Renting exchanged RCI weeks is expressly prohibited

Anyone renting a week that was secured through an RCI exchange is explicitly breaking RCI rules.

marylyn1 wrote:

Anyone renting a week that was secured through an RCI exchange is explicitly breaking RCI rules.

Yep !!!

this is true. We did a exchange in Arizona, kid was sick could not go. I did not know about the rule. They straightened me out. "cannot rent a exchange" oops!

How would the resort know that you are renting on exchange if the person checking in has a guest certificate?

fadlunk wrote:

How would the resort know that you are renting on exchange if the person checking in has a guest certificate?

They have their ways of finding out. If they do find out that an exchange was rented the exchanger's account will be deleted.

First of all renting a week you have exchanged is dishonest. You are representing yourself as the owner of the week ---WHICH YOU ARE NOT. Plus, it is expressly prohibited by RCI and Interval International. Should your renter be in jeopardy of losing his vacation becuase you have decided to ignore the rules??

It has happened that renters have been turned away at check in when the resort learns the week was an illegal rental from a non-owner. The poor renter has no recourse, his vacation is ruined while you sit and count your illegally gotten cash. The renter has a perfect right to sue you since you misrepresented your ownership and your right to rent the week

What can you do if you exchanged for a week and then can not use it?

Return it to RCI for a refund or get another week from them.

Is gifting your exchanged week acceptable? Is selling your exchanged week prohibited even if you pay RCI or II their fees?

What do you mean by gifting? If you think you can claim a stranger as a gift recipient, it won't work! If you give the week to your son or daughter, then that's acceptable.

No your RCI or II FEES Do not include the ability to sell your weeks. It is prohibited..

But all the sales reps for Wyndham and RCI tell you that they make money reserving the weeks they don't need and then renting them out. According to them, this is the way they make money. They even include this in their professional slide presentations. MISLEADING!

Needless to say, most of us paid too much for a timeshare week, then found out that our week(s) may rent and they may not. So, we did into our pocket a little more and join places like R.C.I. Joining was pretty easy, just give them a couple of hundred bucks. After all, now you have the world at your fingertips. The sales personnel lead you to believe that your week(s) can be exchanged with ease since there are thousands of units in their inventory. Most times there are thousands, but the one that you are looking for is amongst the missing.

So now you try to rent your unit, wait it out a little bit, then check with your home resort to find that unfortunately it didn't get rented. Now you contact R.C.I. to place your week in the bank so as not to lose all of the value of your week. However, since it is so close to the check-in date, R.C.I. gives you about a third of its' initial value.

Now, if you did bank the week early enough, you have the full trading value. So, you spend an additional $229 and exchange your week for another one. Taking into account your annual R.C.I. membership, your exchange fee, your maintenance fee, and your taxes, this exchange cost you around $1100-$1200 dollars.

If you have a change in plans due to an illness etc. you could gift this to a relative or a friend. But if your relative or friend gave you a few bucks to offset your losses, they could be evicted even if you paid the additional $55 guest certificate fee.????

I am a disabled American Veteran and I know that these large corporations could care less about that "affordable vacation" that you purchased for you and your family. So here is what you do..... write to the CEO of R.C.I. and explain to him that there is a need to modify their rules. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be fair. Timeshare has never been a good investment, or a fair investment. If anything, they should have given every owner a jar of vaseline so as to place the concept of timeshare in it's appropriate place........

You have missed the point. Gifting or selling your exchanged week does not harm anyone. It has been paid for.........

rogerm240 wrote:

Timeshare has never been a good investment, or a fair investment......

Buying them from the developer in hopes of flipping them for a profit like other real estate is definitely not a good investment. Timeshares are really only an investment in your vacation accommodations if you plan and use properly.

I know those sales people at those presentations twist and skew figures to make it look like buying such a timeshare is a good, long-term investment but that's their job..to sell you a product as opposed to telling you the truth.

rogerm240 wrote:

Gifting or selling your exchanged week does not harm anyone. It has been paid for.........

Whether or not you believe it "does not harm anyone", renting out a week obtained by exchange from either RCI or II clearly violates the written terms and conditions of membership of both of those two exchange companies. True "gifting" (where there is no money changing hands) is another matter; that's permissible by obtaining a guest certificate from the exchange company.

The true POTENTIAL for "harm" under the existing terms and conditions of RCI or II membership is that a unsuspecting tenant could actually be turned away at check-in if it was somehow discovered that they were part of a (clearly prohibited) "exchange rental", losing both their occupancy AND whatever money they paid for that prohibited rental. The violating exchange company member could also have his / her membership in that exchange company suspended or terminated outright, but I have more concern for the innocent and unsuspecting prospective "tenant".

Over the years, there have been first hand accounts (on Timeshare Users Group discussion forums) of people actually getting caught renting out weeks they obtained by exchange, with the exact consequences described above. Do people still do it --- and often manage to get away with it? Yes, but it's still a roll of the dice and I would advise any prospective tenant to have NOTHING to do with the prohibited rental of a non-owned timeshare week which was obtained by "exchange" from RCI or II. It's just too risky.

P.S. I do not belong to either RCI or II and I frankly have no use for either one (particularly RCI). I am merely pointing out the "tenant" risk if they unknowingly get involved with the (prohibited) rental of a (non-owned) week obtained by "exchange" from RCI or II.

Other considerations, by renting out an RCI exchange week you are removing inventory that another member might have wanted to exchange into. If 20% of all RCI members started to reserve the most desirable weeks with the intention of renting for profit then you are hurting the other members looking for a great exchange.

Next your rental at this resort that you don't own at may either undercut owners at that resort (who may have a higher MF) and they can't rent out because you are offering your non sanctioned "rentals" for less or if you are are offering them for the same amount you may be profiting far above the owners that bought at that resort and pay fees to that resort and legitimately have the right to rent. You are subletting when you have no right to do so.

If you have a one time thing where you reserved an exchange and then find you can't use it, gift it to family or friends. Let them know that it is an exchange and you can't rent it to them but if they quietly want to find some way to pay you back, that's between the two of you. You can't advertise a rental on a paid site like Redweek or even a free site like CL. That's a business transaction. You are advertising and asking for payment. You are also likely not disclosing that you are doing this against the express written terms of the exchange company that you got the inventory from. Even the friend thing if it starts to become more than once in a blue moon you need to either take the loss or stop depositing with the exchange company. Use or rent out what you own or let it go to waste.

This policy is exactly why I cancelled my account with RCI. I think it's totally bogus. If I can stay there myself, then I should be able to have someone else stay there, the same way a renter in an apartment is able to sublet their apartment to someone else. If I clearly tell them that I don't own at that resort but I exchanged the unit I do own somewhere else, then there's nothing dishonest about it.

This policy is just another way for RCI to stick it to people, imo.

I'm not saying that I rent out my exchange dishonestly. Once I found out about this policy (which wasn't in place when I first bought my timeshare in 1988, and in fact the sales person encouraged me to rent out an exchange if I couldn't use it), I stopped renting. But as I said, I also closed my account with RCI.

sd204 wrote:

This policy is exactly why I cancelled my account with RCI. I think it's totally bogus. If I can stay there myself, then I should be able to have someone else stay there, the same way a renter in an apartment is able to sublet their apartment to someone else. If I clearly tell them that I don't own at that resort but I exchanged the unit I do own somewhere else, then there's nothing dishonest about it.

I don't like (or belong to) greedy RCI, but I respectfully submit that this is not a matter of "honesty", but is instead a simple matter of compliance with clearly stated, written terms and conditions of exchange company membership. You could allow someone to USE your exchange (by obtaining a guest certificate from RCI), but you cannot RENT OUT a week provided to you as an exchange for your personal use --- not for your own personal profit. And by the way, most apartment rental contracts also very specifically prohibit sub-leasing, so your apartment analogy is frankly weak.

Looking at this objectively, once you choose to deposit what you actually OWN with RCI, you voluntarily relinquish your access to that particular deposit. If you then manage to successfully obtain an "exchange" for your "deposit" to RCI, you have the right to USE that exchange, but you plainly do not OWN that week. Since you don't OWN that week, it's simply NOT YOURS to rent out to someone else. These terms and conditions of membership are very clearly spelled out in writing by RCI (and also by Interval International, another exchange company).

I greatly dislike greedy RCI, but I still do not agree with your viewpoint. As Tracey S. correctly noted above, the (prohibited) rental of "exchanges" subverts and undermines the intent and objective of the entire exchange system. Exchange programs do not exist for people to manipulate for their own financial gain after acquiring good exchanges. Exchanges are provided for USE, not for manipulation for personal gain. Sorry, but with all due respect personal financial gain simply is NOT what the whole "exchange game" is supposed to be about.

Exchanged weeks can not be rented, got it! What about extra vacation weeks? Isn’t good for RCI and resorts involved to make use of these weeks?

Per the policies of both RCI and Interval International, any week obtained through their system cannot be rented.