PLEASE READ.!!! TIMESHARE & HOLIDAY CLUBS

by **Fred 2** on Sun Apr 06, 2008 18:52 pm

You were right not to believe her. It is a common fraud.

by **willywonka** on Wed Apr 09, 2008 09:39 am

I was caught up with the Club Greece holiday scam and trying to get out of it cost me my health, I went to a solicitor and followed the advise of the Timeshare association and now I own a worthless piece of paper that cost me �8000 so if anyone as any suggestions on how to recover any of my loss I would apprciate it. It was my first holiday in ten years and not been able to afford holiday abroad since, it also cost me my relationship.

by **tsuser** on Thu May 08, 2008 17:41 pm

I too find it hard to understand how people still get caught up with this con,specifically Holiday Clubs. It's been going on for some years now and gets loads of publicity in newspapers, radio programmes and on the likes of Watchdog on TV. I suppose a lot of it is down to people being relaxed on holiday and letting their guard down.
One dead giveaway is ANY system that runs for 35 months as they are currently totally unregulated. No mandatory cooling off period etc.
If anybody is genuinely interested in timeshare (Holiday Clubs are a totally different thing) never, never, never, never (get the idea?) buy from the developer as you will pay way over the odds. Timeshares can be purchased for a fraction of the developer price on the resale market. Look at sites such as www.timesharetalk.co.uk or www.tug2.com for in depth information from people who know plenty and are more than happy to share that knowledge.

by **Lin2** on Thu May 08, 2008 19:22 pm

Are you generalising about Timeshares? We have one and don't feel we were ripped off by the developer -it costs a lot to stay at our resort if it is not your timeshare.

by **tsuser** on Thu May 08, 2008 21:28 pm

Lin2,

It's estimated that 60% of the purchase cost when buying direct from the developer is their profit and 'on-costs' i.e. staff, marketing etc. Certainly for the vast majority of resorts there is no benefit in purchasing from the developer. A few resort groups do provide additional benefits for developer purchases but not many.
I didn't actually say 'ripped off' as to me that suggests purchasing something of no value. I own timeshare and have done for many years, and I purchased from the developer as I didn't know of the alternative options then. In fact in the mid 80's the resale market in the UK was probably almost non-existent.

by **lookout** on Fri May 16, 2008 07:57 am

We are going on a free holiday to Tenerife on 6th July, This is in response to a questionair we filled in sometime last year before we sat foot in Tenerife. I and a choice was of where I would go that I had never been before and I ticked Tenerife, Must have had the shaked that day. Anyway according to a contributor Aquilla ther price of our free holiday is being paid for by increasing the cost of living to Ex Pat English residence of the Island so Thank you all next time you buy a drink Aquilla says you are paying for our freebe, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU ONE AND ALL.
And a special thank to Aquilla for giving me that valuable information, I will enjoy the free experience even more now.
Anyone who is invited should go and find out the facts first hand and if its not for you they cant force you to sign.
By the way the only good thing we found in Tenerife is the SUN and it was millions of miles away

by **watban1** on Fri May 16, 2008 13:18 pm

I have been a timeshare owner for 15 years without any problems apart from being cold-called on a regular basis by travel firms offering all sorts of deals. I have never taken up any offers until recently when a company called Extra Weeks repeatedly called to offer me 3 weeks holiday over a 3 year period in 'luxury accomodation at incredilble prices'. The price for the 3 weeks was �346 which seemed pretty reasonable to me so eventually I caved in and paid my money. The downside is that there is only 1 resort in the UK, the majority are in Canaries, Florida etc. I have yet to try a holiday with them so watch this space.

by **Duckwing** on Sat May 17, 2008 19:32 pm

To Watban 1
Dont go with extra weeks you are expected to go to presentation ours was with Club Class Concierge (you can read all about them on one of the other forums) We got scammed for nearly �2000 trying to get it back from Credit Card but have been refused once.
Also extra weeks changed the resort we booked at the last minute after flights were paid for to one that did not suit us
Regards Duckwing

by **alexsmith** on Tue Jun 10, 2008 12:04 pm

Hi Jan C,
I have visited this site link which you have described in your last post

http://www.timeshare.org.uk/scams.html

Off course this great site of helpful information and thanks for sharing...

Alex Smith
Buyatimesahre.com

by **Dill60** on Wed Aug 27, 2008 21:16 pm

Hi all,

My husband had a call at the beginning of the month to tell us that I had entered a competiton and won a holiday. Well, he knew that wasn't true and as we have been down this road before (and been conned) he decided to play along.
We were invited along to a presentation (definitely not timeshare, well maybe if we wanted to join), on the 19th of August, couldn't go then as we would be on our way to Malta, well then maybe the 17th or 18th. OK, fine. Then he was asked what his job was. He told the nice lady he was a reporter for a local newspaper and would it be ok to wright a report on the presentation?
The phone went dead.
Worth a try when telephoned or even when away and approached by a timeshare tout.

PS Fred2 is the best and gave us sound advice when we got in trouble with DWVC a few years ago.