Lessons learned with my membership in 2020.

[asunutgirl]

To say this year blows is an understatement. I also learned a very hard lesson about using my membership this year.

We had previously used our 2019 and 2020 points to book a week at Aulani (our home resort) 11 months in advance. We were scheduled to be there late May/early June of this year. After booking that vacation, I grabbed 3 nights at VGC in March using 2021 points. We generally do a DVC trip every other year so using those 2021 points wasn't a big deal. Well - it's come back to bite me in the backside.

We moved our May/June Aulani trip to Christmas week back in March - stupidly thinking that things would be better. Nope. Yesterday, we made the decision as a family to cancel that trip. Yes, I know they are open but some of the trip reports and testing stories aren't encouraging. We were facing almost $4K alone in flight and testing costs to sit by the pool wearing a mask with much of the resort shut down.

I had forgotten that we had used the 2021 points for VGC and not Aulani. And because we canceled after the banking deadline, I am looking at almost 500 points that must be used by March. I was able to grab a couple nights at the VGC for New Years to use some of the points now that they are opening. And my college age student is using a few in Feb for a WDW trip with her bestie. (Praying that they can go.) But I will be having to dump over 200 points into RCI. It's not a total loss but we previously had an RCI timeshare and those resorts are not up to DVC standards. We will use them but it is a lesson in point planning for me for sure. The March trip to VGC was booked on a whim and it's now going to prevent us from using points in 2021. Lesson learned.

 

[starry_solo]

Have you considered renting the VGC reservation and get some money back that way?

 

[CarolMN]

What is your use year? Where are the points sitting right now that were used for the cancelled Christmas trip? Depending on your use year, it may be possible to modify the VGC reservation to use some of those points, or even bank the 2020 points.

ETA: I see in another thread that your points expire 3/1/2021. That means the banking deadline for your 2020 points was October 31, 2020. Sorry, you just missed it. So unless you can use the points at a DVC resort before 3/1/2021, you will lose them if you don't deposit them into RCI. If they are direct or grandfathered points, you can use them at DLH or PP, too. This year is so tough for many. Sorry you are in this situation. Maybe try renting as @starry_solo suggests?

 

[Lumpy1106]

I'm fairly new to DVC but here's what I learned - once you borrow points, they do not go back. Yeah, I know, it's been said 1000 times here. In practice though, it's confusing. We had originally planned a stay in Orlando the night we arrived and the night before we departed (to save points, but also because we were getting in really late and leaving relatively early - we wouldn't really be on property either day - why spend the points?). With COVID, that seemed risky, so we borrowed points at the last minute to move our entire stay on property. It didn't seem like a big deal, until we reserved our 2021 stay 11 months out. Now we had to borrow more 2022 points than we would have, and we have committed to a trip we weren't really ready to commit to. If we cancel, we can still bank the 2021 points, but the borrowed 2022 points now must be used in 2021. Those oddball point amounts you see in the resale contracts are suddenly making a lot of sense.

Lesson learned, especially this year;
We should have rented the points to fill out our 2020 trip. After all, there were a ton of distressed points when we travelled in August and we could have gotten a great deal, plus we wouldn't be playing the banking-borrowing game we had no intention of playing. It's really easy to just borrow the points, but that's not always the best idea.

 

[CarolynFH]

Have you called DVC MS? They've been putting borrowed points back into the UY they came from, and so far as I know they're still doing it. As @CarolMN says, MS might be able to reallocate and save some of your points, especially since they come from VGC and AUL, both of which were closed much longer than the other DVC resorts. It's worth a call!

Edited to say that I just saw your post on the other thread, that you have talked to MS and there's no help there. I'm sorry that things are so messed up for you.

 

[asunutgirl]

The 2021 points were used for a vacation that we took in March 2020 so those points are gone. And yes, I talked to MS. Disney is making no concessions.

 

[kboo]

Oof, so your May/June Aulani points have to be used by March? I'm sorry.

We recently had a similar situation, although in retrospect I probably would have done the same thing, and I say this with everything having worked out in the end. We'd banked our points into 2021, but then in a weirdly hopeful moment thought we might be able to go over Thanksgiving, so we booked at the Swolphin. Then we used transferred points to turn that into a DVC trip before canceling altogether ... now we are hoping for a Christmas trip with a mix of Swan + our own expiring DVC points. Here's hoping we can use our points that were banked into 2021!!

And as for lessons learned for us:
Stay aware of banking deadlines and cancellation policies (as they are changing). Set calendar reminders like "Make final decision re: August trip" and keep track of the membership and UY of the points that are being used for each part of the stay. As of right now, I am filling out reservations with OTU points rather than borrowing because it's already complicated enough.

 

[HappyDisneyWife]

Ugh. I’m so sorry!! I hope you’re able to get better help through MS, can rent them out, or find a fun/unexpected way to use them yourself!

All the best!