Question:
If your DVC account receives points on, say 5/1/21, when can you book with those points? Can you book before the points are available? Can you use them right on 5/1/21?
You can book whenever, the points only need to be available for the travel dates. For instance, I have an August use-year and just booked with those points this morning for travel in March.
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Thanks! Follow-up: can you book with borrowed points before you have borrowed? Or do you have to borrow them before you can book? And if the latter, can you un-borrow them if you are unable to get the booking you want?
You can do the borrowing as part of the booking. I think that the interface is actually well setup. It will show you the points your room costs, the points that you have in 2021 or 2022 and if any of those are banked. Then it makes you enter whatever you want to borrow right then and there. You cannot un-borrow them ever (and it makes that very clear) but you don’t borrow them unless you are booking the room. Does that make sense?
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Makes sense - thanks so much!
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It is pretty intuitive. I will say I have had to switch stuff around because of COVID enough that my stays are all over the place in which reservation uses what points. The most important thing to know is that if things change you can reallocate what use year a reservation pulls from.
For example, I have a Sept. Use year and had a June DLR trip planned with my 2020 points and a December WDW trip planned with my 2021 points. When I cancelled my June trip, I called and they banked my 2020 points for me and applied them to my December trip, freeing up my 2021 points for future use, which is adventagous since they have 1 more year in which to use them. But you have to call to reallocate points - as the points are allocated when you make the reservation. The system does not pull the most appropriate points upon your stay, only when you reserve
Let me know if this makes sense!
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In this situation, you can reassign the points yourself online.
After cancelling your June stay, you could have gone in to modify your December stay. By going through all the screens, choosing the same dates etc, at the end the system would then have pulled your banked points first.
And then by going into your Points Summary, you can check things are correct.
If you have more than one contract things get trickier though,
Sometimes it is glitchy and that doesn’t work. I read about that on MaouseOwners so I tried doing that a couple of times with one of my reservations. I wonder if it didn’t work because I have two home resorts, although I was outside the 7 month window? I went all the way through twice, even adding info to guests (email or telephone number) and it didn’t change the points, but I did then get onto chat and they did it right away.
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That is great to know. In my situation I was putting back 60 transfer points I bought for the June trip, so was less comfortable. But I am hearing the take away is - anytime you cancel a trip, go ahead and “refresh” your stay to reallocate the points.
One question - do we need to ensure there is availability for our dates before “modifying” our stay to reallocate the points online? I know when reallocating points between different contracts it is a cancel and rebook, but if it is within a contract there is no risk in losing the reservation when I called.
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When you modify online and aren’t changing the dates, there’s no risk. You already hold the reservation and you aren’t changing anything so it will tell you your room is available.
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Thank you! That is what I thought, but wanted to confirm, as that has never come up in DVC fan. I leave it to this group to take things to the next level 
It isn’t like trying to rebook a reservation that you made at 11 months out with a different set of points at 7 months. Then you do need the room to still be available.
This is just where you’re swapping current points with banked points from the same resort and use year.
As @PrincipalTinker said, as soon as you have two contracts involved things get much more complicated.
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