Westgate Change in Policy - Is it Legal?

dawnm269 wrote:

Since my issue last year with this $450, I banked with Interval and avoid dealing with Westgate. As of last week, Mr Siegal bought the Cocoa Beach Pier in Cocoa Beach FL. I guess he got his money issues straightened out and I bet Versailles has been finished since he started charging the $450 to resale owners. I will be selling my Westgate this year, so Mr Siegel can have it back.

It looks to me like Westgate/Siegal are cutting off their noses to spite their face, since the above is what most Westgate timeshare owners will do. Concerning Versailles, it's to be finished in 2015, but if it's going to be kept like it was in documentary "The Queen of Versailles" then it will end up being one huge trash dump.

I would think his goals were driven by one (or possibly both) of the following.

1) They do not want a resale market developing and will do all they can to prevent it. By putting in a policy such as this they are reducing the ability to resell a unit.

At this point in time people are literally paying thousands of dollars to get out from under the property that they own. Kind of a shame. It would trash a person's credit rating but, at least in Florida, it is possible to walk away and not pay the maintenance fee as they can't go after owners for anything other than title. For anyone with elderly parents who got scammed by him, this is the best course of action in my opinion if the sleazes at Westgate refuse to take the unit back.

Note that the rules vary from state to state. If you walk away in some states, you may wind up finding your wages being garnished. My understanding is you can walk away in Florida provided you don't care about your credit rating.

2) Most likely though it was just a method of getting a little bit more money as a result of his financial problems. I was hosed, I paid the money once. He will do all he can to prevent owners from exchanging at some point in the future as that is the way he operates.

I just looked today, if you book your week online, the agreement (the hyperlink of Agreement and Terms, under where you put in your credit card info) state that fixed week owners will pay $140 if reserved online and $150 if you book with an agent. So by them charging people $450 is robbery/fraud. The contract you sign online specifically states $140. And if they did this to you and you booked online, follow the steps I did by calling them repeatedly and faxing them their own contract to get your $300 back!!

Maybe Westgate owners should get together and purchase billboard space across from the entrance of some of the resorts explaining how they are diminishing the value of their properties with this change. Would you buy from them today if you knew this was the case? Maybe sales would go down and they would rethink this policy change. It seems the only thing they listen to is money.

Would be nice if all of the owners could get together but it hasn't happened to date and I'm not going to spend the time/resources at this time.

The Queen of Versailles was a great movie and showed what liars they are but in the end I wish it would have talked more about the damage and hurt inflicted on owners at Westgate.

Wonder how hard it would be to get the names and addresses of all the owners?

jeffb179 wrote:

Wonder how hard it would be to get the names and addresses of all the owners?

Due to privacy issues, I would think it would be difficult getting such a list, however you could start a website or blog requesting owners to sign their names and addresses and make sure all the search engines carry such for people researching anything to do with Westgate.

Actually, all owners should be a matter of public record. The key would be knowing where to look.

marvinb11 wrote:

Actually, all owners should be a matter of public record. The key would be knowing where to look.

Where to look would be the deed section of the courthouse in the FL county where Westgate is located .... I think this can be done via an internet search but I'm not completely sure as I have never tried it.

Visited Branson via the exchange from Orlando. Think I have a little bit better idea, or at least another reason for the change. They asked me to come in to answer some questions and assured me it wasn't a sales call. They said, even if they wanted to do an "upgrade" they weren't permitted to, not that I asked them too. As usual, they were lying.

They indicated that they were concerned about the costs of my timeshare with the annual maintenance and exchange fees. They wanted to "help" me get out from under them and they offered to exchange my Florida unit for a Branson unit for a small fee of $10,000.

Thanks guys, think I'll pass on something that has a 20 year payback period. Thanks for all the lies, thanks for wasting my time. Bottom-line, one other possible reason for the change was to scare people into buying another unit and a ridiculous price.

Visited Branson via the exchange from Orlando. Think I have a little bit better idea, or at least another reason for the change. They asked me to come in to answer some questions and assured me it wasn't a sales call. They said, even if they wanted to do an "upgrade" they weren't permitted to, not that I asked them too. As usual, they were lying.

They indicated that they were concerned about the costs of my timeshare with the annual maintenance and exchange fees. They wanted to "help" me get out from under them and they offered to exchange my Florida unit for a Branson unit for a small fee of $10,000.

Thanks guys, think I'll pass on something that has a 20 year payback period. Thanks for all the lies, thanks for wasting my time. Bottom-line, one other possible reason for the change was to scare people into buying another unit at a ridiculous price.

Can someone clarify - to me doing a developer exchange from one WG resort to another as a resale owner for $450 (instead of the $150) is bad enough, but are they also saying it's $450 to book a reservation at their resort you own at? To me that's just booking a reservation - not exchanging. I'm going to call and argue this point but thought I'd first ask what others may have found out or been told by WG.

I don't own Westgate but did research possibly accepting one for free. I thought the $450 fee at your home resort was when you upgraded to a higher season or banked to the following year or locked off into multiple smaller sized UNITS. Basically any fee that cost direct purchase owners Westgate is tripling the fee for resale purchasers.

Thanks, if you are right then it sounds like just booking a reservation at our home resort wouldn't be triple the fee, as what all you mention are other than a booking?

tracey75 wrote:

I don't own Westgate but did research possibly accepting one for free. I thought the $450 fee at your home resort was when you upgraded to a higher season or banked to the following year or locked off into multiple smaller sized UNITS. Basically any fee that cost direct purchase owners Westgate is tripling the fee for resale purchasers.

There shouldn't be any fee to book your entire unit during your season (or fixed week) at your resort.

They may make you prepay your MF's and they have put restrictions in about the booking time frame (limited to 60 days before check in) for some of the newer resorts like Park City. The restriction also applies to Elara but my understanding is they are not enforcing it there. I have heard the booking agents applying the 60 day booking restriction to Gatlinburg but I don't know if it is really a part of the official CC&R's there.

Tracey - thanks for responding again. I feel better if we can book our resort (being a resale owner) for the regular fee, not triple. We won't find out for sure if that's how WG handles it until we go to book our 2016 week (we own EOY). If they want triple, we'll deposit our week with II and exchange for their $179 fee.

Which resort do you own at? Using I I won't solve the problem if it is a straight out booking fee, which there should be none for your owned week. You would still need to book or reserve a week if you own a float week in order to deposit. Using II instead of Westgates internal exchange system will cost the regular II exchange fee vs the $450 charged for resale Westgate owners who want to use the internal exchange system.

We recently were "gifted" the resale at Branson Woods from the prior owner (2 BR even years, all season) - handled through a title company that handles WG, and WG didn't exercise their ROFR. We are also owners at Park City (purchased direct from WG and trading that has always worked well). The long story is that the prior owner at Branson had banked his 2012 week, and WG advised us we'd have to use it by 12/31/14 (bank out for 2 years max.) I called reservations to ask if we had to use it at Branson (in my mind hoping that fee would be the $150) , or if we could exchange it at other WG's (and I'd read there would be the $450 exchange fee for that). She said "it will always cost you $450 because it's a resale, but if you put it through interval it will just cost you their $179 exchange fee"). I didn't think to ask if she meant $450 just if exchanging to other WG resorts or even to book Branson (it sounded like the $450 would apply for any booking). We probably won't use the banked week anyway, but need to know for when our 2016 week becomes available (the $450 would make it an expensive week after adding M&T's). I'd like to know the real answer, before I call Westgate and ask, because I don't trust them - sometimes the answer depends on who you talk to. Thanks for hearing the whole story - any further help is appreciated.

A banked week basically means it has been deposited into Westgate internale system. So yes using a banked week will most likely cost you $450 or you can let it expire and pay nothing. Banking weeks with the developer is similar to depositing into their internal exchange system. It's not a deeded right like using your week during your size and season during your use year. Westgate has decided that they will charge a fee to allow for these privileges and decided to have one price for retail buyers and another for resale. Unfortunately if you want the weeks you will have to pay the fee. In the future if you can't use the week during the use year you can bank or deposit with an exchange company like interval international or one of the independent companies like Sfx or dae, etc.

I think the interval fee is referring to any future unbanked weeks you can't use. Hopefully you used you 2014 week and didn't bank it with Westgate until 2016 or you will have the same problem when you go to use that week.

Westgate is one of the worst management company when it comes to resale owners. If they ever try to get you to another sales meeting don't forget to mention that you would never buy from a company who tries so hard to make your initial purchase/investment worth so little. Good luck.

And as for the legality of what they do, they basically have the philosophy that if you think it's illegal take them to court but know they are willing to pay thousands and thousands on court and legal fees and will drag it out for as long as possible betting that they will last longer and will offer you trinkets even if they think they can't win.

Thanks, that distinction seems clear and hopefully correct. The prior owner of the resale unit had booked his 2014 week before we obtained it, so there's no issue of banking it. Luckily we've got nothing invested in this unit - just the EOY M&T's, and we plan to enjoy Branson those years. Thank you again for taking the time to educate us.

I just booked a vacation, I was all set and was charged $150. I was never told anything about any other fees because of a resale account. Then I called back because I have weeks banked and wanted another villa because the one I have isn't big enough because I've added people. Then the representative tried to charge me $499 plus $600 for something called a prime week. Then I was really irate. At this point so she then connected me to the corporate office and their telling me if I do not upgrade with westgate which will cost me another $6000. When I get on my vacation I could have fees tacked on when checking in because I didn't pay the appropriate fees to begin with and whoever I talked to didn't know what they were doing when I booked my reservation. If I get to westgate and there's a problem, I can guarantee you, no one there will ever buy another timeshare from westgate ever again!