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Do you really want to sell your timeshare?

What a controversial subject to pose to disgruntled timeshare owners. But seriously – do you want to sell your timeshare or exit your timeshare?

This should raise a few hackles in the necks of timeshare owners who have been subjected to scams, tricksters, inflated maintenance charges, misrepresentations, and pressure selling.

At some point you might just want an end to timeshare, a permanent exit to a constant and persistent liability. But my question to you is do you want to give up a timeshare which at some point you paid a lot of money for? In asking this question we fully understand you don’t want to pay large maintenance fees each and every year.

Now let us take you back to when you bought the timeshare – you did so, from a developer (or another institution herein called the developer) and this entity was an entity other than the club or association which levies the maintenance charges each year (herein called the club). So! You paid a large amount of money on an expectation. The vast and predominant gripe we hear from most consumers is that it’s the cost of maintenance which precluded any reasonable re sale of your timeshare.

So it’s the cost of maintenance which ought to be addressed, not the exit and or disposal of the timeshare.

Whenever a consumer wants to exit and confronts the club with regard to an exit, the club enters into negotiations and at the conclusion of that negotiation always ends up the same. The consumer pays some money which is always variable amounts and gives up his or her timeshare permanently.

So the result is as explained ‘always the same’ – you lose the timeshare and the club always gets it. If the club always gets the timeshare the numbers of timeshare owners will fall and this is the primary reason some clubs use to explain the increased cost of maintenance fees.

This all said, the club which you were contractually bound to is charging you maintenance fees and associated costs for vacant weeks which you in part have funded the purchase of.

Wow! So if there were 10,000 weeks sold in the complex and there are 4,000 weeks given back to the club in exchange for an exits you and your co timeshare owners have a proportion of extra weeks which you are expected to maintain, also you don’t get the benefit of the enjoyment of the proportional weeks which you part own. Who has been getting the benefit of the decision to acquire those weeks from the exiting owners?

This might be a good question which lies in the smoke screen put up by the timeshare industry.

We fully understand this is a boring/tedious subject but we do hope you understand the point. If these exits continue and the consumer owns the club then all the timeshare which the club has acquired over the years (whereby consumers have given up those timeshare contracts) belong to the clubs. The time therefore rests in the club (of which you are a member) and is in part yours.

Therefore, it is of no surprise those clubs and developers have been shifting consumers onto different products and away from the resorts.

If they cleared out the entire resort of those timeshare owner the complex/ resort would be free of encumbrances and could be sold for a vast amount of money to others.

Now, where will that money end up? Who will benefit from a sale or a future lease? We do not believe it will be the consumer!

So consider at all times the end game and don’t give up what could be a large possible return – ‘where there is muck there is brass’ may hold true for the timeshare industry.

Finally, if it is the case that the trustees of the club and/or its director have been disposing of those timeshare from others which benefited others then those perpetrating the sell off have breached their duty of care.

 

For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk