No Barbados This Year. :(

So...what happened?  I still don't understand this but for about 8 years we owned 3-weeks of "lock-offs".  This means we own the larger front 1-bedroom unit and the smaller studio.  The 2 apartments can be used as 1 2-bedroom unit or as 2 units by locking the connecting door.

At first we used all 3 weeks but that turned out to be too long and Tom ended up coming home to work leaving me there to entertain friends.

A few years ago we decided we wanted to enter the Rental Pool to save on maintenance fees.  We needed 4 weeks to put into the pool and we still wanted to be in Barbados for 2 weeks.  We also wanted to get rid off the other 2 studio apartments since all our guests have already come.  They didn't want all these studios, so we sold the 3rd week back to them and bought 2 cheaper units for November.  So, the 2 third-week units plus the 2 November units gave us enough for the Rental Pool, saving us a bit of money each year.

All this stuff is somehow run through RCI.  Unfortunately, as of yesterday, RCI had information BEFORE these sales/trades in 2006.  A computer somewhere in Barbados submitted our old 3 lock-offs to RCI to be used by someone else. RCI was never updated as to what we actually own.

So...we had our plane tickets since early June.  Tom needed a surgery.  The hospital scheduled surgery for September 2 - when we would be in Barbados.  Tom got them to change the surgery to last Tuesday so we wouldn't have to change Barbados.

I had a premonition about this trip and emailed people we know to remind them we were coming.  That's when we learned that someone else had been given our weeks by RCI who thought that they were available.

So, now we have plane tickets to a place that we can't go to.  We could rent a place but I sure don't want to pay thousands of dollars for something we actually own.

Everyone says that this is someone else's fault so we're out of luck.

We do have a lot of points now with RCI so we can go somewhere else but it's so close to the time to leave that not much is available.  If we do find something, then we have to tackle changing the flights at this late stage of the game.

I am so angry and I feel betrayed by people who have been told time and time again over the last 10 years  that we were never going to trade these two weeks.

I know I should feel lucky that I have ever been to Barbados but right now I can't see it that way.