Swapping Points Used to Pay for a Reservation?

[Big Kid]

We are not members yet, but are sweating out ROFR and I am happily planning our hypothetical first welcome home.

I have not seen this mentioned anywhere so it's probably not possible, but I am wondering if one can change the points used to pay for a reservation after the reservation is made. For example, if we made a reservation with our own current year points, then obtained additional points in a transfer at a later date, could we change the reservation to use the transferred points instead of our own points? I am picturing buying distressed points that will expire soon, say in 60 days, using them to pay for an existing reservation, then banking our own points for next year's vacation. Is this allowed?

If not, is there any chance of canceling a reservation and then making a new reservation for the same dates and room type during the same phone call? Or do rooms automatically go to wait lists as soon as reservations are cancelled?

 

[5forDiz]

If the transferred points are not Home Resort points for the DVC resort your reservation is at then you cannot substitute those points into that reservation until 7 mos window or less and, additionally, at least 1 more of the same size villa for those dates at that resort would need to be available; the points cannot just be substituted because doing so then defeats the purpose of owner's Home Resort priority booking window ( 11 months thru 7mos+1 day before check-in date wanted )

You'd have to be sure too that your points used in initial reservation are still within their banking window ( first 8 months of your Use Year ) in order for you to be able to bank them into the next UY.

A reservation can be cancelled and another booking made in same phone call with MS but you run a risk (granted, it may be small risk but it has been known to happen) that in the interim of reservation being cancelled and next reservation being booked that availability may disappear leaving you without any reservation.

Best wishes on your planning

 

[Dean]

Often the best approach is to make the new reservations with the transferred points before canceling the old reservation assuming you have enough appropriate points to do so. Many variations on this theme can be helpful such as making a few days and canceling a few days on the existing reservation then linking them together.

 

[maburke]

I did a reallocation like this, but it was very complicated and not worth doing in ordinary circumstances, in my opinion. You cannot use non-home points to move into a home-resort reservation made more than 7 months out, as described above. Also, I found out that I had to use 2009 transferred points, because my 2008 UY was not active. So that eliminated Sept, Oct, and Dec 2008 UYs for me, which were the ones that were past their banking window and so were selling for distressed prices. I ended up paying full price for usable points.

Lesson is: sometimes the only way a transfer will work is if it is very close to your own uy, in which case, there's not much benefit -- if it's past the transferrer's banking deadline, it's probably past yours, and if it's not, you'll pay full price for the points.

 

[princessfionasmom]

I guess it all depends on when your reservation is. If it's less than 7 months away I don't see a problem with this. I called last week to change my reservation from a studio to a 1bed and there was only 1 1bed left for our dates so MS used our 09 BLT points (which had never been used) to make that reservation then went back in and cancelled the studio (which was made with OKW points) and then went back into my 1bed reservation and changed the points used to the OKW points I had used for my studio reservation. When those points where used up she then used my 09 BLT points. I hope I didn't make this sound too confusing. It was really nice because she did this without me having to ask. It's SOOOOOOOOOOOOO nice when you get an experienced MS EE who really knows what they are doing!