Skyauction for Dummies??

[maggiew]

Could someone post a "sky auction for dummies" type thread for those of us who have no clue what is going on.

Is this like Ebay for a vacation?
What are good places to bid?
Rules, fees, etc?

Please educate me ...

Maggie

 

[Local_Girl]

I'll start with what I know...

It is similar to Ebay, and yes, you bid on vacation components. It is different from Ebay in that you deal with Skyauction for payments and travel arrangements rather than with each individual seller (at least this has been our experience when bidding on resort accomodations). There are auctions for resorts, hotels, air travel, packages, cruises, etc.

To my knowledge, all winners are subject to a $15 fee per auction. Some auctions on resort stays are bid-per-night, which means if you win the auction, you pay what you bid plus a $32 per night minimum charge. These are seldom a good deal. Other auctions are for one week time periods at a particular resort. Some auctions allow for a choice of resorts with several choices of dates. These auctions for a week's stay have a minimum flat charge of $195...so you add that to the $15, and you pay $210 in addition to whatever your winning bid may be. You can find some great deals with these auctions.

There is also something called a Ready Set Go auction for week long resort stays. These run a couple of times a day and generally go for $50, give or take a few dollars. You can check availability in advance to see what resorts are available during the time you wish to travel. You can also contact Skyauction and reserve a resort if you see one you like prior to actually winning the auction. Great deals can be had with the RSG auctions...you pay the $15 plus $195 plus your winning RSG bid amount.

Orange Lake Country Club, Vistana Villages, and Cypress Pointe are probably the more desirable resorts in the Orlando area that come up frequently. If you do a search on the DIS regarding a particular resort, you should get some info to help you decide if you'd like to stay there and what a good rate would be.

I would definitely watch the auctions carefully for at least a few days before trying to bid.

Good Luck!!

 

[spiceycat]

I like skyauction a little better than ebay - not as many people know about it - so the bids are as silly as the ones on ebay.

skyauction is part of RCI - RCI is one of the biggest exchange companies - they exchange timeshares - so instead of letting timeshares exchange use them (which is probably going to be a lawsuite over) - they are selling them.

high bidder whens - so if you really want it - check on it the last few minutes - bid as high as you want to go - but not at first. I also on the bids I really want use the max bid - if you are use to ebay it works the same way.

I go about it a bit different than Local_Girl - I looks under USA/Canda - then to the side click on Florida - then at the bottom click on hotels only.

I never bid on anything that does not 7 days in the min/max stay.

one problem - most of the nice stuff only comes up for the last minute - like right now there are two Orange Lakes for the labor day holiday - so I would always have a back up plan and I would make sure of the canceling policies of my back up before I started to bid.

this really works great for us folks who can drive to Orlando - if you have to depend upon the airlines I don't know how great it would work.

orange lake is a very good bid - Vistana is the one (for some reason) is hot right now.

I have also bid on SIlver Lake and Summer Bay (won the SB). but I really needed that so my bid was higher than what I would have liked.