Message For BlueGreen Owners

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

My family can't complain either! Been owners for nearly 10 years. Although we did buy our first package directly from the company (after doing a sampler package) we have since purchase another resale package.

Although some of their sales people tend to stretch the truth on some issues, I feel that is pretty much the norm in any sales. You've got to do your home work and not trust salesmen in any field as far as that goes.

As for the product. I wouldn't own with any other timeshare company. I've sat through many of presentations and feel that BG has the best product and services out there.

Rob & Karen Massa

[swirg53 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close swirg53]

Happy Bluegreen Owner

I'm going to take a bit of a different stance on this with you. I am a happy BG owner. Like any sales item, I think the salespeople are trained to get you to buy and get you to be thinking in terms of what you cannot afford to buy that they present first and then are happy with the price they come down to but the two do not equate but that's what WE remember. When the price lowers, so does the package of points.

You probably have kids and can only vacation during peak time and do not ahve enough points to do that. A recent change in the rules probably would make a huge difference to you but you probably are not interested in listening.

BUT here's my idea! Different from the others. Since you are so unhappy as an owner, when you find that your lawsuit will NOT win, then I am willing to take over ownership of these nasty bad points you own, saving you from hundreds of dollars of maintenance fees each year. I will only ask that you pay the closing costs of $125 for the transfer to take place.

By the way, I think you said your hubby is a lawyer. I don't think any lawyer I know would even think of taking on this "case" because BG does know what they are doing and their contracts are tight. Of course, the written contract does NOT cover everything that the salesperson told you OR what you perceived they told you OR what you "remember" them telling you but it doesn't matter because you sign a paper within your contract with them that states nothing else has been told you other than what is in the contract and if so, to state it in writing there. Instead of putting something in writing there, they will rectify/clarify the information.

Good luck to you but I think you are barking up the wrong tree and that there are many more satisfied owners than dissatisfied owners, some of whom used to be dissatisfied but found this forum and have been educated properly and love their ownership now. Each to his own. And if you hate it so much, just let me have your points for your cost of only $125 and you will be rid of this pesky company!

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

I'll beat Swirg!

I'll even pay the closing costs if you give them to me!

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

I earlier reported that I had emailed the original poster (is that OP?) of this thread. I finally received a response. I have edited the email to remove some info, but you can see from their response, talking to them would be of no value. The email follows:

From: vintner
To: always4vin@aim.com

I don't know if you have back on the timeshareforums.com website, but your class action against Bluegreen is going no where on that forum.

Pretty much everyone who are owners and has replied to your post has agreed that maybe further information maybe required by you to understand how to use your points.

If you would like to come back to the forum and talk about your issues, maybe we can help you to understand Bluegreen a little better and save your lawyer money.

REPLY****

I don't care if it i going anywhere. I sent it out for anyone...like the thosands of other on-line complints about the company. I'm not paying this lawyer he already has a class action law suit taht he won for the state of NJ. He now is trying to do one for people outside of that state. I don't want to understand this company. It's an awful company that scams people.

[neuf150 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close neuf150]

[QUOTE=Unhappy Bluegreen Owner;219261]For any one who is having trouble with them, and can't get out of it. Please e-mail me at always4vin@aim.com I am talking to a lawyer who is trying to being a class action law suit against them. The more people the better. The more he has on what happened to people the better the chances are. If you are trapped in this like we are I'm sure you have been looking for help to and have been hitting nothing but brick walls. If we work together we may just be able to pay this company back for the damage they have caused in our lives.

I gotta tell you I'm another satisfied Bluegreen Owner. We went from being a family that would take a vacation every other year to 3 or 4 vacations a year. You have to plan ahead (11 months out) although that has gotten better with partial week reservations.

I think Bluegreen is a complicated system but once you learn it you can reap the benefits. It's true the salespeople lie through their teeth but the people answering the phone can help you make your reservation. For the most part their help has been excellent. This group and the group at Bluegreen@yahoo.com can help you get started.

Enjoy your points. Buy resale next time for a better deal.

See Ya in the Sunshine,

ron

[neuf150 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close neuf150]

oops, thats Bluegreen@yahoogroups.com

ron

[curtswife97 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close curtswife97]

I just became an owner in November of last year and I'm very happy with my decision! I also get alot of valuable information from the yahoo group that helps me further make good decisions on my ts!

[swirg53 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close swirg53]

Response to E-Mail

I e-mailed the person who started this thread and she replied to me. She is worried if she does too much on the internet "something else" bad will happen to her, so I am not including her e-mail below, but from what I said in my reply (which is below), you can probably discern what it was that she said. I do hope she and I are able to talk. It is really sad when someone owes money on BG points and are unhappy or otherwise are no longer able to pay.

I’m glad you replied. Unfortunately (for you), I am not interested in taking over payments. Points can be purchased so inexpensively compared to BG’s prices. As a happy BG owner, I really don’t wish for your lawsuit to be won as I don’t want “my” company to have those kind of expenses rather than updating current resorts or purchasing more resorts. On the other hand, I wish you the best in your endeavor to get whatever you want to get.

A couple of words of caution, though. According to bluegreenlawsuit.com there has only been a preliminary settlement issued in the NJ case. It is not at all finalized. And from what I have seen in class action lawsuits, that I have been party to and rather quite accidentally, I only received pennies on the dollar and/or a replacement product.

What bothers me most of all is the American public’s willingness to use credit so unwisely. Hindsight is 20/20 and now you know that. We facilitate a class called Financial Peace University at our church. The lectures are on DVD and done by Dave Ramsey. He is totally against credit cards and loans and just plain being in debt. He is even against credit cards, even if you pay them off every month, because as my husband and I can testify, you spend more when you put it on the credit card than if you paid cash. Whether or not your lawsuit pays off in the way you hope it will, please consider investing in one of this books, Financial Peace University or the Total Money Makeover and follow his plan. With two little ones and little savings and debt, you need to read this and follow his plan. You will be glad you did. So many of our students say, “I wish I had taken this twenty years ago.” Or “I wish I had seen this before we bought our house last year.” OR us when we took it, “We JUST bought a car with a five year loan. I wish we had started this just a month ago and we would never have bought that car.”

Time and time again in our Yahoo Bluegreen Group, we have people who have a mortgage on their BG points and now they are disabled (or whatever financial predicament they are in) and they now cannot make their BG mortgage payments. The balance they owe is far greater than you can sell them for on the resale market. That is so sad.

I have read the NJ lawsuit information, quickly….not in any depth but it sounds like the main complaint was/is that BG (or leisure path, whatever that is) promises that you have won some large prize and then you find out in order to claim the prize, you have to attend a timeshare sales presentation. I didn’t quite get what next happens, but I assume you don’t get the large prize, maybe unless you buy and then it isn’t even then the same prize you had been promised.

I am interested in knowing what your complaint is. I, too, would be irate if those things above had happened to me. I wasn’t too happy at our first presentation when we went simply for the free airline tickets, but we also purchased Bluegreen then. Looking at the free airline ticket later, I saw that there were contingencies to it…………..reinforcing the concept I know so well “Nothing is free.” You had to go to only select places and while there had to stay in a specific hotel at very high prices—no doubt rack rate, which no one ever pays anywhere. Well, maybe not never.

Bluegreen is right. You cannot transfer your mortgage and your points. In order for title to be changed to someone else, the mortgage has to be paid in full. So, if I were willing to take over your points, you would have to pay off the mortgage first. So, one way for that to happen IF anyone would do it, (assuming you don’t have the money to pay it off and from your details below, I am sure you don’t) would be for a buyer on the secondary market to pay you enough money for you to pay off your mortgage and then the closing could begin. Bluegreen is also telling you incorrect information…..because you (the general you) can transfer your points to someone else. But in your case, you can’t because you have a mortgage.

Now if your loan for your points is not secured by the points—some people use a home equity loan to pay the BG loan off, for example. THEN there is no mortgage and you have clear title which can be passed on to someone else. I know one lady who had her points financed that way and she just wanted out from under it so badly, that she accepted less than she owed to sell the points. But it was worth it to her to not have to pay the annual fees anymore since she never used the points.

Just to further explain my offer. I was being catty although some people may very well bite so it wasn’t without hope! I was saying, you can pay the closing fee of $125 and I will take the points. Meaning it would cost me absolutely nothing to receive your points.

I’m more than happy to be a listening ear for you. If the above things are why you feel you have been misled by BG, then perhaps you could learn how to use the points to your benefit and enjoy them.

[scribe4u2 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close scribe4u2]

Willak, I agree.

We have had much experience with freebie/presentation type sales. Most of the time, you are dealing with pros who know how to take a "no" and turn it into a sales.

I don't think a class-action lawsuit will be of much use.

We took what the salesman said, dismissed most of it and did our own homework. We talked to some of the "owners" that were using the facility and made an intelligent decision based on what we saw, what we wanted, and not on the emotional impact of the professional salesman.

Here in Florida, we have a 10 day grace period with which to do our due diligence. My advice is to use that time, if your State has this option, and review all aspects of your purchase, away from the pressure of the pro.

We did. And we are very happy with our purchase into BG.

Best,

Richard

[ben1973 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ben1973]

unhappy Bluegreen owner

In response to those who said they would "take over the points," I would be happy to sell them to you for half what they cost. We bought 10,000 points for $10,000, and for reasons I am about to outline, we are unhappy. To "take over" our points would make us lose $10,000, so we can't afford to do that, but you could add a lot of points to your Bluegreen membership much cheaper through us than by buying them from Bluegreen. They assured us they would only increase in value, which of course was a lie. Here are the reasons we're unhappy:

----------------------------
Do not...I repeat...do NOT buy a Bluegreen timeshare under any conditions. My wife and I bought one, and we are in a continual state of regret about it. It is virtually impossible to sell (the same amount of points we bought for $10,000 are selling for about $3,000 online), plus we have yearly fees of about $700 that must be paid for us to even be able to keep using it. We are not easily conned... we both have Master's degrees. But they fooled us into thinking they were telling us the truth.

Here are some of the things you may not hear while you're in a Bluegreen presentation... we didn't:

-each year you will have to pay both "maintenance fees" and "club dues," which for us amount to over $700. If you don't pay, you can't use any of your points at all until you do pay (they told us about the fees, but estimated them at about $300).

-many of the resorts they tell you about can only be booked in 7-day increments, which means you'll take that trip and no others for two years because you'll use up all your points on that single trip.

-we just found this one out... if you don't have the points, you can't book a trip... for example, we get 12,000 new points in July, so I called to book something in August. Well, I can't do that until I "have the points." Of course, by the time the points actually show up, all the places will be booked for the summer. We're all paid up on maintenance fees and club dues, so we will definitely get the points, but too bad... we have to wait. The person on the phone even sympathized with me and said he understood what I was saying, but couldn't do anything about it.

-they say they will help you rent your timeshare, but this is a joke. Your timeshare will never rent for anything near what you need to maintain the fees on it, much less pay it off (they have since cancelled the rental program since it wasn’t making them enough money…too bad for customers like us whom they told could rent points to defray their costs).

-If you really desperately want Bluegreen points, don't buy them from Bluegreen. There are many points for sale on the internet from unsatisfied customers like us who want out.

-they tell you that Bluegreen points “increase in value” just like actual real estate, but this is an outright lie. Our points were worth $1.00 apiece when we bought them, and no one will buy them for anywhere close to that.

-they tell you that you can book things just a day or two in advance, but this is almost never possible in real life. Things are booked up months in advance.

Owning a Bluegreen timeshare is like a weight that you have to drag around with you for the rest of your life. There are many places that will rent timeshares if you like that kind of thing, and you can usually get them fairly cheap and without any obligation for the future. When I imagine paying $700 a year for the rest of my life, it feels amazingly scary. Don't do it. You're locking yourself into something that will never end when there is absolutely no need to do so.

They give you the free trip, then take advantage of how little you've researched timeshares when you're in the presentation. They tell you this price can only be offered this one time, and that you can't take another trip. It's all cheap sales techniques, and they wouldn't be necessary if it were something people really benefited from.

We even looked on the internet during our sales presentation... if only I had come across a letter like this, we probably wouldn't have bought, and we'd be much better off. At least take a few days to think about it. If they can't give you that long to think, they're tricking you anyway.

Buying a Bluegreen timeshare is a terrible decision. They, like many salespeople, will tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to buy, knowing that they will not personally be accountable for any misrepresentations of the truth later on.

----------------

The most recent thing that happened was that we had tried to rent ours out for 10,000 points (most of our points) before they decided to stop letting people do that. So I called today, 10 days in advance, to check and make sure it was rented, since this is the cut-off for when I can cancel without losing points. So the guy on the phone told me that yes, it is rented. And I asked, "Well, what happens if the people cancel sometime in the next 10 days?" He said, "We don't have any control over that, sir." And I said, "I understand that, but I don't either. So what happens to my points if they cancel?" And he said, "Well, you lose those points."

So some renter I don't even know can decide to back out at the last minute, and I lose 10,000 points and don't get to travel or make any money from my timeshare for 2 years! That seems fair... somehow I have this feeling that Bluegreen charges them a healthy fee for canceling, but of course we owners don't see any of that money either.

------------

Even more recent development... our timeshare did rent after all (through Bluegreen) ... they had told us that it would rent for at least $3,000, and probably more like $4,000. It was the high season at their most popular place, Boyne Falls, Missouri (near the Ozarks). We decided to rent it to try to get some of our money back that had poured down the huge financial hole which is Bluegreen. Well, we received our check today... a whopping $700!! Seven hundred dollars! They rented our 10,000 points (which is really all we get for two years) for $1,100... they get to keep 30 percent, of course. We were flabbergasted. Had they simply called and said, "We realize this is your property and these are your points, and we were wondering if you are willing to rent for $1,100," we would have instantly said, "NO!" But they didn't. It was completely out of our hands. So now we can't travel anywhere for two years, and all of our points were used for what will barely pay for one year of owning Bluegreen. We can't travel for two years, but we get to keep paying fees!

Everything Bluegreen does seems to be a way to get themselves more money and screw over their "valued customers."

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

interesting. Bluegreen stopped their owner rentals program a few years ago. can't imagine how you got a check today.

[smithiekid Member Find all posts View Profile Close smithiekid]

Hi,

This was a complaint on Ripp off a very long time ago I did try to explain to him how to use his points but he would not listen .

It appears that its a copy and paste from that site.

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

Prepay your Maintenance Fees to Reserve Now

-we just found this one out... if you don't have the points, you can't book a trip... for example, we get 12,000 new points in July, so I called to book something in August. Well, I can't do that until I "have the points." Of course, by the time the points actually show up, all the places will be booked for the summer. We're all paid up on maintenance fees and club dues, so we will definitely get the points, but too bad... we have to wait.

No, you don't have to wait. There is an easy workaround on this. Prepay next years fees which then gets your points into your account now so you can reserve now. That means you have to pay twice the first year but then each year thereafter you prepay so then its only once each year. Of course, the fee for 2011 hasn't been determined yet so when November rolls around you will have to make up the difference.

Charles

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

So some renter I don't even know can decide to back out at the last minute, and I lose 10,000 points and don't get to travel or make any money from my timeshare for 2 years!

You can put a clause in the Renter's contract to get around this, I would guess.

It was the high season at their most popular place, Boyne Falls, Missouri (near the Ozarks).

I assume they're referring to Big Cedar, which is about as solidly *IN* the Ozarks as you can get. Maybe they got mixed up because they wrote this while in a hot rage, but OTOH if keeping details straight is an ongoing challenge I can see why Bluegreen isn't working for them.

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

Well said

if keeping details straight is an ongoing challenge I can see why Bluegreen isn't working for them.

Well said.

Charles