Renewing RCI

[Carolinian]

This may sound like heresay, and perhaps it is, but I have changed my opinion, at least for now about whether it is worthwhile to renew RCI membership. Rather that letting mine go as it runs out, as I had long planned, I am renewing.

The reason is simple. Rental Condominiums International, at least for now, is offering some good, sometimes great, rental rates in places I want to go at times I want to go. As long as they do that, hey, I'll be a pirate and participate in plundering the system. Its not like getting bogged down in points, which also plunders the exchange system. This one, I just have to pay an annual membership fee, and if the gravy train stops it is real simple to get off. I have already confirmed some rentals a year out for about half of what my maintenance fee alone at my home base resort on the OBX would be. Deposit and exchange? That is real foolish as long as these rentals are out there.

In the long run will this last? Probably not. It is a Ponzi scheme, and the poor saps who provide the deposits that RCI is renting out, often cheaply, will eventually wise up. When it finally peters out, that is when I will just not renew.

[T. R. Oglodyte]

I've always said that I would continue using RCI as long as I felt I was getting value for what I was putting in, and I would bow out when they stopped providing value.

I let my RCI membership lapse several years ago, not because I didn't like what RCI was doing, but because they simply were no longer cost effective for us any longer.

[Carolinian]

What they are doing is what makes them no longer cost effective if one is using them to deposit and exchange, but it does make them cost effective to take advantage of the rentals. Of course, there is probably a rental portal they have out there somewhere that has the same prices, or maybe better, for non-members. If I find that, then they won't get the membership fees anymore.

[10AC-TYM]

You can get weeks for $195 on skyauction.com.

[tonyg]

Taking advantage of RCI's rentals really plays into their game and reduces the chances of other members to get trades. So keeping an RCI membership for those rentals really is self-serving and detrimental to other members. I think I'm about ready to cancel my membership.

[Carolinian]

Originally Posted by 10AC-TYM

You can get weeks for $195 on skyauction.com.

I haven't looked at those lately, but when I did they were not nearly as good a weeks as I have found lately for prices that are very close on rci.com

[tonyg]

Aren't the skyauction weeks all limited time RCI vacation certificates ?

[bnoble]

So keeping an RCI membership for those rentals really is self-serving and detrimental to other members.

Newsflash: I'm not in this to help someone else. I'm in this for me.