Buying, Renting, and Selling Timeshares

Summit Marketing Agency, SMA TimeShare.com

Apr 02, 2013

Has anyone had dealings with this company. They say they can rent 3 of my timeshares for $4800 a year. The charge is $899 a year. I checked with the better business bureau, they had 26 complaints but they were resolved with full refunds. The full refund seems to lend credence to the company. Any and all advice will be appreciated.

Jeffery125


Jeffery L.
Apr 02, 2013

jefferyl25 wrote:
Has anyone had dealings with this company. They say they can rent 3 of my timeshares for $4800 a year. The charge is $899 a year.

I checked with the better business bureau, they had 26 complaints but they were resolved with full refunds. The full refund seems to lend credence to the company. Any and all advice will be appreciated.

Jeffery125

The fact that they had 26 complaints should raise a red flag. Other red flags for typical scams are:

1) Unsolicited phone calls or e-mails. Did they contact you out of the blue?

2) An upfront fee. Never, ever pay anyone a large, upfront fee ($899) to sell, rent out, market, or "cancel" your timeshare even if they give it some sort of euphemism such as "one-time marketing fee".

3) Offering to sell or rent it out for far more than the going market value. $4800 per year is extremely high. These scam artists give you an obscenely high value to paralyze you with excitement and stop you from thinking rationally. Fortunately for you, you had the good sense to think and inquire about such questionable offers before quickly shelling out such money.

Any reputable rental or resale agency will take its commission out of the proceeds of the sale or rental. So if this company is reputable, it would collect the $4800 from the tenant (renter) and then send you the $4800 less its commission of $899. Fi they ask for such a fee before, then they're a scam.

By the way, it doesn't matter what the name of the company is, if the company charges a large, upfront fee, then it's a scam.


Lance C.
Apr 02, 2013

Thanks for the response Lance, I thought the deal was to good to be true.

I have also contacted a licensed real estate broker who said they receive a $1500 commission after the sale. This sounded OK until I was told that they needed a market analysis for each of the Time Shares at a cost of $450 for the first one and $250 for the additional ones. Supposedly these fees would be refunded at the time of closing as long as they sold within a year and were within 15% of the original asking price. This still sounds like an upfront fee which is a no no according to all the posts I have been reading.


Jeffery L.

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