Unification

[Spence]

Please post your experiences with UNIFYING RHC accounts.
The advantage of unified accounts is that the bigger the contract the lower the MF/point.

My experience from a couple few years ago was that I was able to unify seven contracts for a flat fee of $500. The 'new' contract's expiration was the same date as the expiration of the oldest contract, meaning the one with the earliest expiration. So you lose years.

My experience from this year was that they charged $500 for each separate unification, maeaning that to unify seven contracts would cost $3000.

There are reports over there of being able to do it at no cost; with RHC's reputation, and my experience, I do find that hard to believe but I don't doubt their veracity.

[Jya-Ning]

bought 1 contract at the end of last year (Oct), get 1st account set up around Nov/Dec. The other at beginning of this year. Both are free of closing and resort transfer fee. So I have asked the 2nd one seller to transfer me to the 1st account and unified two contracts together. It is PCC, and close by timeshare closing. The transfer paper has wrong name than my 1st contract, so I got another account. Since I did not paid the resort transfer fee, so I did not force the issue. If the ad ask me to pay the resort transfer fee, I may ask them to waive it and let me do the transfer myself before I enter the bid, and will try to see if I can only pay $500 and have 2 contracts combined into my name. Then started at March start try to put 2 accounts together, sometimes I got VC told me I can not do that and it does not matter. Sometimes I got VC told me that they will fax me the form and never get it.

I have asked Spence to help, and get an eMail contact, and when I send it, the reply was they will have the customer service send me the form, but then never send me that.

Finally, at May or June, I got some VC told me that the ownership is different in both account, and then fixed my account to have both DW and my name on the 2nd one as shown on the 1st one, and another VC send me a form in the email. So I fill in, pay $500.

Then because some personal issue, I no longer tracking it. When I back at the end of Aug, there is a letter from RHC that they have unified my 2 accounts. So I now have 30,000 points, and should be good enough for me until I retired.

To avoid possible trouble, I did not use the point from my 1st contract (10,000 point), 2nd contract's point was starting at 2008 on eBay's ad anyway. After combine, my new account become 6,000 for 2007 instead of 10,000 point. Fortuately, I was planning to roll them into next year use 20% roll over rule when I start to unify them (plan to use 100% roll over only after I have all 30,000 points if needed). Totally I think I made about 10 calls to find and fix the problem and then another 2 calls to have the account transfered.

Now, let me hope that the next time when I look at my account, there is only one 30,000 point account there.

I think after reading HOC's messages and Other RHC owner's unified (Joe, Blondie, bigrick ...) process on tug, kind of give me the correct expectation for the whole process.

Jya-Ning

[Spence]

I wish we were getting more feedback on this thread.

It has been a common element of anyone's unification story here or there, that when you combine accounts the new expiration date is the shorter of the contracts.

For those with lots of points and/or lots of contracts there is another alternative.

RHC Operation Rules only show contracts up to 200,000 points but bigger ones are possible and the MF/pt continues to decline.

When you 'upgrade' which means buying more points from the developer, not only will they combine all your contracts BUT the new contract will be for 30years from that date.

My most recent experience with RHC in Cancun...
They thought I only had one contract for 100K+ this was the contract that held the reservation I was staying on. Your personal rep wants to give you a welcome gift, when you get there they want 30min of your time. They are glorified tour guides and can't/won't answer all of your pointed questions but they have to get through their spiel before the salesperson is introduced. So finally I get to the sales person who wants to upgrade me.

RHC now has an annuity product. When you buy from them they guarantee return of your original investment at the end of the 30years. Sounds attractive, but it's really not. How much buying power will $25K have in 30yrs?

I asked the saleswoman, if I were an RCI exchanger and not an RHC owner, what would you be trying to sell me? 30Kpts for $25K. $2.5K (10%) of this purchase price goes to a 3rd party for the annuity which means the annuity pays ~8%. In their dickering they may later offer for $22.5K without the annuity, the profit to them is exactly the same.

They offered me the annuity on all my points based on their records of original purchase price ($120,000). They wanted $12K. They had no idea of what % the annuity paid. I didn't have a business calculator but showed the salesman the rule of thumb on doubling your money every 10yrs @7% and every 7yrs @10%.

They wanted me to buy 20,000 pts as an upgrade. I said I only want 7,500. I said that's not the only contract I have, they said, oh really. I gave them the other member number, they couldn't 'find' it. I said, look it up under my name or phone number.

I went to lunch, an hour later the saleswoman was still pouring over my paperwork. I said I didn't want their annuity, I said I could make more than they were giving anywhere, buy an annuity from anyone. They seemed to think that I couldn't get an annuity just anywhere, but weren't concerned because every cent they were charging me went to a third party with no profit to RHC and no commission to the sales agent.

Well, they found my other contract and would combine them and upgrade me, just buy 20,000 points. I then showed the saleswoman why I wanted exactly 7,500, no more, no less, no deal unless I got what I wanted. I then threw in that I wouldn't argue with their $995 closing costs (ha, ha). She finally understood why 7,500 was a magic figure and went back to the manager returning in 60sec with the affirmative answer.

So my contracts had only ~19 years left on them. Start doing the math! Buy 7,500 points from them and have hundreds of thousands of points extended for 11 years!

[abc31]

I'm sorry. I'm having trouble understanding this. Why was 7,500 your magic number? And what did you pay for the 7,500 points?

[Spence]

Originally Posted by abc31

I'm sorry. I'm having trouble understanding this. Why was 7,500 your magic number? And what did you pay for the 7,500 points?

7,500 was my magic number because it took me to the top, but not over, another 'level' of their MF tiers (see the Operating Rules). It's also what I guessed may be a number that they might accept if I had a definite reason for it.

But this brings up another item that no one on the sales floor or in their small contracts office could understand about my decision to buy.

I had already paid for 2008 MFs on my separate contracts in order to make 2008 reservations. I asked their contracts person about all the extra MFs I had already paid. They said that I owed more MFs as I had more points, I said I owed less. That's right, I got more points and I owed them less MFs. Took a little while but they finally understood.

What it cost me is proprietary.

[abc31]

Gotcha!

[Jya-Ning]

After return the MF difference, they probably paid all your purchase price back.

Jya-Ning

[bigrick]

Originally Posted by Spence

7,500 was my magic number because it took me to the top, but not over, another 'level' of their MF tiers (see the Operating Rules). It's also what I guessed may be a number that they might accept if I had a definite reason for it.

But this brings up another item that no one on the sales floor or in their small contracts office could understand about my decision to buy.

I had already paid for 2008 MFs on my separate contracts in order to make 2008 reservations. I asked their contracts person about all the extra MFs I had already paid. They said that I owed more MFs as I had more points, I said I owed less. That's right, I got more points and I owed them less MFs. Took a little while but they finally understood.

So you had more than one contract already plus you bought another 7500 points. When you combined all (3 or more) into one new contract the MFs on the new total was less than the sum of the 3 (or more) separate contracts. Correct?

[bigrick]

Originally Posted by Spence

I wish we were getting more feedback on this thread.

Sorry I would have responded sooner but I was travelling! Oh the drawbacks of wanting information from travellers.


My last unification was in June of this year. It was pretty easy on my part. RHC's part is always mind-boggling slow!

I always transfer the new contract into my name first. The $500 transfer fee is always collected by RHC at this point.

Once that's done, then I ask RHC for the unify form. They send this via email. Their form is very simple and I could create it, but if their rep creates it then all the info they want is there. Creating and receiving the email is very quick.

I always have my signature notarized. The times I haven't, RHC takes months to tell me they need notarized signatures. Now I remove that delay by just notarizing every form with them.

Then I fax it back. I immediately verify with the rep who sent me the form that they received my fax. I will refax until they confirm receipt.

So far is all of the 'pretty easy on my part' part I said at the top.

Now begins the RHC mind-boggling slow part. This is the time period when my wife questions why we even bought with them at all. I call each week to be told 'two more weeks at least.' Eventually they got the unify done.

But that wasn't the end of it because now it showed the total points but all the online info (except for the email address) was for a previous owner! Of course, this previous owner's info was not on the unify contract so who knows what they really use to do unifies. Their record keeping and processing is unbeliveable.

Again, it took way too many weeks to get this corrected. More unhappy wife time!

I have never been charged a unification fee. RHC always checks and confirms that the transfer fee has been paid.

Using the points this year has been much more fun. Finally something with RHC that wasn't painful (yet).

[Spence]

Originally Posted by bigrick

So you had more than one contract already plus you bought another 7500 points. When you combined all (3 or more) into one new contract the MFs on the new total was less than the sum of the 3 (or more) separate contracts. Correct?

Yes.