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Re: Westgate Property Owners (by Karen W.):

greg208 wrote:

Hi Karen,

I don't mean to argue with you, but I will share with you my experience. When I bought my first time share from the developer (Westgate) in 2001, my contract specifically stated a floating wek in the value season. In 2002, when I realized the disadvantages to owning a "value" season week, I upgraded (cost 5K) my four bedroom timeshare with the developer to a week 15 fixed week, which is one of the "event" weeks. I can now trade into any week without having to pay an upgrade fee. You will notice that on most resale timeshare sites, there is not much inventory for weeks 6,7,14,15, 26, 51 and 52 available at Westgate Orlando properties. If they are available, there is almost always a higher asking price than you will find for other weeks in the same resort.

Greg

I do not wish to argue either, but this is my experience.

As mentioned before, Westgate never mentioned the concept of value weeks to us when we purchased - they just pushed the fact that all weeks were equal. There is no mention of a 'value' season on our contract and, just our unit number and fixed week number.

When I heard about the devaluation of weeks from someone on another forum (having not received the Westgator newsletter for some time previously) I queried this with Westgate and this is the relevant section of the reply I received. As you will see, they say that the fees are 'new :

... " However, this classification has nothing to do with how your week trades within the Westgate Resorts. As explained in the last two issues of the magazine sent to all owners, the ability to trade your week has always been as a benefit of the Developer by using the unsold inventory weeks. As we have sold these weeks, there are less available weeks for owners like yourself to trade into. Therefore, we have instituted the new fees for all exchanges outside of your week. If you wish to exchange to weeks 1-4, 16-21, 35-46, 48-50, you will simply have to pay the developer exchange fee of $130. If you wish to exchange into any other week, you will have to pay the developer exchange fee plus the seasonal upgrade fee. "

Incidentally, forgive me if I sound rude, but for $5k you could have bought a pretty good Westgate resale from companies such as Timeshares Only and various other websites. In fact you can buy mine for that if you wish!