Access to Your Resort's Owner List - Privacy vs. Disclosure

This month's Ask RedWeek article addresses this controversial topic: as an owner, should you have access to your resort's full owner roster? Most owners would say yes... but what if that means a fellow owner could sell the same roster to an unscrupulous third party scammer?

What do the courts say, and what alternatives exist?

The article is posted here: Timeshare Boards Deny Access to Rosters for Communication on Owner Issues

I would like to access others but I think it is too dangerous to give out people's information. At the least owners should be able to keep their info confidential if the resort decides to do this. John

Absolutely not. Keep it private. I get enough junk email and junk mail already. I don't need to add to it.

Dave P. Walnut Creek, CA

The compromise solution is best stated in the article as allowing a third party to administrate the email sending process rather then giving the email addresses to the member. The management should be able to determine that the email does relate to member business but should not be able to charge more then the email service actually costs.

Wyndham is trying to do as the article says: Make it so expensive as to be impossible. That should not be allowed...

I'm stunned that some people think that owners having access to owners' lists will result in spam and scams.

It's pretty obvious that the owners' lists are being shared with everyone BUT the owners themselves already.

I agree completely with your statement. How else do the post card companies know how to send out notices to owners all over the country.

tsauthor wrote:

I'm stunned that some people think that owners having access to owners' lists will result in spam and scams.

It's pretty obvious that the owners' lists are being shared with everyone BUT the owners themselves already.

Some form of contacting owners by owners is essential to balance the power of the developer who can control the board, and thus take advantage of owners inability to elect an independent board that controls the timeshare for the benefit of the owners and not the developers.

I appreciate the comment about owners needing access to others to keep unscrupulous boards from having too much control. As I stated earlier maybe a compromise is to grant access but individual owners should be able to opt out to keep their privacy and avoid unwanted contact.

Before I became active in any owners' organization, I regularly received unsolicited and unwelcome phone calls and mail concerning various issues with the timeshare, mostly offering to find a purchaser (for a fee) for my timeshare. At that time, the only way my information would have been available as a timeshare owner was through the timeshare's owner information list held by the timeshare. I feel certain that the list of owners and contact information was sold or otherwise provided by the timeshare company to the callers and the companies they work for.

Since owners of my timeshare have been unable to get access to a list of owners, we have been hampered in our efforts to have representation on the board as well as to oversee or regulate our own maintenance fees.

We have a question for John Weir, who wrote the article. Can you please tell us what CA AB634 has to do with timeshare rosters? We don't believe they are considered public records, so we are a little confused? Unless the bill number is wrong? We are very interested in this information.

When we asked to inspect the owner roster at our timeshare in California, because we wanted to communicate with other owners, our association asked for $3,500. They would not let us inspect, but they would mail out an approved communication to all owners. That "alternative" method was supported by the State's Attorney General's office. To alleviate that burden, I ran for the Board and was able to communicate my concerns, in a resume, to all the owners, at no cost to us. I also provided my email address for anyone who wanted to communicate with me. In other words, why allow a Board, or government agency, to run your life, when there is an "alternative."

Dear Kylie: Can you please tell us what CA AB634 has to do with timeshare rosters? We don't believe they are considered public records, so we are a little confused? Unless the bill number is wrong? We are very interested in this information.

Hi Tom, sorry for the delay -- here is a link to California AB 634 that talks about the implications for timeshare owners:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB634

Looks like California re-uses their bill numbers... just to make it fun to find the one you're interested in. This is from 2015.

Keep it private. Thank you Red Week for developing this site & service. I just found you today. I almost now have no reason to go to Facebook again!

Couldn’t agree more with janb316. Every timeshare owner should have the right to privacy, if they choose. That is why we asked Jeff Weir of Redweek to write an article on our suggestion about how owners that want to communicate with each other, can. And owners that choose not to, can maintain their privacy. There is a very simple way to satisfy everyone. And we have done it. Run for the board and in your resume, include your email address. If other owners want to communicate with you, you will receive emails from them, as we have. Now, with this process, owners are communicating that want to communicate (that have a democratic right to communicate), and there are no laws or CC&R’s to stop you or charge you exorbitant fees, to discourage you. There can be no democracy without communications.

THERE IS NO PRIVACY HERE TO PROTECT: Of course the lists of owners are already being provided by the developers/managers to all the assorted "timeshare resale, relief, etc" scammers who are contacting you on the phone and by direct mail.

Besides that, one could go the websites of the county recorders where the properties are located and look up all deeds at the address of the timeshare development.

Making it difficult for owners to get this information only serves the developers/managers ability to control the board of directors of your timeshare HOA by packing it with their employees and flunkies.

Dear RedWeek,

Is there a reason you are deleting members' posts?

We remove posts that:

1) Are not relevant to the conversation (in your case: private communications about totally unrelated issues) 2) Are intentionally misleading (in your case: multiple accounts created on the same computer, posting messages for the sake of generating more interest in a topic you have initiated).