5) Some folks here on both sides get passionate about it.
In the end, we are all trying to be helpful. We are passionate about saving money
and Disney I suppose!
6) In the end, we all should accept whatever decision they make.
Since I've bought direct and resale I definitely see both sides. I'm glad my large purchase was resale, and I don't regret buying direct for VGF since it was the only way to buy it and if you look up in #2, we still overall save a lot of money compared to paying cash rates.
It's just funny that the argument, if we can even call it that, over resale vs. direct still creeps up so often.