My husband and I made the mistake of purchasing a timeshare. Twice. You’d think we would have learned from the first one, but unfortunately, we are slow learners. And it has been a very expensive learning curve! You’ve received those offers in the mail, right? The ones that seem too good to be true? The ones that offer you a 5 night, 6 day stay at a resort that looks so amazing, you wish you could be there right then! “What? Only 299 per COUPLE (as in TWO people!?) for the ENTIRE stay?” Too good to be true? That depends.
If you can go, sacrifice 90+ minutes of your life that you will never get back to listen to their presentation, and stay true to the word “no”, then I say, go and enjoy an awesome discounted vacation! The problem is, most of us go with the intention of saying “no”, but after the 4 glasses of free champagne, all the “fresh” bakery goods you could ask for, a tour around the property ending up at their top floor, corner unit model…the one you will never actually stay in…with views across the pacific, and a smooth talking salesman that genuinely seems to care about your future vacation problems, it starts to make a little bit of sense as to why you should buy. After all, you are going to be taking a vacation every year and this resort has all the amenities you want. Next thing you know, the manager is now sitting with you at your round table, refilling your champagne glass, and showing you the cost of your future vacations (that you had already told him you’d be taking) and why you can’t afford NOT to buy! “Do you want to vacation every year?”, Yes! “Do you like staying at ‘high end’ resorts?”, um duh! “Would you like to pass this on to your kids as a legacy?”, absolutely! And then it happens. One half of the couple starts to cave and glances over at their spouse with the look that says, “well, it kind of does make sense…”, and at that exact moment, the manager knows he has your hooked. He sees the sign of weakness and goes for it! And just like that, you are the proud owners of another timeshare that you thought you would never buy.
Here’s the deal, and I am speaking to you from many years of experience and frustration with learning about these the hard way. Here’s what they don’t talk a lot about that I feel are very important factors to timeshare ownership. The yearly dues. Yes, every year you will get a bill for the property’s maintenance fees divided between the owners. So even if you pay off the initial cost of the timeshare, these bills will keep coming to you year after year. And, more than likely, they will be increasing year after year, too. These bills are not chump change. Our last yearly maintenance bill for our timeshare in Hawaii was over $2100.00. Think about that, $2100!!! Now, where you will get even more frustrated is when you actually go to make your first reservation as an owner and you are told that there is “no availability for the dates requested”. So imagine paying over $2000 for that year in dues and then being told that there are not any rooms for the dates that you want to go. Super frustrating. But it doesn’t stop there….
You remember the salesman telling you that if you didn’t want to travel to that resort that particular year (even though in your case, you want to travel to it, but just can’t due to “no vacancy”), you have the option of “trading” it to over 1000 other resorts across the country! RCI and Interval International are two of the largest trading companies for timeshares. They really should require a course on how to use this system, because it will not be explained to you by your timeshare and it should come with it’s own manual. Now, depending on where you own, the trading company will assign a color code to the desirability and “trading power” for your particular unit. So, sorry, but if you bought in Missouri (no offense), you more than likely are never going to be able to “trade-up” to Hawaii. But, that was never explained either!
If you are one of those people that like to travel “on a whim” and usually do not have a lot of advanced notice to when you can travel, timeshares will not work well for you. With ours, if we didn’t book our dates at least 9 months or greater out, it would not be available. That becomes extremely frustrating when you spend so much much money on the timeshare (in initial cost and yearly dues) and you end up not using it because you can’t get in. Also, if you decide that you aren’t going to use it one year (for whatever reason), you better be certain you “bank” it in the system prior to June or July that use year or guess what?? You may lose that week entirely!
I have a GREAT tip I discovered a few years back. REDWEEK. Redweek.com is a timeshare website that you can buy or rent out other people’s timeshares. You can rent at these resorts just like an owner would, but without the hassle! So remember how I mentioned our yearly maintenance dues were $2100 last year?? On Redweek, I was able to find the same resort, same room, AND the exact week we wanted to stay for the total cost of $1100! Crazy huh? Go on their website and explore all the destinations. You can even buy timeshares on the resale market for dirt cheap, but I still wouldn’t recommend owning one. Had I known all this back then, it would have saved us not only thousands of dollars on buying timeshares that we regret, but it would have saved us all the headache and hassles too! There is also a reason why they want you to make your decision RIGHT THEN. As soon as you leave the presentation, the offer will not be good anymore. Why is that? The fear that you might actually do your research and stumble across a blog like mine…that’s why.