Original Message:
Re: Diamond Resorts enormously increases the cost of Maintenance/Reserves on their resorts. (by Kristine S.):
I own four timeshare properties, with one of them being Villas at Polo Towers, Las Vegas. An "owner's update" turned into a HARD presentation on changing my deeded week to points. We did not agree...knew that they could not make us ( our daughter worked at timeshare sales at one time and told us that). Mind you, this was not easy to do, and took us a hour to convince the tag team that NO meant NO....they were infuriated to say the least... Slamming booklets down. That being said, to have our fees be over $1400. annually at this point is the highest of all the ones we have, and all of them are Gold Crown Resorts. What really is hard to swallow is that I could just rent a week from them or anyone else for way less than that with no further yearly obligations...go one year, or not, whenever. When we first started time-sharing, the only way to stay in these lovely condo units was through ownership. Now our neighbors do the same thing with no sales presentations or maintenance fees..just go online and rent them; just totally unfair! I tried renting for my maintenance fee cost only, and that was too high in comparison to others, and thus unsuccessful at this location. I erroneously thought that once this building was sold out, as lovely as it is, it should not be hard to sell if I chose to in the future, right on the Vegas Strip. Wrong. As stated by others, listings were for $0- $500. I just can't make myself "GIVE" it away for nothing, and of course now our 3 grown children do not want ownership either. I tried one year to reserve a week in Oct, early Nov. and was told NO...that is when all the conventions are in Vegas and they rent out those weeks. I am a OWNER and was given no preference...I was told I could space bank it...which means of course I have to pay MORE to trade into somewhere else. Just amazing.