Escape Timeshare

During his recent Senate campaign Scott Brown was attacked for being ‘too rich’, with special attention given to the fact that he owns several properties, including an Aruba timeshare.  Valuing the timeshare at a whopping $10-$20,000, his opponent alleged that the ownership of multiple properties prevented Scott Brown from being a grass roots candidate.

While most time share owners will not choose to run for office, the ownership of a timeshare can open you up to being a target of more than just political mud slinging.  Due to the nature of property records, a timeshare is a property that can be easily tied to its owner and lead someone considering a lawsuit to conclude that if the owner owns multiple properties, he or she is likely a good target for a lawsuit.

photo credit: BY-YOUR-⌘

An excellent alternative timeshares and vacation clubs is offered to military service personnel and their families.  It’s called the Armed Forces Vacation Club and costs absolutely nothing to join.

One need merely be 21 or older, and a:

• Member of the United States Uniformed Services (Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, NOAA, USPHS; active duty, and both active and inactive Reserve, Auxiliarist, and National Guard) or an adult dependent
• Retired Member of the United States Uniformed Services (Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, NOAA, USPHS, Reserve, Auxiliarist and National Guard)
• Spouse or child (21 or older) of an active or retired member of the United States Uniformed Services (Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, NOAA, USPHS, Reserve, Auxiliarist and National Guard) AND have a current DD Form 1173, United States Uniformed Services Identification and Privilege Card.
• Civilian employee of the DoD or a United States Uniformed Service (appropriated, non-appropriated, or retired).
• Foreign exchange service member on permanent duty with the DoD
• American Red Cross personnel serving overseas with the U.S. military
• DoD Dependent School teacher
• Disabled American Veteran rated @ 100% with a valid United States Uniformed Services Identification Card.
• Contractor working on a military installation and in possession of an ID card issued by the installation.

Membership includes such perks as being able to rent a condo for far less than most timeshares charge OWNERS to stay at there own.  We’re talking less than $300 a week.  Compare this to timeshares that charge $500+/year in maintenance fees alone and this club starts to make good sense.

More info can be found here.

We mentioned Toyshare a while ago, and have received info from several sources claiming that Toyshare is not only in financial trouble, it is now been taken over by ClubRec.

This must be nervous news for those owning shares in the ‘club’, as your share becomes fairly worthless if your timeshare company goes bankrupt.

There may be an out for current members however, as your contract is likely with the old firm and may not be enforceable with the new owners.  If they attempt to change terms at all, you can refuse and walk.

Best of luck to those owning in Toyshare Utah or Las Vegas.

One of biggest reasons that Timeshares are not regarded as true ripoffs results from the owner problem.  Many thousands are duped into buying overpriced timeshares each year, and in order to justify their tremendous waste of money they loudly laud the ‘advantages of owning a timeshare’ to friends and family.

No one likes to admit they were ripped off, especially when it involves an albatross that most people are unable to get rid of.  For this reason, generally the only people that will claim timeshares work for some people are those that own or sell timeshares.

We’ve been getting increased correspondence regarding Toyshare, a firm that operates in a manner similar to timeshares, only dealing with luxury recreation vehicles rather than lodging.

A Toyshare member pays thousands of dollars in fees in return for the option of using an ATV, RV, or even a boat ‘whenever they please’.

Expect a full article shortly detailing some of the problems users have had with this company, which some are now calling a scam.

If you have any experiences you’d like to share re: Toyshare please comment.

Lim writes:

My wife and I purchased a timeshare through Bluegreen at Charleston, SC. We have 8,000 points
every other year. We soon learned that we didn’t have enough points to use the timeshare for an entire week.

Ouch! Many timeshare companies purposefully mislead customers into believing that their points will equate to a yearly vacation.  They neglect to inform the buyer that these points are often barely enough to reserve a not very nice room every two years, if that.

It continues:

We were definitely misled. We pay outrageously high interest to a mortgage company owned by Bluegreen, . No attorney was present at the loan closing. We were never
told about the maintenance fee, which is exorbitant, between the monthly payment and the maintenance fee I don’t know how much longer we can hold out. They told me i could sell the timeshare as easy as that once we thought we are not going to use it which is a total BS.

Wow, it certainly gets worse doesn’t it?  We recommend that buyers always use a credit card or other financing to purchase a timeshare.  The timeshare company is already giving you a bad deal on the property.  They hope to take the buyer twice by ripping them off on high interest financing which often carries a prepayment penalty.

And concludes:

We tried to sell our timeshare back to bluegreen, they refused, refered us to a real estate company (Pinnacle Vacations) owned by Bluegreen…I am paying Pinnacle $35.00
in since 2004. Nothing!! Hope we can do something about this.
There has to be something we can do. I am so much hopeless and sick about this thing going around and tricking others into it. My experiences i believe won’t be much different from other victims.
Thanks for putting my rant up.

We’re sorry to hear about the bad deal you got on the timeshare, on the bright side its influenced us to write more on how to dump a timeshare.

A large amount of the mail we receive here at Escape Timeshare is from people purporting to be timeshare owners that are ‘perfectly pleased’ with their timeshare purchases.

Considering that just about any timeshare can be purchased on the secondary market for 30% of its retail cost, we tend to discount most emails as being from timeshare promoters or masochists that genuinely enjoy greatly overpaying for luxury vacations.

We do occasionally see the stray email that stands out as being from someone that is genuinely pleased with their purchase and may have at least gotten a fair deal.  For example, Johnathan writes us:

You really cannot write-off all timeshares as bad deals.  I found a single bedroom unit in Puerto Vallarta roughly ten years ago that I purchased for $150 from a co-worker that was sick of maintenance fees on a place she could never find time to visit. 

Mexico can be a bit of a trip for some people who sometimes decide to just let their units revert back to the resort.  She was about to do so when I offered to buy it for a song.  She had spent nearly $20k to purchase it.

Many timeshare owners are surprised to learn about assessments. Simply put, if the timeshare needs renovations, disaster repair, or to simply pad the managing corporations bottom line, timeshare owners will often be assessed a large lump sum fee.  These can sometimes span several years.

The fees can vary in size, but are generally at least $1000. If you don’t pay the assessment you will be denied access to your timeshare. You will still have to pay your maintenance fees or face collections or foreclosure.

Assessment can particularly hurt if you own multiple units in the same complex.

Imagine owning in Wyndham Santa Barbara…owners in the resort were recently hit with a ‘special’ assessment for last couple of years to pay for hurricane repairs.  So much for insurance huh? The entire assessment on a single-bedroom unit totaled $1488.

Perhaps the worst part of an assessment is that it completely destroys a timeshares already low resale value.  Often, even after an assessment has been paid, resale values remain low as future buyers are scared of another assessment in the future.