Hey all,
I finally got around to depositing a week of our membership into RCI. As the hubby just got a new job we aren't too sure if we will be able to do any traveling any time soon so we just kept it to the single week.
I phoned the privilege club this morning. They have an answering system where you pick your language and wait on hold until a representative is available. I was anticipating a long wait and was pleasantly surprised by a very short wait. I had my privilege club membership number ready for the rep but didn't have my RCI number ready so I caused a delay while I went online to look it up.
The representative was very pleasant and helpful.
I confirmed I wanted to deposit one week and was told the week would show up in my RCI account in the next 24-48 hours.
I had tried calling a few time prior to this call and always received a message that they were closed and listing the times they were open but not mentioning what time zone. The answering machine had stated they were open Saturday morning but I didn't have any success reaching anyone. Before leaving this call that did go through I confirmed their business hours and was told 9-6 Mon-Fri eastern time.
Six hours later, I checked RCI and the week was there. It was quite exciting to have the exchange offerings opened up to look at rather than being restricted to the Last Call and Extra Vacations.
I had used RCIs deposit calculator previously and was expecting around 18 points for my deposit so was a little disappointed with the 10 points it was assigned although it's looking like those 10 points can get me almost any vacation I would want. On a whim I looked up my home Jamaica resort and it's exchange points are 5 so ironically I think I could use my one deposited week to stay at my home resort for 2 weeks.
Over the last few months I have looked around the RCI website quite a bit but I see I need to train myself up on how exchanging actually works. There is a lot of info on their site, it's just going to take some time to go through it. Once I figure all that out I'll post a bit of a cheat sheet/quick start on this blog.
I'm pretty disappointed that I won't be able to post any actual travel experiences on the plan for quite some time but with hubby's new job both finances as well as time are at too much a premium these days. If anyone out there can share their experiences I would be happy to post them on here.
*Note about RCI. So far I have received 2 sales calls from them which is 2 too many in my opinion. The first call was an RCI cruise special and the second was a deal on extending our membership. During the membership call the sales person made a comment that hadn't occurred to me. The sales lady pointed out that my membership will be running out in less than a year and a half so I'm limiting my search window. It hadn't occurred to me that I may need to buy into RCI even more before even using their services but this may be a possibility.
