Search is down(!) Can someone explain USE YEAR to me in layman's terms?

[Dodie]

I can't believe that search is down. It's been weeks since I've seen that. I'm really sorry to ask what must be a commonly asked question, but I'm just not seeing what I need from the various FAQs...

We're considering buying a resale. It's use year is December. That seems to be a use "month" to me, not a "year," but I obviously don't understand it all.

What is that?
What does it mean?
What impact does it have on one's reservations? Banking? Borrowing?

Thanks so much.

 

[spiceycat]

it is more used for banking and borrowing - but it is also usefully for deciding when to make your reservation

Mind is June - so any trips in May for me are pushing it!

for a december use year your banking is as follows
100% by May 31
50% by August 31
25% by Sept 30
0% Oct 1 - November 30 (60 days before)

they use a 60 day cut off for a lot of things - you can't make a reservation (except using II or DVC) for the last 60 days of your use year.

I love my June use year - it works well for me - but I haven't heard anyone say that they had a bad year - so people just can't plan well.

they use a month and a year - I am not sure what the year is for beside their files. my year 93 appears in several documents.

the month (in your case) dec - is what you need to be careful with - if you do alot of traveling in November or October I would ask for another one.

You don't want to cancel your trip a few days before you go then lose all the points because you can't bank them. (you can't plan sickness and deaths happen all the time).

However if most of your vacation is in December - you will love this use year!!!!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Use year is the month you get your new points each year. It has nothing to do with when you can make your reservations, but could be important if you need to cancel a ressie at the last minute. You would want a use year that is well within the 6 mnonth banking period of the time you usually like to travel. A December use year can be a bit confusing, because you get your years allotment at the end of the year. That means that most of your 2004 points would be used in 2005.

 

[CarolMN]

Maybe my post at the end of this thread will help:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=515059

Best wishes -

 

[OneMoreTry]

The use year is defined by the month when you are given your new allotment of points.

My use year is October. So on October 1, 2004 I will have my 2004 points added to my account. I will get my 2005 points on October 1, 2005.

I got my 2003 points on October 1, 2003. So those are the points I'm using for my trip this summer. (Because my use year is so late in the year, I end up using my points the following calendar year.)

The reason it's called a use "year" is that you have one year from the time you receive the points to use them. If you don't do something with them after that year, they disappear like Disney magic.

So my points from October 1, 2003 disappear on September 30, 2004. My October 2004 points expire on September 30, 2005.

You can either:
Use the points for a vacation.
Bank them to use the following use year.
Or borrow them during a previous year.

Banking and borrowing is another matter.

 

[PamOKW]

DVC describes Use Year as the "birthday" of your points. We don't all get our yearly allotment of points on January 1. They are staggered throughout the year. You "use" the points for a year from the time you receive them. With a December Use Year, you use the points from December 1-November 30 every year. The banking deadlines are determined from December 1.

There has been a lot of discussion on here lately about Use Year and when search comes up you might want to look at them. Use Year is not crucial, but if you have a particular time of year that you travel, it's somewhat helpful to have a Use Year that is within a few months of that travel time. This gives you more time to make decisions about banking points and is helpful if you take a trip late in your Use Year (like November for a December Use Year) and have to cancel close to the date of travel.

 

[BWVDee]

Originally posted by dianeschlicht
........ You would want a use year that is well within the 6 mnonth banking period of the time you usually like to travel.

This is excellent advice!!!
Use Year is the one thing I did not think through at ALL when I bought my initial contract with DVC. Since all additional pts have come from add ons through Disney, I still have just one use year. My use year is Oct. How this came to be was due purely to the time I was buying and then a combo of pushing back the contract date so that I could get Magical Beginnings with a years worth of pts to use on our upcoming trip in Nov and then still have a full yr of current pts for furture trips. For the first year it was great because we started off our DVC with double the amount of pts the very first trip! However two BIG things I never even considered is that I almost always go to WDW sometime in late Aug or Sept., AND I take a lot of business trips to FL that I then combine with vacation at WDW. Well business trips, being business trips, are not always easy to book at 11 mo and also often have date changes! Having a trip booked so close to the end of your use year can get hairy if you have to rebook or cancel. I have only had one occasion where my poor choosing of a UY came back to bite me, but it was a substantial amount of pts on the line and it took some reshuffling, let me tell you! If I had to do it over again I would have picked a June UY--which is really ironic because I bought my DVC membership in April! I should have post dated the contract instead of back dating it. It was the chance of getting a whole years worth of pts right off the bat to use on an upcoming trip that sold me. We had our reservations at Poly/YC changed over to a 2 BR at BWV as soon as I signed on the dotted line! We fell in love during our first DVC trip and could not believe how wonderful it was! However in retrospect, when taking in consideration the number of late summer/early fall trips I take to WDW, this was a foolish decision.
But what the heck, if that should be the worst of my problems, I am a very lucky person!
Also for people with professions that dictate a specific vacation time period like teachers should also really consider all aspects of UY when purchasing a DVC membership. A very good friend and fellow DVC member who is a teacher, did not really weigh this consideration fully and also wishes she had gone for a different UY.
I personally do not think the importance of UY is emphasized enough by the DVC guides or even on these boards. After my experience, this is one thing I always tell people to really take into consideration when buying a DVC membership.

 

[CRobin]

Originally posted by BWVDee

I personally do not think the importance of UY is emphasized enough by the DVC guides or even on these boards. After my experience, this is one thing I always tell people to really take into consideration when buying a DVC membership.

I would agree with the stipulation that if you consider it a fair possibility that you will be forced to cancel upcoming plans, then you should fully understand use year and the implications surrounding it..

OTOH, if you don't see much likelihood in having to cancel, use year doesn't really come into play.

 

[PamOKW]

I agree that UY can become important but sometimes it's impossible to pick the perfect one. When I bought, my WDW trip was always the first week of May. My Use Year is perfect for this. I then discovered how nice the fall, Christmas and January are for trips. My UY continues to work fine to okay for these trips, although the December-January trips are iffy in terms of cancellation. However, now I also like to go down in March. My Use Year is absolutely the worst for this trip and I have lost points. This is also the trip that has been cancelled most often. However, the only solution to this problem is to buy another complete contract that would allow me to own more than one Use Year as insurance against late in the Use Year cancellations. I'm vacationing almost year-round at WDW so no one Use Year will protect me against cancellations.

I agree that if you are pretty sure a certain time of year will for the foreseeable future be your travel time, it's worthwhile to pick a matching Use Year for that time.

 

[dianeschlicht]

Pam, I think your explanation is exactly why I don't think UY is as important as a lot of folks think. We had no idea we could choose a UY when we bought, and our is not at all good for our most frequent travel dates (March UY, we like to go January). That being said, I have never had to cancel a trip last minute. Now that might change as we age, but I think the chances that you would have to cancel last minute would be few and far between.

I think Pam's idea that your travel patterns can change after you purchase is a good one. We no longer ONLY go in January!

 

[tigger2esq]

We have a March UY and we like to do most of our traveling in Sept/Oct. this works outperfect for us becuase we have until August to decide if we need to bank our pts and by then we DEFINITELY know if we are traveling in Sept/Oct!!! We did not plan this however and it was simply the "luck fo the draw" with the resale we ended up with. the only date I REALLY keep in my head is my August 100% banking deadline.

 

[Suzabelle]

We have not signed our paperwork yet. Our guide said our use year would be February. We take most of our trips in October, November and December. Can we request a change to a later time period?

 

[spiceycat]

call and ask! make sure your guide knows when you generally plan to take vacation.

as had been say - however - you might find that you change your vacation plans to go with your use year....

 

[jmminarik]

Originally posted by Suzabelle
Can we request a change to a later time period?

You can always request...whether they'll meet the request you'll find out when you do.

Fortunately for us, we lucked out with our Use Year. Not knowing a darn thing about it all, we got a September use year. That works for me on two levels...we prefer to go in December, and on a deeper, more fundemental level, attending/working in academia for 25 years I still think of September as the 'real' new year.

-Joe

 

[spiceycat]

I have a June use year - that also works for Sept, Oct, Nov and Dec ....also of course the summer months.

 

[pumpkinboy]

I hate my Use Year, but that being said, it has not yet posed too much of a problem for us, as we have never had to cancel a trip. Our Use Year is February bcs, like BWVDee, we wanted the soonest UY so we could get ahold of the next year's points ASAP. However, it turns out that we like going to WDW most during the Autumn holidays, like Columbus Day (aka Canadian Thanksgiving), Veterans' Day, early December and MLK Day in January. As our kids reach school age, I suppose we'll be going in late April for Mass school vacation too, and that will work with Feb UY, but our favorite, MLK Day weekend, usually causes us to borrow then hold our breath hoping no big blizzard keeps us from flying south. Feb is easier to keep in your head tho, bcs closer to the calendar year; I think Oct or Dec would bug me bcs so far off the calendar, but would be more convenient for our travel patterns. But hey, I've only got another 38 yrs to worry about this .

 

[CRobin]

Originally posted by pumpkinboy
I hate my Use Year, but that being said, it has not yet posed too much of a problem for us, as we have never had to cancel a trip. Our Use Year is February bcs, like BWVDee, we wanted the soonest UY so we could get ahold of the next year's points ASAP.[/B]

I am missing something here....

We are all going to get our 12 months worth of points at sometime during a 12 month period. When you get the points really doesn't matter, it is when you USE the points.

If you own at Resort X, and you WILL have points available for your trip @ 11 months, you can book @ 11 months. It makes no difference when those points are deposited into your account.

It gets more complicated if you borrow points into your current use year and then must cancel. Those borrowed points cannot revert to their original use year and must be used by the end of the current use year.

 

[pumpkinboy]

Originally posted by CRobin
...We are all going to get our 12 months worth of points at sometime during a 12 month period. When you get the points really doesn't matter, it is when you USE the points.
If you own at Resort X, and you WILL have points available for your trip @ 11 months, you can book @ 11 months. It makes no difference when those points are deposited into your account.

It gets more complicated if you borrow points into your current use year and then must cancel. Those borrowed points cannot revert to their original use year and must be used by the end of the current use year.

All of this is true, and if your plans bever change, then it makes no difference at all. In the initial purchase, we sold back the 1st year's points, so we wanted to actually have some points to use sooner rather than later.
It is the banking and borrowing issue that continues to bedevil me. By the time January reservations are being made (remember Feb UY), we are usually at borrow mode for the year, which gets scary. If we ever need to change a big November reservation, then banking might be tight. So if there were one thing I would change about our DVC participation, it would be our UY.

 

[BWVDee]

For someone that never changes their travel dates, I guess UY can be overlooked. However many people do change travel dates and as pumpkinboy said, for a trip booked closed to the end of your UY or even worse a trip with borrowed pts booked for the end of your UY can become quite a hassle if the trip needs to be changed.
I have had to change trip dates quite a few times, due to various reasons. I just canceled and rebooked 2 WDW/DVC trips in the past week alone! My April trip was canceled and rebooked for June due to a change in the business portion of my trip and our May trip was canceled because now instead of WDW we are going to SC for my DS's graduation. So now instead of BWV we are possibly going to stay at HH for a few days. Things happen, that is life. And no matter how you slice the pie; having a UY during a time that you reguarly go to WDW is a bad idea. I go to WDW very often and at all different times of the year but one time I am always there is late Aug/Sept. An Oct use year was a terrible choice on my part.
YMMV. This has been my experience.