I don’t know how common it is, and I doubt it’s where the real money is, but that method would ensure against a loss if you are a commercial renter. It also could explain why many of the confirmed reservations never drop in price. 
the casual one-off renter wouldn’t be motivated to behave like that.
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Then it sounds like the best way to combat that is to have any points go into holding expire at the end of those 60 days, regardless of any new reservations. Member services could make exceptions, but that would be case by case, and of course, leaving a record of those on the membership.
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I got the 30/60 backwards. 60 gives them even more runway so yes I bet they are churning holding points.
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This is really punishing the private owner who may have had an emergency! That’s the problem with the bad actors, they ruin it for everyone!
I remeber about 20 years ago trying to get second hand tickets to a U2 concert. I watched as the professional scalpers bought up the tickets of any lay person trying to sell theirs, and then pricing the tickets at a high point. They would never come down in price and would walk away with unsold tickets rather than devaluing their inventory. It was fascinating. Took me another 10 years to see U2.
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That’s why I added the caveat with calling MS for an exception. The best way to not have points go into holding would be to cancel outside of 60 days, but we all know life happens. Now if it happens twice that quick, that’s awful luck. If it happens 3 times, something is wrong.
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That’s exactly what I think happened with Eras tour tickets. I watched right up to concert time and even after it started, and those prices didn’t drop at all. A real person trying to offload tickets they can’t use wouldn’t do that. A company who’s already made profit on just a few really jacked up ones? They didn’t care.
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And when an individual offers a low price they snatch them up so they set the floor 
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So I actually just came here to say yay, one of my waitlists came through! It was the more important one to me and October is shaping up again. Fingers crossed on the second and it’s a 1 bedroom Kidani so I’m hopeful.
As an international guest I really do not see this although I believe it’s likely true for people planning one time or infrequent trips. Honestly as a DVC owner and AP holder, I found the international changes pretty upsetting. Not because
I don’t think it is. Or because
Because that would be silly.
But because it makes me feel mildly unwanted and unwelcome in my happy place. Plus I would have actually done the DVC extra thingy and can’t. It just takes a little of the joy away. There’s still joy.
And on another note… I think we have similar approaches! We have BCV (which I also only use for Beach Club), VGF because it’s DH’s favourite and I love walking distance to MK despite it now being my least favourite park and finally SSR because it was super cheap and we like to move around at 7 months and sometimes do last minute and I don’t like to “waste” the expensive ones. We’ve had the SSR contract for… 8(ish?) years and not stayed there once, but we bought with the idea that we’d be ok to. It’s really helped with our flexibility, and we actually really do want to do a stay there, but available AKL rooms just tempt me more… Suspect we’ll get our chance soon.
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This makes complete sense. Sometimes small things cast a shadow when you really would prefer sun.
So far this approach is working well. I did just use my BCV points to book 2 nights at BWV at 2.5 months. I don’t want to get in that habit but I didn’t think the waitlist would come through.
So you are also confirming that I don’t think I can give up my AKV contract as my "cheap points: contract.
I did the math last night. My current pattern of using DVC means that I would ideally have about 205 points. I have 170. OTUP are nice, but some.of the limitations are frustrating.
Pretty much I think I need a 75 point VGF or Poly.or a 50 BLT (depending on what we think of BLT in October). I haven’t told DH yet. 
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Okay now I am looking and I see a 50 point AKV in my use year…soooo tempting…
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Funnily enough I was going to say that if you’re doing “cheap” points that adding on to your AKV sounds better for you than SSR. We did SSR because it was the cheapest of the cheap contracts available in our use year (and still at WDW) but if I already had AKV I totally wouldn’t give it up!
Tough choice between cheap add on and walkable to MK add on, though. This is a fun dilemma. Or can you do both?
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If you own DVC and have an AP you most likely aren’t getting to take advantage of the packages I speak of. I’ve seen some pretty great deals out there.
That is a weird exclusion. I’m sure the subset of international guests that own DVC are small comparatively. And the subset of those guests that would actually purchase the add on membership (or whatever they call it) is even smaller. There must be some sort of reason (legal maybe?) why it was feasible to exclude international DVC owners.
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I suspect this is a genuine legal issue.
Since DVC don’t have a licence to sell timeshares in the UK or the EU (and likely elsewhere), we cant buy direct unless we’re actually in the US.
It makes sense therefore they can’t sell the upgrade either.
It was suggested elsewhere that maybe they would if you asked whilst in the US. Not seen any reports of people trying that &/or the outcome.
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Interesting. That could be a work around since that’s how you can buy direct as well.
ETA: But really if you don’t come a couple times in a year would it really be beneficial? It’s a yearly add on, correct?
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Yes. But if you wanted OTUPs and could take advantage of the other benefits it might be worth it even as a one-off.
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Both are a pipe dream, but eventually I think it will happen. As long as the contract is under a certain amount, I can save up for it. Then I’ll see where prices are and what makes sense.
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I totally get this too. I was all set to buy resale points, and at the end of the day one of the main reasons I bought direct was because I didn’t want any limitations on the product I was buying, whatever they may be. I knew it would bug me. And so international guests meet this limitation, direct points notwithstanding. I also suspect it is legal, though it might be nice for them to specify that. It’s not like Disney to leave money on the table (which is fair–they are a corporation!), and if they specified the legal limit, it might help you feel less of a sting.
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Thank you!! I wouldn’t have thought twice of the DVC beyond (or whatever it’s called) limitation if they hadn’t blatantly lied about the reason international guests couldn’t advance book lighting lanes. I’d had that same thought as @Nicky_S about trying when we’re on property but tbh I’m not desperate for it, it was just the general feeling of rejection whether it’s logical or not.
Years ago, DVC was awesome with me on the direct thing. I bought 25 direct add-on points for the blue card when that’s all it took. I called from Canada, and the DVC guide implied that he could process everything if I just said I was calling from the US. I didn’t want to do that, and said I’d just wait until we were on property. They sorted everything beforehand so it took all of 5 minutes out of our holiday and they still gave us the 3 fastpasses. Lovely!!
… and more importantly my second wait list just came through! I’m so happy with this trip now.
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love it when this happens!
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