Almost gave in to one these deals last year, signed up on the night then went home to do some research (luckily in the UK we get a 14 day cooling off period, where you can back out with no penalties, guess everyone else has similar laws?).

On investigation it seems that the best approach if you're gonna do it is buy the absolute minimum "points"off your agent to "become a member" then purchase all your other points off members at less than half price (our agent was offering us NEW points at £150 each, on the members web site they were going for £60 - £70 each + a nominal transfer fee).

The agents also have huge leeway in their pricing, ours dropped from £8000 to less than £6000 when we said we were backing out, so haggle like a mad man, it will pay off.

The reason we backed out in the end is that even if we amortised the amount over "a long time" we couldn't justify the cost, after all it represents accomodation only so you add all your travelling on top plus there is a yearly maintenance charge.

Do your sums very carefully and make an informed choice, the members BBS's are a wealth of info from satisfied & disatisfied customers alike.

Cheers, Sim