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Although not yet approved by the U.S. District Court, details of a proposed settlement agreement in Murillo vs. RCI are now available: In terms of "injunctive relief" mandating substantive, meaningful, permanent changes in RCI's practices, it's certainly a matter of opinion whether this proposed agreement actually achieves any such thing. Personally, I am thoroughly unimpressed, since after review it seems to me that RCI is only VERY slightly constrained from just renting out the "best of the best" deposits, instead of offering those prime weeks ONLY to RCI members for exchange purposes. Any restriction on RCI "rentals" is very tiny indeed and nearly meaningless, in my opinion. The agreement is predictably lengthy and, to those who sought real "punishment" to RCI for its' past practices, probably very disappointing. You can find the entire proposed settlement agreement on other Internet sites if you are interested in reading legal documents, but following are key highlights (not necessarily listed in an order corresponding to the order within the proposed agreement): 1. RCI agreees (for the first time) to a "disclosure of trading power" --- although WITHOUT actually revealing the internal methods by which that trading power is determined in the first place. Many will regard this change as progress, since RCI has always completely cloaked "trading power" in total darkness and mystery. Historically, exchanging through RCI could perhaps be best described as "Deposit first, then hope". Once (if?) the "change" is implemented, an owner will be able to determine trading power BEFORE depositing with RCI (but only for OWNED weeks; members won't be able to just "inquire at will" about the trading power of weeks which they don't actually own in the first place --- and non-members won't be able to make any trading power inquiries at all). Some will likely note that this particular change really constitutes nothing more than RCI finally offering a "search first" option --- an option which has already long been in place by competitor exchange company Interval International. It should be noted here as a relevant aside that RedWeek has also offered a "search first" capability since the RedWeek exchange program first began. 2. RCI agrees to achieve a "balance" between its rental and exchange inventory. RCI will apparently be allowed and able to get inventory from many sources in order to achieve this alleged "balance". Upon review of the draft agreement, however, I personally found this notion of "balance" to be very poorly defined and extremely difficult for RCI members to ever successfully monitor or verify --- but that's just my personal opinion. I'm "facts and proof" oriented and I always have been, so I'm not a big fan of performance criteria which can't be readily quantified, easily verified and routinely monitored. Also, at least as I read it, this "balance" seems to be achievable by RCI acquiring comparable "quantity" (i.e., numbers) of weeks for the exchange inventory, without any actual consideration of "quality" of those weeks. In other words, it seems to me that there could very well be 1000 undesirable "dog" weeks in the RCI exchange inventory, and 1000 highly desirable "prime" weeks in the rental inventory --- and yet that would somehow be "balanced" under this settlement agreement. That arrangement is NOT in any way, shape or form "balanced", in my view. Would YOU rather have 1000 clay bricks or 1000 gold bars? 3. Class action RCI members will be able to pick ONE of five different offered "benefits". To me, these "benefits" seem to be trivial little "trinket" items of very little actual value (or any real cost to RCI). Specifically, these "benefits" choices include choosing ONE item among a $100 cruise discount certificate, a free night's rental (...but only available with a night's PAID rental), a membership renewal credit, or a prorated refund of membership fees. Remember, it's "pick ONE" (...and ONLY one). Petty, laughable and insignificant, in my personal opinion. I do not "exchange", least of all with RCI. I have absolutely no stake or involvement in the outcome of this case, nor have I ever had any stake or involvement at any time. I am merely reporting developments in Murillo vs. RCI here, factually and accurately, for those who might be interested in the matter but don't actually know where / how to find or follow the actual progress of the case, which clearly is now VERY close to its' formal, final...and apparently fizzling... conclusion. ============================================== Postscript info: revised on 12/09/08: The preliminary approval hearing for the settlement agreement is now scheduled for December 15, 2008. While I have no personal stake in this matter, it's certainly very easy to see how / why class action members interested in seeing RCI reform its' current "rental" practices are plainly furious about this proposed "settlement". For any potential RCI "exchanger", this proposed agreement is a farce by any possible standard or measure. It certainly appears to be just one very small step forward --- accompanied by two or three very BIG steps backward! It is entirely possible that the court will summarily reject this proposed settlement agreement, which certainly appears to be very lopsided --- clearly benefiting RCI tremendously but, just as clearly, benefiting the plaintiffs / class action members almost not at all.