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Club Navigo is a rip off (by Steve M.):

ralphe13 wrote:

Have you ever heard of Suzy Orman. If you watch her show she always states timeshares are the worst investment a person can make. I have stayed in several timeshares, but do not own one. I go on line to skyauction.com or endless vacations and buy a week. In October I will be at the wyndham santa barbara in a 2 bedroom, for $349 for the entire week. In Jan staying at the wyndham grand desert in las vegas, one week for an amazing price of $244 for a week. Both properties are 4 star gold rated. Quick falling for these sales gimmicks and wasting your money. You work to hard for it. I will be surprised if my message makes it.

While buying from the developer is a sure fire way of losing a lot of your investment - buying on the secondary market -WITH A PLAN - is a good way to actually stay for free.

As I have stated before, I owned 6 time shares, all in the same three resorts, Grand Seas in Daytona, The Cove ST in Ormond Beach and Liki Tiki in Orlando. The total points value of the 2 x 3Br and 4 x 2Br units was 31,000 each year. My total investment, was $23,000 for all six weeks, and the annual fees are $5700. I have used a formula where I take a percentage of the investment costs, all of the fees costs, and divide that by the number of points I will have left AFTER making my reservations for the year - usually two weeks over in Ormond or Daytona in a 2Br. The figure I get each year is the price per point that I will rent a week for, rounded up to the next $50 interval. This year, a 2Br ocean front in medium season ended up being $650. That is less than half of what the resort was asking. I had no trouble renting out all the weeks I booked - a total of 7 weeks, mostly in 2Br units, and I vacationed twice in 2Br units at The Cove with my family. Net on the year, I am ahead by several hundred dollars and still have a week in a 2Br in Ormond and points for 2 weeks in a studio still in the bank. Thus I vacations not for several hundred dollars as you wrote - which is none the less a great deal you got - but I vacation at the beach in a 5 star rated ocean front 2Br FOR FREE.

Learn the systems and use them to your advantage. If you are having trouble making reservations the week you want, and it is not an event week, which is nearly impossible to reserve unless you own that week, then try prepaying your fees, and making your reservations 11 months in advance. In most cases, you can prepay the same amount that was due last year, and Club Navigo will give you use of your points for the upcoming year. You then can make your reservation far in advance, while rooms are still available. And since there is such a high demand for the week you reserved, you often can cancel the reservation if needed, or move it if rooms are available the new week, and they sometimes even wave the small cancellation fee, since they know they will rebook the room.

The only exception to not buying from the developer - is if you are buying an event week at one of the time shares where that applies, like Grand Seas and The Cove where you have the Daytona 500 race, as well as Spring Breaks, Bike Week, and other special weeks. These are always booked solid, and you can truly treat them as an investment. I am guaranteed reservations every year and my Daytona 500 week rents to the public - by me- at over $2500 for the week. Total costs, including fees will break even in just under 10 years. Then I will be making $2000+ a year on the investment.