OK but in this instance, if you cancel a Nov ressie in Oct they will give you all of the points back but they expire by the end of Nov so what's the point? Do you have to USE (travel) by the time they expire in Nov or just re-book another trip say for Jan / Feb? For some reason, I always thought there was a penalty for cancelling a reservation - or at a minimum a restriction on how the points could be re-used.
The points must be used for a vacation that ends no later than the last night of your use year. So no, you can't book a trip with them for Jan or Feb, even if you call to make the reservation before the end of November.
I guess we really haven't USED our membership that much (only twice so far). We purchased in Dec '06 and booked our first trip in Jan '07 for a week in Aug '07. In March '07 we banked our remaining '06 points into our '07 points and booked a cruise for July '08, using all but 10 points. At some point I then banked those 10 points into our '08 UY which will start in a couple of months. But so I was thinking if we tried to use those '08 points to book a trip before we actually GET them that we'd be
borrowing from our '07 UY?? NO??
The 08 points and the 10 points from 07 that you banked into 08 have to be used for a trip that happens between 12/1/2008 and 11/30/3009. You can book the trip 11 months prior to arrival if you're staying at your home resort and 7 months prior to arrival if you are staying at a non home resort.
The points are really already there - you just have to use them for a trip that falls within the use year. No matter when you make the reservation you would NOT be borrowing if the trip falls between 12/1/2008 and 11/30/2009.
And I thought the borrowing thing would be another obstacle if we cancelled or changed.
If you did borrow points for a trip and then cancelled it, you would still have to use the borrowed points before the use year expired. You can't return borrowed points to their original use year.
Example: You want to take a trip in January 2009. That falls within your 2008 use year (12/1/2008-11/30/2009). You use all of your banked points (originally from 2007) and all of your 2008 points and borrow 50 from your 2009 use year. Let's say you cancel it more than 31 days in advance. All the points come back into your account. You have the 10 banked points (those expire on 11/30/2009) and the 2008 points (those can be banked because your banking deadline is the end of July or they can be used for a vacation that will end no later than 11/30/2009). You also have the 50 borrowed points (originally from 2009). Those have to be used by the end of the 2008 use year (11/30/2009) or they expire and are forfeited. You cannot return borrowed points to their original use year.
I just really thought there was a penalty or a restriction on the useage for changing a reservation.
There sometimes are restrictions.
For example, if you use points for a cruise and cancel it, those points cannot be used to make a reservation at a
DVC resort or for an exchange from II. They have to be used for something in the Disney Collection, the Concierge Collection or the Adventurers' Collection.
If you cancel a DVC resort reservation less than 31 days prior to arrival, those points go into the holding account. Those points will expire at the end of the use year and you can only use them to make a reservation no more than 60 days in advance.
December use years are sometimes tough to understand -because use year is NOT the same as calendar year. When you have time, you might want to review the thread on
Understanding Use Year. I think it will help. Make yourself a chart for December use year points like the one in the "Understanding" thread. Use it to follow the examples.
This is when your UY is important too 'eh? For us, we have a Dec. UY so we're currently in our '07 UY which is now "empty" of points. We want to GO in '09 but will be primarily USING '08 points that will be getting in a couple of months (250 pts. from '08 and 10 pts. banked from our '07 UY). But so for this case, since we don't actually HAVE these points yet, we wouldn't want to BORROW them and book yet since we're still "iffy" about our plans. To get them all BACK as you said, we should wait for Dec. to book, right?
BTW, I still don't get the gist of the advantage of my orig. question here... To me, unless you're one of the very first callers, there is still nothing that indicates to me that making a ressie at SSR then calling to transfer it to THV's guarantees you anything over someone who has no reservation at all (as far as trying to get a THV). It only guarantees you that you have a unit SOMEWHERE if you're trying to book for a really popular week. It doesn't mean you'll GET a THV!!
Keep going here Carol!!! I thought (according to how people made it sound) that you could just call and TRANSFER the ressie to a diff. resort?! But you are saying you first have to call and CANCEL the orig. ressie, then get the points back and then re-book the other resort (unless you have gobs & gobs of points)!! BUT if you're like us, and only have 250-260 points or so to play with and the orig. ressies uses up all of them...then this is your only option?! So it's not really as simple as "switching" anything! OMGoodness!! That would've been a shocker to find out later!!
