Point usage questions

[jthelman]

I'm almost ready to buy in, but it seems like I keep coming up with questions that I can't answer. You guys have been very helpful and I appreciate the information. Here's my latest contributions to the litany of questions:

1) let's say you have 150 pts available, and need 155 for the length of stay you are booking. Can you pay cash to make up the extra 5 pts needed? If going 1 less day puts you at 145, what do you do with the extra 5 pts in your account? If it's already 5 banked pts, do you just eat them?

2) I see a lot of people with multiple small contracts at different home resorts, from what I can tell, people do this to guarantee that at least one resort is available at the 11 mo. window. I can't figure out how this could work. If you have 3, 50 pt. contracts, do they "age" each to build up enough pts. for a stay at each resort, or are they waiting until the 7 month window (defeats the premise above) then using all the contracts together for a stay?

Thanks!

 

[DVCconvert]

1) let's say you have 150 pts available, and need 155 for the length of stay you are booking. Can you pay cash to make up the extra 5 pts needed? If going 1 less day puts you at 145, what do you do with the extra 5 pts in your account? If it's already 5 banked pts, do you just eat them?

You cannot mix a cash stay and points, but you'd have several options for those 5 points.
a) within 7 months of your stay you can buy upto 24 points from DVC ($15 per pt I believe) these are called 'one time use' points.
b)you could borrow from your next years allocation of points to cover those 5
c)you could pay another member to transfer those points to you

If you have 5 points leftover and they have already been banked, they will expired at the end of the current use year.

2) I see a lot of people with multiple small contracts at different home resorts, from what I can tell, people do this to guarantee that at least one resort is available at the 11 mo. window. I can't figure out how this could work. If you have 3, 50 pt. contracts, do they "age" each to build up enough pts. for a stay at each resort, or are they waiting until the 7 month window (defeats the premise above) then using all the contracts together for a stay?

You can only book using the 11 month home resort advantage with the number of points you have at a given resort. At the 7 month mark you then could extend (based on availability) a home resort stay using points with different home resorts.

You could also bank and borrow a small contract over a 3 year timeframe so in your example once every 3 years you could have 150pts to use at a home resort.

Another reason some members buy smaller contracts is that they are likely to be able to be resold quickly if a member decided to sell.

HTH

 

[RobDoc]

If you have 5 points remaining in your current Use Year which have already been banked they cannot be transferred to another member since only current points may be transferred.

Your only option would be to use those points for a reservation - and you'd need to combine them with points borrowed from the next Use Year or with "One-time-Use" points or points transferred from another member.

If you find yourself a few points short for a reservation, you can try to get a cash reservation for the one night - MS can usualy link it to the rest of your reservation and sometimes a DVC member 25% discount may even be available.

As noted, you cannot just pay cash to make up a few points. Yout best option, if short by up to 24 points would be to purchase the "One-time-Use" points thru MS - but that can only be done within 7 months of arrival.