Buyer beware

Should you buy a timeshare?

If you listen to a timeshare salesperson, the answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes – not only should you, but you’re an idiot if you don’t. The concept of a timeshare is so drop-dead simple. Yet so elegant, that’s it’s one of the best investments you could ever make, according to the Timeshare Salesperson’s Creed.

This will be the theme, repeated like a mantra, of your timeshare sales presentation. You’ll be told that a timeshare is real estate (it’s not), that you can write it off and refinance it like a house (you can’t), that you can rent it out, if you wish, for a healthy income (this is extremely problematic), and that you’ll definitely be able to resell it at a profit (you definitely won’t).

Besides the savvy financial investment you’ll be making, think of all the money you’ll be saving every year, year after year, on vacations. So your timeshare rep would have you imagine. You’ll be signing up for an arrangement by which you can exchange your own timeshare unit for another, virtually anywhere in the world, seamlessly and with no additional expense. The only qualification to this (which no timeshare salesperson ever thinks to mention) is the phrase subject to availability, a caveat that ensures you’ll be able to trade your timeshare for another one anyplace else approximately, well, never.

Even managing to use your own timeshare unit can turn out to be an ordeal. Why? Availability! A bit of explanation:

In the golden olden days of the timeshare racket, you purchased a fixed week. This entitled you to stay in your unit each year (or every other year, depending on your agreement) for that allotted week. Then the timeshare companies got wise and came up with the concept of points. Ostensibly, this was for the benefit of timeshare owners, who would no longer be restricted to stays during fixed weeks, but could use their points to stay at their own timeshares and also trade them for stays at other locations. But really, it was an opportunity for the timeshare companies to overbook their properties, just as hotels overbook rooms. And if a timeshare owner complained about availability, they could blithely explain: You don’t have enough points.

The theory of points is a lot like the Theory of Relativity, in that nobody really understands it. (A wag once said that he doubted if even Einstein understood his own theory; the difference between relativity and timeshare points systems, however, is that the latter are purposely obtuse.) The reps of one giant timeshare company routinely sell people a package of points inadequate to use at all, and then invite them to come back a month later to buy enough to do them some good. If the customer carps, well, it’s not the salespeople’s fault, but just the quirky nature of points.

A case in point: A client of ours, after being hammered for several hours by a tag-team of salesmen, gave in and agreed to the purchase of a timeshare worth eight points. This, he was told, would allow him to stay for a week at any affiliate resort in the world, any time of the year. After he acquiesced, the sales guys jumped up and announced that they had a new timeshare owner, and that he’d be taking his first vacation to Hawaii. Three weeks later, he went back for an “update” meeting, where he was informed that, sorry, his eight points weren’t enough to go to Hawaii, or anywhere else, for that matter. Not even a sorry, actually – they told him he could either spend another ten grand to have enough for the Hawaii trip, or take it up with corporate if he didn’t like it. He decided to take it up with us.

The bottom line is that when you buy a timeshare, in almost every case, you’ll be making an “investment” in a money pit. The salespeople will work long and hard to get you to buy, and will promise you the world, and after they’ve put you through the wringer you’ll be glad just to have it over with. But then you’ll find that it’s not over with. Because as far as the timeshare company is concerned: Once is not enough.          

Welcome to the nuthouse

So you’ve just purchased a timeshare. If you’re like a great many people in this position, your first thought is: How can I get rid of it?

This reaction actually might not come immediately; it might take weeks, months, or even years to develop. The premise of a timeshare is so alluring, that the disappointments can be hard to swallow. In that regard, it’s a lot like life itself.

Look inviting? Think again...

I work for a company that helps people get out of their timeshare agreements. We have a steady and ceaseless flow of clients, across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic statuses, all of them angry and/or abashed at being taken in by the hucksters that proliferate and profit in the timeshare sales industry.  

Prospective timeshare customers are generally lured to an initial presentation at a resort, with the promise of gifts (which usually turn out to be bogus or overstated) in exchange for agreeing to a tour and a short informational session. Most of our clients claim to have been completely taken by surprise when some such innocuous-sounding affair turned into a sales pitch.

A sales pitch it will be, nonetheless, and invariably an aggressive and relentless one. A favored stratagem is the tag-team approach, with one sales guy or gal giving way to another whenever the pigeons demur. “They wouldn’t take no for an answer,” is a constant refrain on our client questionnaires. After three or four hours of grilling worthy of NYPD Blue, the subjects often break down; it takes hardy souls to resist the mounting pressure and the promises of more and more perks and benefits – to sit tight until the storm subsides and they are allowed to escape with their lovely parting gifts and their pocketbooks intact.

After the deal is clinched, comes the signing of the papers. Most often, buyers and sellers alike are eager to get this over with quickly, though for different reasons – the new owners because they’re exhausted, hungry, thirsty, bewildered, and anxious to get on with their vacation; the timeshare agents because – well, because they don’t want their adversaries to read their contract too closely. If they were to, they might find that just about everything they’d been told over the course of their prolonged ordeal is contradicted by the written terms.

Like what? Let’s start with the notion – a major selling point in most salespeople’s arsenals – of the timeshare as an investment. Just about every timeshare company’s contract stipulates that the buyers have not been made the claim that the timeshare is in any way an investment, that they can make money through rentals and reselling, or that they are purchasing it for any other purpose than recreational. Yet the predominant theme of most timeshare presentations is: the timeshare as investment.

“They told me I could sell my timeshare for much more than what I paid for it, if I ever wanted to, but I see them on sale on eBay for pennies!” So goes a sad but common lament. Why are timeshares selling, not just for cents on the dollar, but actual cents? And should you buy one? I’ll tell you next time.