There are several things going on at once, and maybe I can help clear some of it up. (As background: I've been a Wyndham owner for about 15 years, and like a few others here, I am active on TUG and have been following all of this very closely. I do not rent, but don't begrudge those who do.)
First, the hotels/expedia "great deal" that people have been talking about for the past month or so was almost certainly never real. The room description doesn't even come close to any of the units in this complex, at either the timeshare towers or the hotel tower. I have no idea what this was, but if the description was accurate it wasn't at Wyndham Bonnet Creek--or any of the Orlando Wyndham timeshare resorts. I believe that the note from hotels-dot-com that "Club Wyndham" can't honor the reservation is BS, because there wasn't one in the first place. I have no idea what happened, but I don't think Wyndham had anything to do with it.
Second, the "owner priority" dates are a little less risky these days than they were before, because the owner booking site was
updated last month to "keep you up to date on which resorts are being prioritized for you." I don't know what this means, exactly, but hopefully it will be less likely that an owner will go beyond their two allowed exceptions without knowing it. If we are lucky, the web site will actually enforce the two-exception limit. I still think you want to ask the owner you are renting from how they know this is an allowable reservation, and a reputable owner should be able to explain it to you without telling you that they are adding the guest certificate at the last minute because "it won't be cancelled that way."
Third, Wyndham has been targeting owners that (in Wyndham's estimation) have been renting "commercially." There are a number of ways an owner can make it onto Wyndham's Naughty List, and once they are any future rentals from that owner are problematic at best, because Wyndham is playing hardball*. There's no obvious good way as a renter to make sure you won't get swept up by that, unfortunately, but IMO this is still reasonably rare. My advice: avoid the point managers because as
@Lisa P. mentions upthread, they may not know if one of their owners is trying to run out the clock before the jig is up. Instead, work directly with an owner, and don't be afraid to ask them how often they rent and whether they've ever received a notice about their renting from Wyndham. There's no guarantee they will be honest with you, but most people are.
Forth: Extra Holidays is the outlet Wyndham uses for "official" owner rentals that are blessed by the company. To use EH, an owner books time with their points and gives it to EH to rent out, and if EH rents it they give the owner a cut of the total booking. At the moment, EH does not accept owner rentals for any restricted dates, so you don't have to worry about getting one by mistake. That's the good news. The bad news is that you can't rent restricted dates from EH at all. I suppose it is possible that EH has cancelled a rental before--there are times when, for example, refurbishments have run long unexpectedly, and owners have had their bookings cancelled, so EH would not be any different. But, that seems to have been mostly a pandemic-labor-shortage issue more than anything, and it is exceptionally rare. I would expect the chances of EH bookings being cancelled are comparable to showing up to a hotel and being walked, because they are overbooked. That does happen--even at Disney--but again it is very very rare. Personally I would not worry about it.
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* For example, the no-guest-certificates restriction has followed a contract that was sold to a new buyer who wasn't otherwise targeted. I suspect that's because one of the large renters tried getting out from under Wyndham's thumb with a gratuitous transfer, so Wyndham closed that pathway, but I don't know that for sure.
