Report Abuse

[Q=donp196] It's time to open the discussion about what timesharing is and has become. I bought into timesharing back in 1980. The concept was simple. They sold 51 weeks with one week for maintenance. It was based on the principle that people used the week they owned every year and split the costs of maintenance with the other owners. The first place I bought was for 13 years and then it went back to the developer. There was no need for an exit strategy. Over the years that changed with the addition of exchange companies. It gave the owners the ability to go somewhere else by exchanging their week at a reasonable cost. That worked well for many years until the exchange companies raised their fees and started to sell the prime weeks on the open market. Then corporate greed entered the picture and points were created. It was an opportunity to over sell properties for huge profits. People didn't realize that there are many unsellable weeks that got dumped into the pool. Weeks that nobody would ever want to go to certain resorts but for the purpose of profit they were sold to anyone who would sign on the dotted line. I challenge anyone to show me an advantage to the owners. These contracts were written by the developer for the developer. The developers spent millions of dollars writing the laws and more millions lobbying our law makers to pass the laws they wrote. They claim that you are buying real property to lock you into a lifetime of ever increasing fees and assessments but then also claim that you don't have the right to use your property unless you have enough points that they set at their discretion . I wanted to start a conversation and hopefully others will join in and give their views. I want to cover all the aspects of ownership over time including fees, resales and scams. Please join the conversation and hopefully we can help some people get the most out of their ownership or help them find an exit plan.[/Q] I have a question for you. We bought a deeded week at a timeshare about 15 years ago. We go every year and have only exchanged once. Now Diamond Resorts has taken over and tried to get us to join their Club (the points system) but we did not. Am I safe in thinking that since we didn't join their system, we will still have our same privileges (ocean front 2 BR unit, week 33) since we didn't sell them our deeded week? I suspect our maintenance fees will start to jump up, but other than that, we haven't lost anything we've had all these years have we?