Kyle, I had a chat with an older dude in the Premier office about the new DR property. I was told that no one from either side (TTR or Desire) of the DR resort will be able to use the other property EXCEPT premier members. TTR members booked at the TTR side will be able to use the Desire side, and vice versa. I repeated that back to him to confirm. He told me they are breaking ground next year.
Well that stinks. They keep giving me reasons to not visit their properties. Oh well. Thanks for the information. But I will say premier tends to always say you have to be premier to do things as they want you to buy in as premier. Interesting that he also said they haven’t even broken ground yet. They told us in April they had. I really think it comes down to saying whatever they think will benefit them.
Say it isn't so, Kyle! Say it isn't so! FYI about them telling people what they think is wanted to be heard... not about the breaking ground. It's a different travel thing for us than you & Jen, since we're so close to Cancun in travel time. We'd probably not do the DR for just that reason, to say nothing of other reasons (not all of them bad-talk about DR). Stacia loves-loves-loves St. Martin and the surrounding islands reachable by boat, so we'd probably do that when we're not doing Cancun stuff or just staying Stateside (and by stateside I include Canada, as there's a ton of cool people and stuff to do up thar…)
If they booked before July 5th they will get black bands... we booked there a referral before July 5th and I called TTR to ask and was told we would have black bands
That is correct for any booking made before July 5th. There is one exception - if the booking was done through a 3rd party and then had the referral added to it, the changes became effective immediately.
Len, FYI my buddy (Cortus on this site) did that for a couple who booked in 3rd party, and sure enough when they arrived they didn't get black bands. …. but when Cort actually went to the office to verify everything, the manager on duty had them come back by and ended up giving them the black bands. I think that during the transition period, they may have been in a heightened customer service state. That being said... I can see & understand why they want to get rid of the referral system, at least as it stands or stood, I should say. To me, and this is just me so get pissed off at me if you want, going to the same place on a referral originally made to discount the experience to try to elicit a membership buy-in which was used, in some instances more than 10 times.... that's abuse and it needed to be stopped. Bad business move, but I doubt they knew it back in the day when it originally was introduced. Kyle, for instance... hey buddy, how many times did you & Jen go to TTR and/or one of the Desires on a referral?
Add to that the ones on Facebook and other sites that sell their Referrals for cash and tell the referral that they don’t need to attend the presentation. It’s obvious what the intent of the Referrals are when given to members, but of course if there are ways to circumvent the system then people will take advantage and this is the result.
Not that I really care, but I am a bit amused that people are sticking up for Premier and are going with the “intent” of the contract. Premier sold contracts that allowed holders to be financially compensated via Referrals, smart people realized they could make money off of this, so they did. Premier could have easily put into place a rule that you could only travel on referral 1x or done any number of things (which they did as soon as they decided the current/old system was not in their financial best interest). Based on comments in this forum/Facebook, Premier has 0 problems holding people to the letter of their contract if it’s in their best interest. I’m all for holders of timeshares actually getting one over on the “man” - even if the good times are now coming to an end. As a side note, given price differentials between referral rates and discount site rates - even with the 250 payment, Premier could have still been making bank. Discount site rates rock.
No one is here sticking up for Premier. Just stating why they would likely be making these changes. I wasn’t saying what those members were doing was wrong, just that it was causing this result.
