To Cancel Premiere Or Not Within The 5 Days Grace Period??

Hi all, we just got back from Temptation and they managed to sell us a membership. I'm just not sure if it is a good value or not. According to the contract we have 5 days to cancel and I would love some experienced perspectives. The package we got is for a plush jacuzzi. 350 nights. As far as I can tell, what we get is half price rooms for the next 25 years or 350 nights, whichever comes first. Plus premier perks, which, it doesn't seem really amount to a whole lot.
One question mark is the exchange with other hotels through sfx and (I forget the other one) where you swap a week at Temptation for a week at other hotels like a Hilton or W. It seems like this might make for a good value but since we won't have access till after the 5 days is past I don't know how to really tell. The way it was explained was we trade a week of our Temptation time for a week elsewhere and pay $399. When I go through the paperwork though its not clear exactly how it works and looks like (in one document) that it may be limited to 2 weeks per year??
And experience based advice and perspectives would be very greatly appreciated!

 

We’ve been members for several years. If you go two or more times a year it pays you back. We had a hard time with WorldPasa and SFX finding resorts that weren’t an arm and a leg. The $399 to me is BS. Now we have a Lush category room so the savings is significant per night. The perks with 40% loyalty rewards or 30% price match is nice.

 

Yeah, the way they made it sound with the exchange resorts thing, we could basically stay at any hotel (like regular Hiltons or W's) for $399 per week and as I look deeper that seems to be utter nonsense.

What do you typically use your 40% loyalty rewards for?

 

If you are a science nerd hopefully you can do some good math so here goes. Note not a member. Done the presentation 6-7 times. Know many members and their deals but the deals are always changing so it isn’t apples to apples.

Start with you obviously had a buy in for those 350 nights. And you likely won’t be able to use all those 350 nights in 25 years but who knows. Take how many nights you think you will use and divide your buy in price to figure out your nightly price before your 50% discount. Then the important thing to remember is 50% off of what? The rate they give you, with the exception of the most peak periods ie halloween, nye, is much higher than the rate you can typically find on discount sites. So 50% off their rate isn’t really 50% off. I have found that the Best Buy in rates plus the amount after 50% of their rate is ALWAYS higher than the discount nightly rates. So then you have to figure in the perks to see if the perks make up for you paying more than you would on a discount site (buy in nightly rate + amount after 50% off their rate plus perks > discount site rates?). Thru the years we have been offered many perks such as airline credits, yacht privilege, price matches, sfx program, free nights, etc. I assume you were offered some free nights too in the deal? Get as many of those as you can to make the calc closer. We have heard of issues getting your airline money back, with price match, finding available weeks/nights for sfx. Does it work for some in some cases? Sounds like it. Does it not work for others due to technicalities? For sure.

I like to think of those perks as bonuses I won’t count on but if they work then hey that is great. So the initial calculation is what matters most to me, especially since I am paying $ up front. We were at Desire 2 weeks ago and for the first time ever the calc came out in our favor…for Desire RM. What was the catch that made us not sign up again? Inventory. They have signed up so many members that the room type they were trying to sign us up for isn’t available for a single weekend for the rest of the year. So they were offering such a great rate for something we couldn’t even book until 2023.

The message is if you are having doubts then I would trust those doubts. Just my 2 cents. Sure others with disagree and that is ok.

 

Perfectly stated J&K.

 

Honestly....the chances of being able to cancel (after they got some money from you) is about pretty close to zero.

And Jen&Kyle are right about DRM...the membership they present there is much better than at TTR (0r seems to be). That is where we finally got a membership this year (it's good for all Original properties)

 

The same is true for some room categories at Temptation. We bought in with Lush tower room. My wife is retired from an airline so we fly standby and usually book a week or two before we travel. Only twice have we been able to get a lush tower room so we wind up booking a Bash tower room. Still a nice room but a lower priced room.
We have done ok with the fly back program. We have used it three years so between the two of us it has been for six flights. We have got the money for five of them. The one we didn't get the photo of the boarding pass was unreadable. There was plenty of time for them to e-mail us and let us know but they didn't. So if that is part of your package you better be very good with details or you wont get the money.

 

yes good point re the fly back. We have heard the key is having an actual copy of the boarding pass. People make them print one at the airport instead of the mobile version. But right they pay you if you do everything perfect but look for ways not to. Stinks they didn’t notify you and give you a second submittal chance. And really don’t get how in this day and age it takes 6-9months to get reimbursed

 

yeah the prices they were throwing at us this year was way better than ever for both the % off various room categories deal and especially the passion suite /penthouse deal. Then I looked up when I could actually book those high end rooms and realized wow I would have to plan vacations a year in advance. We can’t and don’t do that. Then they tried the oh premier has more availability than what is on the original website but we didn’t trust and talked to many members on site saying they can’t get rooms that are not already available on the original resorts website in most cases. Shame I was close to buying this time. Maybe the equation changes again once they open the DR and the addition at Desire RM.

 

Thanks for breaking this down. While I consider myself pretty good with math, I do get easily overwhelmed when there's a lot of data all over the place.

One thing to note is that at the presentations, the sales people will tell you "we'll give you x number of nights" like say "100 nights" and in my head, I *think* "free nights" and in my head, I'm going "Oh boy, 100 free nights, and all I have to pay is $xx,xxx" But the kicker, the shot of reality, is you are not getting FREE nights, but you are getting DISCOUNTED nights.

For me, when booking resorts like Temptation or Desire, I am always checking 3rd party sites (TripAdvisor, Trivago, HotelsCombined, etc) and they almost always have way better rates than the resorts' sites.

So the question I ask myself becomes, why would I pay $xx,xxx USD to "buy" discounted nights when I can book discounted nights for free, on my own?

I guess the Premier perks would be the other thing to factor in, but IDK about paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of sitting closer to the pool.

my 2¢