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Re: Is TUG Helpful? (by NoOneYouKnow):

JoAnn?

You are familiar to me.

The era you're talking about 1999-2005-ish, it was a great place for timeshare owners to share and learn from each other, especially by doing things such as Trading Power tests, to learn things the exchange companies held to be proprietary.

We comforted each other when Christel DeHaan sold RCI to Cendant, and they raided the exchange pool to rent weeks to non-timeshare owners. In my daily online searches, I saw exchange inventory in SW FL in January go from a selection of 15-20 resorts to absolutely nothing at all.

We struggled together through the Class-action lawsuit, which only served to legitimize the owner-unfriendly policies of the exchange companies.

Timeshare-wise, it was a simpler time.

Things turned on TUG, precisely in 2004, about the time Bill Rogers turned over the reins. I call it the Brouhaha of Ought 4, and only those involved truly understand it. Several very active TUGgers from the old days left at that time.

There, politely, I have waited 18 years to say anything like this.

Timeshare-wise, we no longer own them to "timeshare". We own one for year-round golf rights and we own one as a year-round beach club. I rent them out to break even, so we get those privileges for free.

I still use RCI to get discounted vacations for others via Extra Vacations and Last Calls, both for one time use and on 5 year Guest Passes. I'm up to about 175 with RCI.

It took 30-some years, but now we get good value from our timeshares.

The need to share timeshare information with strangers on the Internet ended quite some time ago, a stage I went through, about when I was able to get rid of our excess weeks on my own, with persistence and annoyance.