No. You actually pay a 10% premium to get it. If you cancel, you get those 10% points that are extra back to use as normal, but when you take the week, they all get used.
Exactly - although we actually do get a better deal, but that was not really the intent at the time. One of the benefits of the Guaranteed Week is you also lock in the
point chart, essentially.
So, to elaborate slightly on
@Sandisw's point, through example:
For the Copper Creek GW, at the time, that week was usually 107 points for the week. So, they added 10% to it, and so our contract, and the price for the week for us, is 118 points. So the week (Week 48, typically the week after Thanksgiving) is automatically booked for us each year, and it costs us 118 points for the week. So, we pay 10% more, assuming the week should cost everyone else 107 points. For that week, however, this year, it would cost 119 points for the same week. Now this may have a little to do with point chart changes, although I don't think they've changed a lot for that week - it's more that this year, we have a lot more days that fall in November, when the points are a bit higher. Now as stated above, if we cancel (which Member Services has to do for us) that reservation, we get all 118 points to use as normal.
Further example, and a better one to illustrate the changes is the GW we got at Riviera. We got it for the first full week in October. We have no intention to go for a full week then any time soon since our kids are still young (currently 3rd and 4th grade), but maybe when they're out of school we might go. We have it more for the future if we want to do a week for Food & Wine at a hard time to get a Standard View (although Riviera's always hard to get a Standard View). Now, when it opened, that week was 118 points. So our contract and GW for that week costs 130 points. So where it would cost everyone else (at the time) 118 points to book it, it would cost us 130 points to book it. We'd pay 10% more, but have the week guaranteed for us.
However, we really made out on this, if we want to keep that week and use it in the future. For this coming year, 10/1-10/8 at Riviera in a Standard View costs 139 points. It was booked for us with our GW for the 130 points - so we would have actually
saved 9 points and had it booked for us automatically. That's because the October points chart there has been adjusted so much as that's a high demand time.