New Timeshare Owner - Did I make the Right Decision? (Should I Rescind/Cancel?)

[jasonf Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jasonf]

So my fiance and I just purchased a timeshare from vacation village at parkway with RCI exchange weeks in gold class resorts. Here is the breakdown:
We paid about $10,500 for week 4 at our resort in a two bedroom unit that sleeps 8 people which is a very nice place. It is basically 2 units that have separate keys so each side can be used by two different families.

The maintenance fees are $590 and real estate taxes are $150, which we only have to pay those every other year. We get 1 week at our home resort every other year, which we can pick any week, or we can deposit our week with RCI as 1 week in a 2 bedroom unit or 2 weeks in a 1 bedroom unit.

We also get 1 week every year extra from RCI which expires 1 year after activation each year.
We also have to pay an $89 yearly fee to stay a part of RCI.

So the way I figured it out we will basically be paying (590+150=740/2=370+89=460) $460 each year for all above. So if I didn't want to stay in my home resort and stayed in a 1 bedroom unit, all I'd have to pay is a $199 fee to exchange and get 2 weeks every year for the rest of our lives.

So did we make a good decision by buying into this plan?

Please help because my parents, which aren't very big risk takers, are saying we made the wrong decision by buying into a timeshare and have seen several negative reviews for the company we bough into. It seemed like the right decision to us because we plan to use our weeks for our honeymoon in italy, which would probably cost us the $10,000 anyway and now we would have vacation set each week for the rest of our lives.
I also figured that if we didn't have the opportunity to use the weeks, we could either save them or rent the week out to family/friends or people we know. Especially considering our home resort has two separate units 2 exits away from Disney World which is a very popular destination.

Please help.

Thanks

[PigsDad Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PigsDad]

The exact same property, every year ownership, can be had on ebay for $1. (see ad)

If you are still in the recission period, please do so (and save yourself $10,499!). Then if you are still interested in purchasing a timeshare, take your time, do some reading here, and make an informed decision -- not a pressure-driven decision at a sales presentation.

Kurt

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

I agree with PigsDad. If you just bought, rescind immediately, in writing. I am not sure, but in Florida I think you have 10 days to rescind. Your contract should have the address to send your rescission notice - be sure to get delivery confirmation.

You will the find the right timeshare at the right price once you've done your research.

And the RCI trading thing is not easy - it's unlikely you'd be able to trade your Orlando week(s) for the honeymoon you want in Italy - plan your honeymoon when and where you want it, buy a timeshare later.

[eal Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close eal]

Be sure to follow the instructions exactly and make sure you get a dated receipt for the recission letter being sent in whatever way is stipulated. Timeshares can be had literally for a dollar so take your time, investigate all the possibilities and think about getting something in about 6 months or so when you have a better idea of what you are getting yourselves into. Timeshare purchases are literally free but the annual maintenance fees go on forever. Good luck with the recission process!

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Resale is the ONLY way to buy timeshare to be cost effective. I agree with the others and rescind. Then study the resale market and buy a bargain that best suits your needs. eBay is the bargain basement of timeshare resales, so as a buyer it is the place to start. If you cannot find what you want there, then there are other markets to check that will cost more than eBay in many situations, but still far far less than a developer purchase.

As to Vacation Village at Parkway, there are a number of considerations:
1) Trade value - The developer at this resort has a very cozy relationship with RCI and as a result, the resort is substantially overvalued on both RCI Points and the points lite of RCI ''Weeks''. So, if you are mainly interested in trading, as long as that lasts you are in great shape. But the fundamentals are that Orlando is overbuilt in timeshare, and at some point reality may be imposed and the trade value sink to its real world level. An RCI employee who used to post here regularly told us that Vacation Village at Parkway was the resort with the biggest oversupply of inventory in the entire RCI system.
2) Use value - Is Orlando the place you really want to spend most of your vacations, or is it really somewhere else, like a nice beach somewhere perhaps?
3) Long term maintenance fees - Developers in sales often artificially reduce these to boost sales by a number of tricks. One is a direct subsidy to the resort budget. Another is deferring maintenance reserves. Once sales are over, so will be these gimmicks. If the developer is deferring maintenance reserves, it is a double whammy because not only do these need to be cranked into the budget on a regular basis, but there will need to be more money put in to make up for the period they were deferred. These are but some of the reasons, I have always bought at mature resorts, where the developer has left the picture and a member-elected HOA is in charge.

Timeshare can be a great product if bought the right way and at the resort that best fits your needs. A developer purchase is never the former and is often not the latter either. Resale is the way to go.

[Laurie Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Laurie]

It seemed like the right decision to us because we plan to use our weeks for our honeymoon in italy, which would probably cost us the $10,000 anyway and now we would have vacation set each week for the rest of our lives.

You'll most likely never get that honeymoon in Italy you're dreaming of, by trading your timeshare.

Forget this as a justification; if you told them about that, and they sold you on that basis, they were very clever at zeroing in on what would persuade you.

Italy's top spots are a very difficult trade, and require lots of advance planning as well as flexibility on dates. They lied if they showed you an exchange directory, and led you to believe that you just pick out a resort and voila, it's yours.

Now if you want to go "somewhere" for your honeymoon and are open to many locations, that could happen by trading. But you could still buy the same thing for $1 instead of $10,000.

Meanwhile you can rent some wonderful apartments in Italy and they won't cost you $10,000, by any stretch. In fact, you can find them for about what you'd pay for a maintenance fee + taxes + exchange fee + RCI membership (or less), and they'll be exactly where you want to go, when you want to go.

I'm all for trading into Italy when it works, and we've done it a few times, but your purchase won't be the ticket. Hope you'll take the advice here and rescind right away, if not sooner.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

I did not pick up on the honeymoon in Italy aspect, but I agree that unless you want the Sud Tirol region, getting a specific week in much of Italy is going to be very difficult. I have traded into Italy a couple of times to resorts in good areas but had to grab the week that was availible when it was availible. Some of the resorts so rarely show up, that picking a specific week is a luxury you just don't have. Now if you want to go to Orlando or Branson or Massanutten or the Canary Islands, you can find plenty of inventory most any time you want to go, but that is not the case for Italy.

[1950bing Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close 1950bing]

The time to ask questions is BEFORE you sign.

[Pstreet1 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Pstreet1]

Take a look at the lovely apartments available to rent in Italy on VRBO is Vacation Rentals By Owner. We just rented a beautiful penthouse, glass all around, with beautiful terrace for about $115.00 a night. Do not use Italy as a reason to keep the timeshare.

Do not assume that the people on this forum really don't know what they are talking about. All of us have owned timeshares (and generally, more than one) for years. This is one of the best sources possible to learn how to use timeshares effectively--and perhaps even more importantly, to buy them effectively.

Do not assume that the one on e-bay must be a scam of some sort; it isn't. There are free timeshares available everywhere these days from people who simply don't use them anymore and/or can't afford the maintenance fees. (I've got one like that I'd love to get rid of.) Timeshares are extremely easy to buy and very difficult to sell. It is the ultimate buyers' market.

[jasonf Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close jasonf]

Thank you all for your help in this matter. It seemed like I was getting a good deal being that I had a nice resort home with 2 lockout bedrooms to stay. But if I didn't stay there, then I could trade my 1 week in a 2 bedroom for 2 weeks in a 1 bedroom. And the way they explained it made sense regarding the cash you normally spend in vacations just gets thrown away like renting, but the cash spent on a timeshare gets invested in reality in your week you own. So it's basically like a guaranteed week of vacation at a big reduced price in a gold crown resort for the rest of our lives. But if we didn't have a chance to use the week, we could rent it to someone and make money off of it, which could be an investment because if it only costs me say about $300 for a week, I could charge someone about $800 and make $500 off the deal and they would still get the resort cheaper through me than by themselves. But experience is everything when it comes to life and the decisions we make. I respect your experience in this matter. It sounds like we might not even be able to get our exchange weeks in Italy like we hoped for our honeymoon. It just sound nice to be able to take a weeks vacation to anywhere in the world for only $199 exchange fee. So this couldn't be looked at as an investment?

I have until tomorrow to cancel the contract by my 10 day grace period, so I guess it sounds like the best idea is to cancel this contract and buy a resale after more research and time.

[PigsDad Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PigsDad]

I guess it sounds like the best idea is to cancel this contract and buy a resale after more research and time.

Bingo!

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Definitely not an investment. You would lose money, big time, if you went to sell it after buying at developer prices. I have always bought resale, and have changed what I have owned over the years, but by buying resale, when I sold, I at least broke even.

What timeshare is good for is allowing you to take nicer vacations than perhaps you otherwise would, and it is great for that! But only if you buy it right, and that is resale.

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

Thank you all for your help in this matter. It seemed like I was getting a good deal being that I had a nice resort home with 2 lockout bedrooms to stay. But if I didn't stay there, then I could trade my 1 week in a 2 bedroom for 2 weeks in a 1 bedroom. And the way they explained it made sense regarding the cash you normally spend in vacations just gets thrown away like renting, but the cash spent on a timeshare gets invested in reality in your week you own. So it's basically like a guaranteed week of vacation at a big reduced price in a gold crown resort for the rest of our lives. But if we didn't have a chance to use the week, we could rent it to someone and make money off of it, which could be an investment because if it only costs me say about $300 for a week, I could charge someone about $800 and make $500 off the deal and they would still get the resort cheaper through me than by themselves. But experience is everything when it comes to life and the decisions we make. I respect your experience in this matter. It sounds like we might not even be able to get our exchange weeks in Italy like we hoped for our honeymoon. It just sound nice to be able to take a weeks vacation to anywhere in the world for only $199 exchange fee. So this couldn't be looked at as an investment?

I have until tomorrow to cancel the contract by my 10 day grace period, so I guess it sounds like the best idea is to cancel this contract and buy a resale after more research and time.

Jason, don't wait until the 10th day just to avoid any potential disagreement about interpretation about when the clock starts/stops. A timeshare is never an investment. It can be a nice way to vacation if you buy properly and can devote the time to maximize it. Orlando timeshare rentals (and resales) suffer from oversupply. I am fully familiar with the sales tactic of comparing your ongoing and purchase costs to what you'd allegedly pay for hotel rooms, but buy resale when you know what you want.
The RCI "anywhere in the world for $199" is just a lot of BS - you can go "anywhere in the world IF IT BECOMES AVAILABLE AND YOU HAVE THE TRADING POWER NECESSARY TO GET IT." Availability of high demand weeks is low. Trading requires extreme flexibility and significant advance planning (up to two years in some cases). Many of us plan our exchange vacations based on what's available - the idea of choosing a destination and then expecting to find a trade in when we want it goes out the window much of the time.

[Laurie Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Laurie]

It just sound nice to be able to take a weeks vacation to anywhere in the world for only $199 exchange fee. So this couldn't be looked at as an investment?

You can't ever take a weeks vacation anywhere in the world for only $199 exchange fee.

As stated, you could take a vacation somewhere in the world for $199, if you had no maintenance fee, no taxes, no membership fee, and got the timeshare for nothing. But you are forgetting to put all those annual fees on your expense side, not to mention amortizing in the 10k. (And of course the travel costs.) That's really bad math.

Even if you buy the same timeshare for $1, it's not an investment! That's because you may or may not be able to give it away (if/when you decide to) without incurring some costs, putting your bottom line into the red.

I love timesharing and am grateful that I went to one of those presentations, where even skeptical me got hooked. Those sales people are Masters of Manipulation. Fortunately and amazingly I rescinded, because that event predates most search engines, I barely had internet, and there was barely a network of timeshare consumers to give advice.

We've taken over 10 trips to Europe now using primarily timeshares, and I'm currently planning the next one. You have infinite time to figure all that out, meanwhile I hope you'll take care of your rescission paperwork without further delay - why wait til the last minute?

There's not an argument in the world that could convince anyone here that you are getting any "deal" other than a quick way to be parted from 5-figures of your hard-earned money.

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

I will add that the people responding on this thread (except bing) own timeshares and exchange and travel all the time.

Our advice to rescind AND then do your research is the best advice u will ever get.

I love to travel and I love TSing - I wish I had a board/site like this when I made my first purchase ....

Edit - I think we should stickie this thread and refer to it when people ask us if they should rescind...