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Re: Westgate Property Owners (by Greg P.):

karenw150 wrote:

In answer to Adahiscout and Jayjay:

I own at Westgate Lakes on Turkey Lake Road. All Westgate Lakes weeks are designated 'Red Weeks' for the purpose of exchanging via exchange companies. However, what Westgate have done with our week, which is in November, is to make it unequal within the Westgate internal exchange system. So, for example, if I want to to Westgate in say, March, I would have to pay an upgrade fee ($500 I believe) to exchange my week, on top of their own exchange fee (roughly the same as Interval's). Although we bought the week when it was equal to any other week, at the same sort of price, Westgate unilaterally decided to devalue it in this way.

One more interesting point is that you cannot deposit your unit with an exchange company anymore. You have to ask Westgate to do it. Westgate then choose a week, not necessarily yours, to deposit. It seems to be that this can work to an owner's disadvantage because the week they deposit can be a different week to the owner's and may therefore be less desirable. I am a little hazy on how this will work in practice but there are some discussions on the TUG website forums.

Hi Karen,

I would like to comment on your post. Firstly, I own at westgate town center and am very happy with how I am treated there. Because I have school age children, I am restricted as to when I can use my timeshare. I am restricted to the more popular weeks (6,7,14,15,26,51 and 52). For this reason I bought a fixed week 15 (Easter), and agreed to pay a higher price to be assured of having easy access to one of these "event" weeks. I would feel deceived by Westgate if they did not charge a premiuum to "value flex week" owners to be able to exchange into one of the "event" weeks, seeing as they paid less for my week than I did. Check the resales, you will find that these event weeks a t Westgates in Orlando demand a premium price.

Westgate did not charge this fee initially, because they had lots of unused "developer" weeks available at the time, but your value season, flex contract should identify the weeks that are available for you to use at no extra cost.

Finally, I find that Westgate gets unfairly treated on most TS forums. Thier staff is no different than most other TS companies. They are all human beings and individuals with different personalities.

Greg