DVC Dilemmas: "Unborrowing" Points and Holding Accounts

DVC stuff happens.  This episode may help you avert your crisis.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right, all right. Here we are again, DBC for adults. I want this to be a good podcast today or YouTube video, depending on which way you're looking. I'm going to go ahead and start, and this will lead us into our topic. We're going to talk about un quotations, unborrowing points, which there is a way. And we're also going to be talking about holding counts. The results are both from dilemmas you might find yourself in. I have found myself in, and we're going to talk about how you get through that. First of all, I just got back from DVC Vero Beach. There's my t-shirt. I love it. And I posted a picture of it on one of the DBC fan Facebook groups, and I caused quite a stir because one of them said, When did you get that? We were just there last week. And I said, Well, I got it today and posted it online. It turns out that a lot of the DBC resorts now are stocking more resort-specific merchandise. So look for that. This is a really comfortable short shirt. If I didn't have to go out in public, I would wear it every day. It's really comfortable and I like it. So look for more merchandise in that regard. Before now, most of the DVC merchandise has been in the resorts, has just said DVC member or Walt Disney World or something to that effect. And boy, Vero Beach again. We just got back from a cruise, Royal Caribbean, that since we fly Allegiant, we had to leave two days early, come back a day late. And we stay at Vero Beach when we do that. And then we drive over to the cruise port. So that's why we we have fallen in love with Vero Beach so much. We had a discussion while we were down there about, you know, we would like to get, they've got six cottages that are their three-bedroom units that sleep 12 and even a couple of more if you're talking about pack and plays and stuff like that. We want to do that with our family. Now, our extended family is 15, so we can't get them all in there, but maybe a family or a or or two at a time. We actually talked about you. I mean, if you listened to last episode, you know we're planning on going to Grand Californian here in October, and we actually discussed for a little while maybe canceling California and trying to do Vero Beach. The problem is, and this is what leads us to the topic today, is those cottages are some of the most popular reservations to get. That if you don't camp book at 11 months, if you don't owe points at Vero Beach and can only book at seven, it is near impossible. If you're booking at 10 months, it is near impossible. I actually consider, I'm going to share my screen for a moment, but I'll be as specific as possible for you that are listening on the podcast. We are going to look at my screen for listings on the D. This is the DBCResale Market.com site. I love them. That's who I bought my points from. You can see it's sorted so that Grand Californian is at the top, and it's this, it's two$261 per point because you can't find it. And look at what's at the low end. Look at that. Vero Beach is currently going for$42. That means that even though it would cost you like to buy the poly, I think it's$255 a point now, direct from Disney, and you would have to buy 150 points. Well, it's a pretty good chunk of change. You could stay at the poly with these same points. You're only going to be able to book seven months out. But since I want it one of those Vero Beach cottages, they set alone, they overlook the ocean. Oh man, they're beautiful. I could stay at Vero Beach weeks upon weeks. Anyway, so$42 a point? Are you kidding me? I could buy that cheaply. Now the problem is it's got the highest monthly maintenance. It's$14. I guess that's annually. So you multiply$14 times the number of points, divide by 12, that's your monthly rate. I actually considered going in here and buying one of these cheap contracts. Had that not monthly point not been so high. Look, even if I financed it, it would only be$166 in this particular case. If we go back to Grand California, which is on the high end of listings, page down Polynesians up there. You see these low points. The lower the points of the contract, the higher the price is going to be. So we actually considered that. But we didn't. We're going to stick with our Grand Californian. I did look ahead. We could only get Vero Beach January, February right now. And I'm not even to the seven-month window, so those might be gone by the time. So we we don't think it's going to happen, but we sure would like it to because we love that place and we go there quite often. Now we're going to talk about borrowing points. And I think I still got my screens in the order I want to look. Look at this screen. This is directly on the Disney site. I am not going to share screens from my favorite non-Disney sites that publish things about Disney because that's a little underhanded. Me showing you their information, I don't want to do that. But I'll show you something directly from Disney because you can look it up yourself. One of the concepts of Disney Vacation Club is banking and borrowing. Now let me simplify that. In fact, I'm going to look away from my screen so I'm not reading while I'm saying this. I want to say it from my gut because if you think, Mr. Collins, you know, we we want to I sound like this. I'm a substitute teacher, by the way. That was my other podcast, Substitute Teachers Lounge. If you're interested at all, now I can't remember. I forgot to make an announcement. I was going to make a second announcement. Here, let me do that first. My email address is Greg VacationClub at gmail.com. And last episode was the first time I'd mentioned it. And man, I got emails, and I will get back to all of you. I plan on inviting some of you to be a guest interview on the show. In fact, maybe I'll invite several of you, and we'll do several panels on the screen and talk to everybody and get your experience and all this kind of thing. Now, it's it's hard to get a bunch of DVC members together because they all own different points. They're worried about talking about their points if they don't own as much as this other person, which to me makes is not even relevant. But anyway, banking and borrowing. DVC will allow you, let's start with banking. Banking is pushing points forward. Just like it says, you're banking it until next year. My use year, the the day that I get my points every year is April 1st. Okay. Then if I have not gotten any plans to use those points from April 1st, let's say 2026 to April 1st, 2027, I can bank those points so that they're good from April 27 to April 28th. Okay? And the way I do that, I have to do it by November 30th. In my case, it would be different if your user is not April. I would say I would go in, you can do it online. I'm not going to show you that screen because you're, it would be kind of pointless right now. But you go online, you click a button, and basically you have banked your points. You can't unbank them, but you can bank them forward. Borrowing points, look at this next description. That's borrowing. You're, let's say you're in 2026. You need extra points for this year that you don't have, but you've got some next year. We do this almost every year because I guess we don't have enough points, and we're buying we we're using it for our family as well, and we have to borrow into next year. Now I say family. I'm giving a week to a family member, but I'm also, we booked Viral Beach, and we booked, I'm staying for a week in August at Disney World, and we've booked this at Grand California. And so it's mainly us. But borrowing, you need more points this year, you say, okay, I want to borrow 100 points. It pulls those points from next year, puts them in this year. Now, let me tell you what that does for you from a purchase standpoint. Let's say you're thinking, all right, we can really only we'll probably only go every three years, but we'd like to do the DVC, and we're going to need about 400 points a year because of the size of our family. Well, if you're only going to go every three years, let's divide 400 by three. Now that's not going to come out even, but let's just let's start with 450. That'll make it easier. Let's say 450 divided by three is 150. Well, guess what you could do? You could only buy 150 points. Plan on, on the year you go, let's say you're going to go in 2027, bank this year's 150 to next year. When you get to next year, borrow that year's 150 into 2027, and all of a sudden, guess what? You've got 450 points to use in 2027. You're going to book that reservation in 2026 as soon as you get within 11 months or seven months, whatever your rule is, if you're whether you're staying at your home resort or not. And it's kind of funny, you could really say that in 2026, I'm going to book a vacation for 2027 using points for 2028. All that would apply in this situation. So that is banking and borrowing. Now I wanted to talk to you about unborrowing because banking and borrowing are. Banking and borrowing are let's see here. Banking and borrowing are get to the right screen. Sorry guys. Banking and borrowing borrowing are can't be reversed. Unless, let me tell you what we did, and I think I've alluded to this, but I might not have been very specific. You know that since we had to push our California trip to October because of an emergency in the family, well, technically, by rule, we would have had to have said that was in February, but we would have had to have stayed somewhere by April 1st of this year because that put us in that situation, and that's when my year ran out. And I couldn't put it back in 2027 because I had already borrowed it, and that is here's the air quotes. That is irreversible. So here's what you can do to unborrow. But let me mention something first before we get into making a phone call. One thing you got to remember if you borrowed some points for next year and you have to cancel, well, you can't put those points into next year. But if you've still got some of this year's points, you could conceivably use your borrow points from next year for some kind of reservation this year, bank this year's points to next year and in effect convert them into 20, 20 points. So that's a way to get around borrowing. Bank to next year, use what you've already borrowed this year. Now, you might want to get a spreadsheet out because that can get complicated, and I messed up one year and it cost me five points. I ended up blowing five points that I couldn't use for anything. So you'll have to keep track of it. Now, unborrowing that is not allowed. There's my air quotes again, unless you give them a call. I called them back in February and I said, okay, we've had an emergency in the family and we can't use these points, and I can't use them before April 1st. Would you consider pushing those points back into 2027 so that I could use them? She said, Hold on just a moment. Went and talked to whoever she had to talk to, and she came back and said, All right, we have decided to go ahead and one time, one time only, we are going to push your points back into 2027 so you can use them. In effect, I unborrowed the points, and they did that for me. So don't give up, don't panic. Now, if you just decided, well, I just don't want to go anymore. Well, you know, they might not be as receptive because, you know, there's a reason these rules are in here. They don't want to tie up inventory for 10 months, and then you cancel at the last moment when they could have had that, you know, reserved earlier with another party. So that's one of the reasons they do that. So that's a little lesson on banking borrowing and borrowing. And let's close with holding accounts. I got caught up in this. I want to say it was back in 2021 because it was COVID-related. And I know we wouldn't have made a reservation for 2020 when COVID was kind of at its highest. So here's what happened: we had reservations at Hilton Head, and it was us and some of our family members. I tested positive for COVID a week before. A week. Well, just like I mean, if you cancel within 30 days, let's read the definition. So you've you've got my situation. I had to cancel a week before. Look at this. This is right off the Disney or the, I should say, the DVC site. It is a Disney Vacation Club site. What is a holding account? Is a parking space for vacation points. Listen to this, from a Disney Vacation Club reservation that has been modified or canceled 30 days to one day before your scheduled check-in date. By the way, if it's after one day, you're out of luck. You lost your points. Sometimes a member makes a change to a reservation 30 days to one day before the check-in date, using fewer points than the original reservation. The vacation points difference goes into a holding count. Any change is considered a cancel and rebook. Now, this is the important part. You guys listening to this on a podcast, this is where you really need to concentrate to what I am saying. Vacation points in your holding account will be good until the end of your use year when they expire, just like normal, but you can use them like you would your regular vacation points, except that reservations must be made within 60 days of your check-in. Vacation points in a holding account also cannot be banked or borrowed. Now, here's what that means. You have to use those points, and you can only book 60 days out, two months. So if you're already looking at spring break, the earliest you can book that with holding points is February. Now, let me tell you how this worked out for us. And I realize this is a unique situation and wouldn't probably work out for you in your situation. So our Hilton Head trip was in October. Okay. We also had a vacation scheduled for March. And it just so happened that when when I had to cancel this more than 30 days out, it went into a holding account. And I'm thinking right away, we've already got a reservation in March. We're not going to make another reservation 60 days out and find anything we want. Well, just on gut, I said, All right, March 2nd is when our reservation starts. That means 60 days out is January 2nd, or it might be January 3rd. I'm not going to do the calculation. And sure enough, I went in on January 3rd and I pulled up my March reservation. I clicked modify and it let me go in and change it from using contract points to holding account points. And there wasn't anybody more surprised than me. So don't give up. There is, even if you don't have a future reservation, I got lucky because we had already booked that March reservation out far enough that we got what we wanted. If I didn't have that March reservation, but still wanted a March reservation and didn't go until January 1st, there's no way we'd be staying where we wanted to stay. So I was able to modify that, even though I booked it several months ago. I modified it within 60 days and it let me do that. So that's some ways to play around, so to speak, with the holding account points and the borrowing points and all that good stuff. And boy, that's all this is kind of a mind-bender, isn't it? You can get yourself into DVC dilemmas. You have to keep track of your points, make sure you know what's going in and out. It's a great product, though, man. Again, I think Vero Beach has become our favorite because we really don't go to I go once a year, but it's only I go by myself. And it's because my wife is in a club that they travel somewhere every year to explore a national park with a national park group. And when she does that, I say, all right, I'll go get a studio. I use this split stay, so I do have one coming up in August that's at three different resorts down there. And I will I'm going to use my Rivy era just because I haven't seen it before two days. I always go to Kidani. Can't go down there without going to Kidani Animal Kingdom. I'll use it for two days. And then my last day is at the Bayleck Tower at the Contemporary because to me that's the best place to stay if you want to watch the fireworks. And I've never done that Keys to the Kingdom tour for Magic Kingdom where they take you underneath it and behind the scenes. So I'm going to do that that day. Going to be fun. Hope you learned a little bit. And you guys that emailed me, I will be back in touch soon. So please don't think that I have forgotten about you. I've got you all in a file, and I will get back with you. Talk to you soon.