Even with all the lies a timeshare salesperson is likely to have told you to get you to purchase a week of use of their resort, there is one thing—one—that should be true about that week: it should be available to you. That is what you paid for. It’s the central element of the timeshare purchase. You don’t get the property rights, you don’t get the use of it anytime you want—but you get to use their property one week per year. It’s what the contract is all about. It means they’re supposed to save that week of use of their property for you, right?
In an ideal world—or even a less-than-ideal but still somewhat fair world—yes. But in this world? No.
The timeshare companies are greedy. So greedy that even the right they purport to sell you, they will renege on—while fully expecting you to pay in full and on time your full loan amount, maintenance fees and any “special assessments” they may levy. All too often they prove willing to double- and even triple-book weeks in a given unit. And it may come as no surprise that this has become a highly lucrative move for them. If they sell a single unit as many as 52 times (because that’s how many weeks there are in a year), it already leaves their “owners” to fend for themselves when vying for the most popular vacation weeks in a year. But often timeshare resorts will sell a given unit more than 52 times. If we’re charitable, we can presume their logic is that not every owner will want to visit every single year. But the problem is: every owner has the right to visit every single year, and every owner is required to pay the maintenance fees and special assessment fees every single year. Every owner has paid for that right. It should be fully available to them—even if that means the unit sits empty for a week. But the resort owners don’t treat it that way, and that should be criminal.
Here at The People’s Advocate, we stand up to this army of timeshare Goliaths on behalf of mistreated consumers, because we believe in the public interest of consumer protection. If you have been tricked or coerced into a timeshare contract—whether in our beleaguered Florida or elsewhere—feel free to contact us for a free information session. There may still be time to deduct that timeshare from your life altogether.