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stevem532 - I got a presentation from hell on Christmas Eve. One thing they said to me regarding purchasing on the secondary market was the fact that they were nearly sold out at my resort and my weeks/points were not consecutive. That I would have to come at the assigned dates on my original deeds. The weeks were scattered throught the year and I could not afford all those flights. I believe they were bridging the gap between what I purchased on the secondary market like you said above. I said to my agent, Diamond had the first right of approval and they waved it. Now, I am being penalized for purchasing on the secondary market; they basically told me this was so. Now bear in mind the fact that they are nearly sold out; then he goes on and told me about all the grand/unnecessay modifications Diamond had planned for our resort. I said, who approved that? The reply was, the board. I said, they are basically friends that sit on each others boards. They are not a timeshare owner. We, timeshare owners, would never have approved these modifications knowing we are going to have to pay big money for them somewhere down the line along with our "maintenance fee". BTW now they call maintenance fees an assessment fee. To many of us must have asked why such high yearly increases to maintenance or what is the maintenance fee was for? I asked, if you are nearly sold out why is Diamond basically redesigning this resort? Tell me all this is not being done to attract new buyers because the present timeshare owners here are happy. They went on and warned me that if I didn't put my points into the club and a special assessment was called for that there are more people to spread out the cost in the club so they would have to pay less; that the people with original deeds or the original deeds/points that were not in the club would be hit hard. Putting my points in the club would protect me. But are we not now responsible for all the special assessments for several resorts? I watched other presentations to see how they double team them. One sells and the other acts like they are going to help lock in a price for you. Then some people explode, some cry and....then they come back with a lower fee and with a story. I wanted my contracts back because I still felt like I was being extorted. I wrote Steven Cloobeck basically hitting on all the above points. My salesman came back and asked me what I could afford. I named a number not too low but not high either. They took it. SO THE MORAL OF OUR STORIES IS, DON'T BE APATHETIC VOTE TIMESHARE OWNERS ONTO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND DON'T GIVE YOUR PROXY OVER; DIAMOND USES THEM TO VOTE A DIAMOND MEMBER ON THE BOARD. VOTE!!! [Q=stevem532] [Q=joyceb120] I just looked at my statement from Diamond Resorts and I am not a happy camper at this point. The fees increased $42 from 2012 to 2013.. that isn't so bad. But today the fee is $1975.44 for 2014, an increase of $117 on 11,000 points. This is bad, very bad. They didn't warn me of this huge spike in fees when I was listening to the "Owner Update" in April. The salesperson asked us how we liked our timeshare. We said we loved it, and that we were very happy with the Club. I told her I could rent a week to someone else and have points left over to reserve our own vacation. She was not happy about that at all!! She gave me a remark of "oh, so you're a little travel agent at your kitchen table", etc. Then she basically threatened us, and said renting to others was against the rules, and that we could be kicked out of the Club and Diamond Resorts if we continue to rent out our timeshare weeks. (Yeah, we could be so lucky). And now our fees have increased.. I guess they want to be sure to get part of the rent money I'm raking in.. RedWeek.. did you know it's against Diamond Resorts rules to rent out our timeshare on your website? What a load of horse hockey.[/Q] Regardless of what Diamond may tell you - you need to go back to the deed and see what it says. My deed in a Resort that Diamond has since purchased, gives me the right to allow anyone to use my stays. The only restriction is that I have to be using the stay to get some owners perks, and that if I am not there, the usage has to be a full week. Read you deed and see if such rights are spelled out. If they are, Nothing that Diamond tries to change will hold up. The deed is the final authority, and when they purchased the property, they had to accept the deeds along with it. Also be watchful for the scam Diamond tried to pull on me. They gave a big presentation about how I should sell my points in the current system to them, and buy Diamond points instead. This was to give me access to hundreds of resorts, instead of the 20 in my current system. But the price to convert the ownership points to Diamond points was extreme. The scam is that they take the price they would currently sell my units for. (These are ocean from, guaranteed event week units in Daytona Beach. The highest priced units in the Resort.) They then subtracted what I had paid for the units, and expected me to pay the difference. By doing so, they were saying that they intended to STEAL the equity that they said had built up in my units. To my mind, if the units are now worth twice what I paid for them, then they are still worth twice as much when I sell them back to Diamond. And just as an extra kicker - the icing on the cake so to speak - after paying Diamond for what I already own - they offered no guarantee that I would ever be able to use my event week, after the exchange. This would then make the ownership worth $15,000 less - the difference between a high season event week, and just a high season week in the old system. My response to a similar threat from the Diamond rep at our meeting about rental of my units - If you don't like it, pay me the developer's price for the unit and I am out of here. Otherwise, shut up, as you can't do anything about it without me suing your but off. The deed is the deed, and they can't change that. --- I now have an appointment in Las Vegas to talk to Diamond about either converting or selling to them. INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT.[/Q]