posted 01-09-2003 14:44            

RCI is now participating on the TUG Bulletin Board! We will have a special person, Madge, answering notes, and obtaining information for us. She’s excited at the opportunity this is to help us. I’ll give you some information about Madge and how this will work below. Please remember the rules that make this possible. They can comment on company policies, exchange rules, ratings, etc, but not individual situations. Try not to go into long diatribes, be argumentative, or post personal agenda. Please don’t ask for individual help. If we keep asking, we may very well lose RCI’s participation on these boards.

Information is crucial to customer satisfaction, and RCI recognizes that they must be more forthcoming in addressing their members’ questions and concerns, and they are therefore looking forward to the opportunity to participate on TUG. They believe it will be in everyone’s interest to focus their participation on company policy, including rules, procedures, products and services, with inquiries relating to individual member account activity welcome as always at their regular customer service channels, feedback@rci.com or 1-800-338-7777.

About Madge
I spoke to Madge today. She’s happy to be joining us. She’s been with RCI about ten years, and has had a well rounded career. She began her career as a VC. After a time she became a crisis troubleshooter, the person you’d call if you had a check in problem or a problem at a resort. Next she worked in Customer Service, mainly doing written responses to members. Now she’s on the Internet team, learning all about what that entails. And now, she’s going to be our RCI-TUG liaison for general information.

Madge will have access to others at RCI and Cendant, who she can count on for answers when she needs, and they may come to TUG to answer also. I’m sure you all know David Roe, and there will be others from time to time. Once Ask Madge is up and working well, in a few weeks, we may be able to add another special feature (you’ll have to wait on this).

Remember the rules, folks, and let’s try to be civil, ok?

Let the questions begin!

Fern Modena,
TUG BBS Manager
Administrator/Volunteer

posted 01-09-2003 15:12            

Will you be answering questions about points as well?

Thanx

posted 01-09-2003 15:23         

Welcome to TUG. I hope the association proves to be pleasant for you.

If one has a Weeks acount valid for, say the next ten years, does one still need to pay the annual fee for a Points account?
If so, can the Points account fee be reduced?

posted 01-09-2003 15:24         

We might as well get this question over with. Does RCI rent member weeks that have been deposited to the public instead of leaving them in the exchange pool? If so, why? Why are there so many RCI affiliated rental sites? Why are rental weeks (reasonably priced) not offered to RCI dues paying members first before being offered to the general public?

I'm sure there are hundreds more questions forthcoming concerning RCI rentals. If you could explain as much as possible about this now, it would save a lot of time.

Is it RCI's ultimate goal to become a points based exchange company only?

Why are Bonus Vacations so expensive now when they used to be reasonably priced?

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www.picturetrail.com password:gingin (see many timeshares we've visited, please lighten screen before viewing)

posted 01-09-2003 18:45            

Welcome to TUG! We look forward to your participation on this BBS. Your candor will be greatly appreciated.

I do have a suggestion for the current state of the RCI website. If it is not usable to its members for transactions it should have a sign saying "under construction" or come back later. Often I will be in the middle of a transaction and receive countless errors. It would be better for me not to waste my time until the site is in a reasonably usable condition then to input information just to have my transaction fail.

As I stated in one of my previous posts, I do believe you should have a price "rollback" because of all of the problems the web site has generated for your members.

IMO,

Rita

posted 01-09-2003 20:16            

Madge, would you please find out when Aussies with a points account will be able to do online points searches?
Thanks.

Lang

posted 01-09-2003 21:15            

Many of us are having trouble with the new site. I think it would be good to get specific. When I am searching and don't find a match, I have to go back and start all over again. With the old site, I could go back and change areas without out retyping the dates, or change dates without changing areas. It is an aggrivation to do this. Can you help get this changed. Also, we used to be able to keep a list of resorts that we were interested in and simply paste them into a search. Now we have to retype them each time. Can that be fixed?

posted 01-10-2003 04:35            

quote:

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Originally posted by maxedout:
Whoa slow down guys.

I know we're all excited to have RCI's presence on Tug at long last, but the poor woman hasn't got here yet.

Max

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I agree with Max on this one. Let's let Madge get on the board and answer some of our queries first before we drown her on her first day. It's hard to drink from a firehose.

I re-state a comment I made on David Roe's second thread
(http://www.tug1.net/tugbbs1/Forum2/HTML/004809-2.html) that I view the web issues as irritants rather than fundamental concerns. Let's focus on the really important aspects of RCI's handling of our weeks rather than the mechanics of exchanging. (Some of these major concerns are raised above by GinGin and Carolinian.)

Alan

posted 01-10-2003 05:14            

I was wondering if a resort has different unit types that fit the same amount of people but are different in size and amenties are they given different trade value if it's the same week banked? For example, Christmas Mountain Village have Villas which are large 2 bedrooms 1300 sq feet, 2 fireplaces, jacuzzi
screened in porch gas grill and cottages that have 2 bedrooms that are 650 sq feet no jacuzzi only one fireplace no screened in porch or gas grill in otherwords very different accomondations but at the same resort and both sleep 6. Would they be given the same exchange trade value if both were at the same resort and the same week lets say week 30 and same amount of bedrooms and both sleep 6?

posted 01-10-2003 09:35            

A hearty welcome to you Madge. TUGgers are really awonderful bunch. This gives me great hope that RCI has really not forgotten the backbone of the timeshare industry-namely timeshare owners.

posted 01-10-2003 13:47         

I'm very pleased to be with you and to provide you with answers to your very insightful questions. I've made note of your issues and questions and will begin today to respond. I will need to ask your patience as we've received a great many questions -- we all expected we would at the start.

With respect to your questions about RCI's rental inventory, David Roe has asked to address that issue with you himself. Please allow him a little time as well -- he's hard at work on it already!

David also asked me to convey to you right away that we are working flat out on both infrastructure & applications changes that we believe will continue to improve the response time of our website. We will keep members apprised over the next week of the progress we are making. In answer to some of your specific questions about the web, I can provide the following information today:

Space Availability --- The change from the old site to the new doesn't affect available space in any way. The inventory computer system, EVS1, is a mainframe system. The web site just reflects what's in it.

Modifying searches -- Once you've logged in, options are listed just above the box with your personal data. Click on "View Your Travel Plans" and then "Modify Search". Make your desired changes and click on "Submit". Once you receive results of your search, you may choose to "Conduct an Ongoing Search with my Modified Search criteria" or "Continue searching for original location and date request."

Can't view or modify resort choices in ongoing search -- The New Weeks will allow you to search for 3 different timeframes - 2 as Area searches and 1 in the specific Resort Choices section. However, within the Resort Choices section, all dates must match or you will not be able to access the choices to modify them. And, if your request only includes specific resort choices with multiple date ranges, you may not be able to see the Resort Choices section at all. This means you will need to speak with an RCI Guide to make any changes, or ask the Guide to change your dates so that they match, at least within the Resort Choices section.

I will be in touch again early next week with more to address some of your other questions!

posted 01-11-2003 04:21            

Do you know if there is any plans to specifically change the "search by resort number" feature of the RCI web site? The old site let the user cut and paste a list of desired resorts. The new site requires them to be each entered manually, which is much more cumbersome and takes significantly longer.

Some of us "addicts" who search almost every day are finding it to be pretty frustrating.

posted 01-11-2003 13:53            

quote:

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Originally posted by Brian Talbot:
One thing that I've checked and rechecked on the website (that nobody here seems to have mentioned) which has yet to work is "view travel plans". When you click on this selection, the site "thinks" for a minute (as if it is about o enter a java function) and then simply pops you down to the bottom of that same page you are on already (where it says "you have no comment cards to complete". In the next 12 months I have probably about a half-dozen confirmations and one ongoing search and have yet to be capable to see these in the new website.

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posted 01-11-2003 15:02            

I would like to know why I do not see all my confirmed vaction's. I see about 80% of them some are not listed.When I talked to a vc they said that they are confirmed and in there they just may not be listed on the website.I feel that each and every confirmation should be listed.

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