Tag RCI sucks

So yesterday I get an envelope from the Festiva group, the outfit that bought out our timeshare.  The same place I got the long, aggravating sales call from a week or so ago.  You may recall that during that call I was told that if I don’t convert over from RCI to the new Festiva points plan for the low, low bargain price of $5500 I will wind up getting hammered with considerably higher maintenance fees.  The guy on the phone told me this was absolutely going to happen and I told him if it did I would absolutely bail on the timeshare altogether.

So anyway, I opened this letter, fully expecting my blood pressure to start edging up, assuming the letter was the written confirmation of what the sales guy told me was coming.

I read through the letter.  It outlined some further improvements that they have done to the property as well as announcing they are changing the name of the resort from Celebration World Resort to Fesitiva Orlando Resort.  So I reach the end of the letter and there is no mention of changes to the ownership plan or migration to the Festiva points plan.  I looked in the envelope to make sure there wasn’t another piece of paper in there, nothing.

Hmmm so now I wonder if the sales dude was using a “sky is falling” technique to try to bamboozle me into dropping $5500 that I don’t need to.  So for now, status quo will be the plan.

I was glad to see the replacement Tacoma interior door handle showed up last night so I can stop pulling a McGyver to get out of the vehicle.  Yea the interior of my truck is brown and the replacement handle is gray, who cares?  At least it works.

Last night I wanted to get the grass mowing out of the way.  Before I started I went to the orchard to grab some apples, I knew I had a few that should be close to ripe.   I was bummed when the largest apple I ever recall coming off the tree was already starting to go bad.  It’s always a fine line on how long I can actually leave the fruit on the tree before the fcking bugs/birds destroy it.

The grass was very shaggy after 10 days of not mowing backed up by 4 days of off and on rain.  After the tractor part of the work was complete I pulled out the weed whacker.

Shortly after I started whacking I was joined by my across the street canine friend, Thina. (theena)  I later found out that is her actual name.

I turned off the whacker so she could approach.  She came right over belly crawl style and assumed the now familiar rub my belly position.  I looked over at her place and saw the front gate was closed.  I wondered how she got out.  Well by this time light was getting hard to come by.  After giving her a dog bone and some water I fired the whacker back up and continued, figuring she could just hang out till I was done and then I would take her back over.

Well that is exactly what she did.  She would wander around a bit and then come back to me and follow me around.  She appeared to think the weed whacker was a toy,  several times I had to stop her from jumping in at it while it was running.

By the time I got finished it was literally pitch dark.  I walked back across the street with Thina by my side and opened up their gate.  I called Thina over to me, rubbed her belly and then told her to stay as I closed the gate, which she did.

So as I am wrapping the chain back around the gate I don’t see the dog.  All of a sudden I see her by my side again with a big dog smile on her face.  Great, evidently she has discovered that there are alternative exit points in the shrub border that surrounds the house.

I looked at the shrubs and saw one hole that appeared to be already blocked by an old rusty bicycle.  I saw another hole next to it.  I found an old board and wedged it across the hole, hoping that would be enough to block her.

I opened the gate back up, put Thina inside and closed it.  Once again Thina quickly escaped through yet another hole.  Argh.

Ok so now I once again open the gate, walk up to the door and ring the doorbell.  The man comes to the door looking confused as I was knelt down petting Thina.  I told him she got out again and that she got out through the shrubs.  He says “ok” but I don’t think he really understood me.

When he came out Thina started walking around the yard.  Obviously she didn’t want to get put in her garage dog house. A couple of the kids came out to try to help corral her, one of which actually spoke good english.  He was the one that told me the dogs name was actually Thina and not Nina.  I told him as well about the holes in the shrubs that the dog now uses to escape.  He said he was the one who put the bike in the first hole.  Well at least I know I can talk to the kid the next time when I say, “if this keeps happening I am going to have to call animal services.” Poor dog.

I have had multiple people on FB say I should just keep the dog like it is a simple solution.  Well first off, I am not looking to add a dog to my life at this moment, second, it isn’t like the dog is some stray.  I think her owners might notice when Thina is playing in the backyard across the street.

I just want the dog to be safe.  I really hate the dog is in a home where she isn’t valued.

Originally I had ideas of trying to run with the group on Saturday morning but my legs still felt like shit from my leg work on Wednesday.  Plus I was tired, still catching up on the sleep deficit from my late Thursday night Prometheus showing. Instead on Saturday morning I picked up the dogs early and brought them back to the house, Ali was going into to work. I had stuff to do around the house so I figured the dogs would rather hang out with me while I was doing stuff than be at home alone.

I finally got around to creating a new to do list, something I have wanted to do for quite awhile.  For years I had a list pinned to the fridge of both short term and long term projects, Ali hated it.  However for me, it serves an important purpose.  I find having these items in front of me day and in and day out makes me much more likely to complete them sooner rather than later.  Having a “hey I should do this” item pop into your head and then just hope you remember to do it later does not have a high success rate.

This time I split the list into three categories, home improvement projects, home repair/maintenance, and automotive related items.  I am looking forward to starting to cross off some of those items.  I really need to knock some of those painting projects off the list.  Painting indoors is the perfect Florida summer project.  Anything involving being in the AC is an ideal summer project here.

I had another visit from the German Shep over the weekend.  Again she was cute as could be.  Well once again I walked her back over to her place which once again had the front gate wide open.  I walked her all the way up to the front door of the tiny house and rang the doorbell.

First the woman, whom I think doesn’t speak much english came to the door followed shortly by whom I assume is the husband, flanked by several of their multiple children.  I told them their dog, whom I confirmed is named Nina, was over at my place again.  I asked them if they wanted me to close the gate as I left.  He said no, he will put her in the garage, lovely.

So evidently Nina is either thrown outside or locked up in the garage, poor dog.  Later in the weekend I saw her walking in front of one of my windows, looking for her new friend (me).  By the time I got outside she had gone back to her side of the street.

After I got done with my house chores I took aim at flushing the coolant on the SSR, something I should have done shortly after I bought the truck.  There is a good chance the original coolant was still in the SSR and if that was the case, it is two years past the maximum recommend change interval of 5 years.

I followed the general procedure I found on SSRFanatics, draining the system and then flushing it with distilled water multiple times.  It took awhile to go through the fill, let engine run for awhile and drain cycles but it certainly wasn’t difficult.

I decided to document the process to add to my growing library of automotive maintenance videos, some of my more popular YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcEmach_hVw

During the afternoon I saw a number that caller id’d to Orlando.  Normally if I don’t know the number the caller will get a big fat serving of voice mail.  However for some reason I decided to pick it up.  On the other line was some young guy from the Festiva group.  I recognized the name, that was the company that took over ownership of our timeshare, another one of our poor investments,  several months ago.

I forgot the guys name but boy was he a talker, he immediately started rambling, I only interjected a sentence or two, for the better part of 10 minutes he did all the talking.  This was the crux of what he said.

As part of their grand take over plan, Festiva is offering to convert current owners off of their current deeded arrangement as well as the tie in to RCI, a company that I have already discussed here many times negatively.  RCI sucks plain and simple.  Well the idea of dumping RCI sounds good, keep blabbering away sales guy.

Festiva supposedly has their own exchange program that supposedly has very minimal fees compared to what RCI charges, ok that is nice as well. Who doesn’t like lower fees?  However I knew there was another shoe to drop, and drop it did, a big muddy work boot no less.

Switching over to the Festiva plan would be easy, easy as long as you were willing to drop ANOTHER $5500. When I heard that I may have literally said “what the fck” under my breath.  What a joke.  The joke got better.

The guy tells me that approximately 70% of the current owners have opted to switch over to Festiva (I am sure that is an OMGWTF lie), meaning that there is a much smaller collection of deeded owners remaining to spread those lovely maintenance fees across. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if my yearly maintenance fees double.  Ok, well now I was pissed.

I told blabber mouth that this is how it appears to me.  Festiva came in, sends out a letter that their new ownership is a great thing, they were already doing some repairs/improvements to the property and it didn’t talk of any other signficant changes for owners as far as costs were concerned.

The reality is they are using a Mitt-like Bain Capital approach to the timeshare.  Come in, gut the principals that the current owners bought under and give them one $5500 option to get out, else face higher maintenance fees, directly caused by their actions.  It was utter bullshit.

So when fast talker took a breath I stopped him.  I told him this was the bottom line.  If anything he is proposing involves me laying out another large sum of money to chase the other large sums of money we already flushed down the toilet with this timeshare he can forget it.  I told him I am now separated and there was not a chance in hell that I would be taking his offer.

I told him that if the maintenance fee armageddon he was referring to comes to pass I would simply dump the timeshare and walk away from it.  In my financial situation turning my back on the thousands of dollars we threw at this pig is a better option than dropping another $5500 to put lipstick on it.  F that.

Despite leaving absolutely no doubt that I was not going to do anything this guy continued trying to pitch me it’s merits.  He was determined, I’ll give him that.  For whatever reason I didn’t just hang up on him. Despite his annoying persistence, pitching something that is intended to do nothing but screw me over, he seemed like a nice guy.  Finally I convinced him I was not interested.  I thanked him for the info. Regardless of how I feel about it, it was important for me to know it was coming so I can act accordingly.

I let Ali know about it as well since her name is on the deed.  She is going to call RCI and see what they say about it.

So Ali texted me late in the afternoon she was leaving work.  I asked her if she wanted to grab dinner at Sweet Tomatoes after I dropped the dogs off, a place neither of us has patronized since we separated.  It’s a weird dynamic I find myself in with Ali, I know that I I need to put more effort into establishing a new social circle yet I find myself doing most stuff with her.

I guess part of the reason for that is our split was so amicable.  In marriages that split with a screaming, frying pan throwing, you f’d who hell storm, you typically won’t see the estranged spouses having much contact at all.  We have always been and continue to be good friends.

Anyway dinner at Sweet T’s was good, there wasn’t a big crowd like we saw during season.  Of course we ate later than the old people normally chow down, I don’t think we got there until after 6.

We made Father Day plans for her to bring the dogs out so we could do a swamp walk, something else that I hadn’t done in awhile.

Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to do a block (bike/run/swim).  Ali talked about maybe joining me for the swimming portion but she decided to stay home.  It was a tough session.  After biking more than 12 miles, running 4 and swimming a mile I was pooped to say the least.

After the swim I drove over to Ali’s.  She had a Father’s Day card for me from the animals which was cute.  I had the SSR so she loaded the dogs up in the Camry and followed me out to the house where we ate lunch before heading over to the swamp.

We knew it was going to be very hot for the dogs so we packed a lot of water and planned to cut the walk short.

The swamp is actually not very swampy at all, it was almost totally dried up.  15 foot deep basins that used to be filled to the brim with water now had nothing in them at all, it was pretty weird.

The dogs were obviously laboring in the heat.  We stopped much more than we normally would, both so they could drink and just lay in the shade.  It was funny watching the dogs veer side to side in the path, making sure to hit every shady spot they could.

We saw a couple gators nestled in the muddy shallow puddles that remained in a few spots.  We did manage to have one new swamp wildlife sighting, a doe and her baby fawn right out on the path behind us.  It was cute.

The dogs were quite glad to get back into the van, the Florida heat and sun is very tough when you are black and furry.

When we got back to the house I jumped in the pool so I could splash Sadie a bit to help cool her down.  You could tell how tired she was.  Instead of her normal sprint around the pool perimeter it was a just basically a fast walk.

As I was drying off I said to Ali how ice cream, specifically a milkshake, would taste good.  She mentioned how she still had a Cold Stone gift card with a partial balance on it as well as a coupon.  Ok , so it was decided, now we were going for ice cream.

I followed her to her place in the SSR to drop off the dogs.  We then headed over to Cold Stone or at least where Cold Stone used to be.  We discovered that location had closed so we went to another that was a couple miles away.

I requested an extra thin chocolate shake, something that can be hard to come by.  I hate when places basically dump soft serve in a cup and call that a milkshake.  I want to be able to drink it with a straw, not use a spoon.  They did a good job of meeting my request. The shake was quite good.

As we were sitting outside enjoying our respective treats, somehow the subject came up about online dating, specifically Ali asked me if I would consider doing it.  Well I was surprised she would wonder if I would consider it based on my tendency to favor electronic communication over all other types.  I told her that I actually had Match.com account already although it is the free variety where you basically can browse and have very restricted communication with other site members.

She seemed pretty surprised by that.  I told her that so far it seems like a weird scene, telling her that it seems I am of most interest to older women, an age range that typically is not going to interest me much.  I guess it was weird to even be discussing that at all with Ali, it just seemed to be part of the conversation.

So on the way back to Ali’s place we made one more stop at the grocery store so she could grab supplies to make the dog’s veggie meal supplement.

It was a fun Father’s Day albeit in a new set of circumstances.

Last night I finally finished watching The Immortals which took me a total of 3 sleepy nights to complete.  The reason I had it my Netflix queue was because it was from the same guys that produced 300, one of my favorite movies ever.

Well these guys had let me down before with that awful super hero themed flick that had the guy with a massive blue penis.  I was hoping that was a fluke and Immortals would be their redemption.  Well it wasn’t, instead it’s strike two.

The movie tried so hard to be epic.  It leaned hard on 300 style cinematography with many, many slow-mo, blood spewing, skull exploding fight scenes.  I just didn’t get into it, at all.  It was a chore to get to the end of it.  Mickey Rourke was the head bad guy.  His random and totally pointless acts of violence got so ridiculous I was laughing out loud eventually.

I don’t know if you could make a film that felt any more unoriginal than Immortals.  Don’t bother, C-.

Last night after work I felt so tired despite getting 8 plus hours of sleep the night before.  Despite my lethargy I HAD to get in one more Bender attempt in since it was the last day of the month.  My goal was to hit double digits.  I was surprised that despite my lack of energy I was able to pull it off and in retrospect might have been able to get an 11th rep if I hung on the bar a bit longer.

My new $100 sonic bark inhibitor arrived yesterday. I didn’t feel like mounting it up last night despite being greeted by the customary shrill sounds of the chihuahuas barking when I got home.  This new device boasts it can detect barking from up to 75 feet away and send out a silent deterrent over a range of 300 feet!

I won’t be relying much on the device picking up the high pitched chihuahua screech though, that is what the remote control is for.  The remote can fire off the device from as far as 500 feet away.  I may have the remote surgically attached to my body.

I ordered the optional outdoor AC hookup so I never have to worry about low battery power delivering a less then full blast correction.  There is only one negative that I see.  For outdoor use they include a clear vinyl “rain jacket” for the device that has some small holes over the speaker and microphone areas.  I am worried in the extreme Florida conditions that the jacket may not hold up very well. I hope to have the device hooked up tonight after work.

I have a couple other small projects that need to get done.  I once again have one of the running club time clocks in my garage.  This is one of them that I replaced the batteries on.  Evidently the charging light has been flaky since the replacement, possibly I knocked something loose.

I have a second running club related repair as well.  One of the BNC connectors on a timing mat fell apart in my hand when I took the system apart after the race Monday.  After contacting Ipico they indicated they could repair it but there would be some considerable expense with freight both ways and time and materials  for what is a relatively simple repair for someone with basic skills.  I told them I had basic skills so they directed to me what I would need to fix the connector.  I hope to grab the parts today at Radio Shack.

Last night I went out with Ali on her tri bike so she could practice some more.  She made some good progress, successfully navigating relatively small radius 180 degree turns after initially being unable to do so.  She said she felt more comfortable on the bike which is great.  She will be using it for the triathlon we are doing this Sunday in Naples.

If you search my blog you will find some pretty extensive rants about RCI, the company that we are forced to use if we want to broker our timeshare points.  They have pissed me off many times with their ridiculous nickel & dime charges, horrible customer service and terrible web site.

Well you haven’t heard me rant about them in a few years because we haven’t used their service at all.  Since we discovered we really enjoy long road trip vacations with the dogs the past few years our RCI account has been collecting cob webs.  That timeshare purchase we made years ago has turned out to be a big waste of money in the big picture.

Well I figured I may try to get some use out of this pig for our upcoming trip to Ireland.  We need to fly up to New York to meet up with the rest of the family for the flight over the pond to the “homeland”.  I had suggested to Ali that maybe we could go up to New York a couple days early just to sight see a bit.  I was last in New York close to 25 years ago and Ali hasn’t been there since her school field trip days.

My thought was RCI could be used in one of two ways, to get a discount on our flight to New York or for accommodations in the city for a couple days.

So I log onto their website yesterday and am immediately greeted by frustration.  I keep getting stuck in authentication loops while trying to investigate my options.  I would try to look at available options, get prompted to log in, which I would and then be returned to the exact same page that would prompt me to log in again.

Eventually I got sick of trying and decided to just call them instead.  So I call the 800 number, follow the system prompts and get greeted a busy signal.  I tried three different times and had the same result.  I was amazed that after 3 years that RCI still sucked just as much as I recalled. I couldn’t believe both their web site AND phone system would be f’d up.  At least they consistently are a mess.

So I decided to call again today.  I found our old resort guide and found a RCI affiliated place in New York called the Manhattan Club.  It’s location would be just about perfect.  I didn’t bother trying to F with the web site again and instead hoped their phone system was actually functional.

After close to a 15 minute wait on hold, I was greeted by Janet.  Janet utilized an overly polite voice that crossed the line from friendly to phony.  I told Janet I was looking for information regarding availability of locations in New York in August.

Janet said she would be happy to help me, all we had to do was settle an outstanding $26 charge on the account before we could proceed.  She said it was the point rollover charge.  I have ranted about this charge before.

The way it works is RCI allots you a certain amount of points per year.  If you don’t get the opportunity to use your points during a certain year they will roll the points over to the next year.  How nice huh?  Well they will do this but it will cost you $26.  This $26 is in addition to the yearly fee that we pay to be a member of RCI.  This idea of paying for something that costs RCI NOTHING is like pouring battery acid on a brush burn for me.

When Janet told me about the charge I kept my cool and politely asked for a further explanation.  She told me that my 2011 usage year expired yesterday (ironically) so if I didn’t pay the $26 I would only be able to use my points for 2012.

I repeated this back to her, hoping she understood why this was so stupid.  I said “So Janet, you are telling me that even though it is June 1st, 2011, I can no longer use my 2011 points unless I pay RCI an additional $26 even though I my account is paid in full through May of 2012?”  “Yes, that is correct” Janet robotically replied, her voice obviously losing patience with my refusal to simply comply with the small fee.

I maintained my cool and tried to reason with Janet further.  I explained that there is no point in my paying the additional $26 if there are no available accommodations in New York City for the dates I need.  Janet insisted that unless I paid the additional $26 she was unable to do the search.  She then tried to blow me off, saying that I could call back if I changed my mind about the fee.

Well that removed any veils of politeness on my part.  I confirmed Janet’s name and asked to speak to her supervisor.  She chuckled under her breath as she said she would transfer me, just to be a bitch. F U Janet.

So after another 5 or 6 minute hold a gentleman picks up whom says he is a supervisor. I asked him if Janet explained my problem and he said she did.  I repeated my issue anyway, explaining that I was trying to see if I could even use my points at all and to be asked to pay $26 on top of what we already pay yearly to simply do a search was outrageous.

The supervisor understood my gripe.  He said that the way the RCI reservation system works for the call center it literally will not allow the reps to continue in the system unless that fee is addressed which sounded like pure and utter bullshit to me.  Magically, the supervisor did not have this restriction and he was able to perform the search for me.  He said the Manhattan Club had no open slots for the rest of 2011.  He said that typically high demand locations like this require booking 9-12 months in advance which was not news to me.

I thanked him for searching and inadvertently proving my point that I would have just wasted $26 to find out they couldn’t help me anyway.  I asked the supervisor if he had any info on how I could use my points towards discounted airfares.  He only knew some outlines of the plan so he transferred me to the department that handles that type of transaction.

After another 5 minute hold I am picked up on by another woman.  Even though I already provided full confirmation of my personal information to the previous clerk I was asked for it again.  I asked how the points for airfare deal worked.

The woman told me that I could use up to 25,000 of my points for a discount on the airfare.  The points translate into a cash discount on the price of the ticket, 25,000 points equals a $235 discount.  But of course as always with RCI, there is a catch.

If you book the flight online they charge you $25 to do so, there goes more than 10% of your “savings”.  If you have the audacity to expect a human being to help you book the flight they charge you $50, lol. What a joke.

I am sure the rates that you get booking a flight through RCI are padded already beyond what you would see if you went directly to the airlines, evaporating more of your make believe “discount”. I thanked the woman for the information, confirming that RCI is a waste of time all the way around.  She was sure to mention to me before I hung up that I had a $26 charge on my account if I wanted to roll over my points. She would be happy to process that for me. I told her thanks but no thanks.

I hung up with a renewed disgust for RCI.  I am annoyed that if I want to get any use out of my timeshare dollars at all I have to deal with these incompetent scam artists.  RCI sucks plain and simple, avoid them like the plague.

I guess if we want to extend our NYC stay we will be paying full boat to do so.

Well as you can tell, I really dug into changing things up with the blog yesterday after I installed WordPress 2.5.  I found a way to incorporate my random image header with a newer theme that supports “widgets”.   These widgets allow me to plug in all sorts of extras into the blog.  I added a NASA image of the day, a traffic analyzer that shows information about the traffic coming to the blog, a link to a post one year ago, weather, how many spam comments were blocked, a cleaner drop down menu for browsing prior posts, a new “popular” posts widget and more!  I also signed up for Google ad-sense and installed a WP mod to easily incorporate it into the blog.  I figure if I can make a few bucks while blogging, why not do it? You will notice that some of the Google ads relate to the blog post you are looking at, kinda cool.  It’s a whole lot of change but I like it, a lot.

Small side note, the site crossed 30,000 unique hits.  The accuracy of the hit counter  is questionable since I have had to reset the count from memory quite a few times due to issues with my web host.  Speaking of my host, I requested for my content to get moved to a different box due to the issues I have been having.  When the change happens the site may be unavailable for a day or so while net DNS servers are updated.

Last night I finished up sinking line posts in the ground.  After I scooped out my last bit of dirt with the post hole digger I lifted it high and drove the digger into the ground deep in celebration.  It felt good to be close to the end of the nearly month long project.  All that is left to do is string about 600 feet of wire which I plan to get done Saturday afternoon/evening.  

Ali got home last night just after I finished up with the last line post.  I had Nicki out with me on her leash.  Even though the fence is not totally enclosed, I let her off leash even though I’m sure Ali cringed when I did it.  Nicki immediately started sprinting around in circles, thrilled to be able to run around without a 16 foot restraint attached to her neck.  Ali and I both laughed as we watched her run and run.  We left her off leash until we went back inside.  She was just fine and didn’t try to sprint away from us as Ali has always feared.  As daylight was fading I loaded up the 3 big heavy rolls of fence wire into the back of the truck and dropped them off where they would be installed, saving me from pushing each roll several hundred feet.

This afternoon I am leaving work early so we can head up to Tampa.  Ali is running a 5k up there tomorrow called the Iron Girl.  The race is all women.  She is very excited about competing in an out of town race.  We are taking the pooch along.  I am bringing a laptop with that is loaded with the Slingbox client.  I am hoping we can watch some of our normal Friday night Tivo stuff at the LaQuinta we are staying at via the net.

The cat is still at the vet, we are still in no rush to get her.  I came up with a plan to set up the automatic litter box AND the manual litter box in the utility room once Spook returns.  Then the stupid cats will have a choice.

I received yet ANOTHER Roomba yesterday.  This time it was a jet black scheduler model with “intellibin”.  Intellibin sounds really high tech huh?  All it does is flash a little red led if the dust bin is full.  Since I empty the bin after every run it really is just fluff for me.  I currently have NINE robots at my house, well TEN if I count the Scooba.  It’s time for me to get busy, parting them out to sell on Ebay.  I am going to give one to my mom to try and I plan to keep three for my cleaning crew. (and maybe one more for hacking) All the rest will be finding homes elsewhere either intact or as organ(part) donors.   

I can’t wait to see how Ali’s Wheel of Fortune tryout goes.

I started Tivo’ing Battlestar Galactica.  I keep hearing how awesome it is.  I love sci-fi, I think I will wind up being sorry I got in on it so late.

Oh I forgot, we had another bad experience with RCI last night, what a surprise.  Ali’s friend Sue is going to be driving down to visit us next week.  Her car has some problems so we suggested that she rent a car for the trip.  We offered to help her out.  We had about 30,000 unused RCI points that are expiring at the end of May.  I f we don’t use them, we lose them.  One of the things we can use them for is stuff like rental cars, perfect!  We at least can get some use out of them.  So Ali calls up RCI and explains that we want to rent a car for a friend using our points.  Ok no problem, we can do that.  Oh by the way, there is a $49 fee to do so, another f’ing fee.  When Ali told me about the fee I grumbled but it is to be expected at this point, RCI is all about fees.  So she gives the rep all the info and is told she would be transferred to Budget to complete the reservation.  It will cost us 33,000 points PLUS the $49 fee. Oh and there COULD be additional charges by the rental company but we need to find that out our self.  So Ali gets on with the Budget rep and again gives all the information.  Then I see Ali’s face turn to concern/disbelief.  The rep is telling Ali that they have NO cars available at that location to rent with points but they would happily rent us a car if we wanted to pay for it conventionally.  What a crock of shit.  The rep said that they normally only allocate cars for points at airports.   Ali asked for a supervisor, the guy said he was a supervisor.  Ali hung up, disgusted.  She spent close to a half hour going through this circus only to be told that our points were no good.  By the end of the ordeal she was chiming in on my chant of “RCI sucks”.