While I am not currently a DVC member, I VERY nearly was as of this past December. I will tell you for CERTAIN that when we sat down with our DVC rep for 4 full hours on the last full day of our vacation in December, we were told repeatedly that the “beauty of the DVC is that the points never change. A Sun-Thurs stay in the [equivalent of Value season, I forget what DVC calls it] that is 17 points per night now, will still be 17 points per night 20 years from now, and until the end of the contract. The points will never change. The exact dates of the seasons may fluctuate a bit year to year, but those Sun – Thurs nights in the [value] season will always be 11 points.” He repeated that over and over, several times during our meeting, and when I called back to ask more questions after we got home, we were given the same shtick. I remember it vividly because he kept saying it over and over. It was the incentive for us to buy.
We got engaged on that trip. We were keeping our wedding small and inexpensive, and this was going to be our wedding gift to each other: a lifetime of Disney Vacations. But, as we are in our early 30’s and didn’t have a ton of money to invest right away, he was trying to get us into a promotion they had where you could buy into AKV for 100 points to start. He encouraged the 150 or 160 points, or whatever it was, as he said we’d get more vacation value out of it, but 100 was what we could afford right NOW, and so that is what he was trying to sell us. With only 100 points to start, even a few points per night difference can have a dramatic effect on how long you can stay and how much you have to borrow and/or carryover per year. I don’t have my info packet with me, so I can’t list specific numbers, but with that 100 points we’d figured out that for our needs (a 1 bedroom so my dad could stay with us when we went) we could just barely get X number of nights, Sun – Thurs stay in per year, and with carryover and borrowing, could make a just the two of us quick trip for about 2 nights every few years to balance out the difference. We couldn’t really afford a full week, with weekends, on those points.
Well, we ran into an emergency that dipped into our down payment money too steeply, so we decided we’d just have to wait it out for a while before we bought into DVC. After reading this, which is decidedly different from what our DVC rep told us, I’m both heartsick and relieved at the same time. If we’d signed on for the 100 points and the promise we were made that those Sun – Thus points would never change, we’d find ourselves no longer being able to plan the same way. I can understand that for the majority of DVC owners, who have more than the usual minimum 160 points, and stay for full weeks at a time, this makes very little difference, and in many instances may even help. But I can’t help feeling that it’s decidedly unfair to people who were “sold” the “beauty of the DVC points is that the points per night never change” pitch to get them into the lower point sales. We were never given the opportunity to look at the full contract. When we asked for a copy of it to go over, we were told that it wasn’t available until we officially agreed ready to make the purchase, so I feel we had no chance to make a real educated decision about the DVC with all of the facts before signing the contract. I can’t help but wonder how many other people found/are finding themselves in this position now.