A Boise couple is out about $10,000 they paid to companies that promised to help resell their timeshares; but those offers turned out to be scams.
Bernard and Betty asked that we not use their last name. Like timeshare owners across the country, they have found a resale market full of people trying to get out of their shared vacation properties — and few buyers.
The economy, a tight credit market and unhappiness over rising timeshare fees are creating motivated — some say desperate — sellers who can fall prey to resale scammers. These scam companies offer to market timeshares on websites or mislead owners into thinking they have buyers lined up.
“But they do not have a buyer,” Bernard says. “They just want your money.”
Bernard, 65, a disabled Vietnam veteran, says the scammers called them on the phone.
“They said, ‘We have a buyer for your timeshare, but we need $3,000 up front ... to go ahead and start closing on the property,’ ” he says.
Betty, who is 68 and legally blind, says she and her husband paid about the same amount to at least two other companies. Not one delivered results.
The scams aren’t the only problems Betty and Bernard have had with timeshares.
The couple used a timeshare they bought in Mazatlan, Mexico, about twice a year for nine years. They became frustrated with rising fees and restrictions on exchanges that required them to use their designated vacation time at other resorts owned by the same company.
They also wanted to sell a second timeshare they owned at Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
But they gave in to the pressure of a sales pitch for a third timeshare in September 2010 — when they were staying at the timeshare at National Harbor, Md., for the Virginia Tech-Boise State football game. Bernard says they were told the timeshare is near the site of a future Disney resort — the cream of the timeshare crop.
“They kept my wife and I cooped up in this room for over four hours,” Bernard says. “There were probably 40 to 50 pages for us to sign.”
When he left the room, the salesman held his wife’s hand and directed her where to sign, Bernard says. “That really boiled my skin.”
They agreed to “roll over” their Tahoe timeshare, pay $6,000 down and bill their credit card $1,100 a month for payments and maintenance fees.
Then they had second thoughts.
Bernard says they signed the agreement on a Friday and contacted the timeshare company Monday to say they’d changed their minds. They were told the three-day window for backing out had closed over the weekend. With the help of a lawyer, Betty and Bernard got out of the deed, but the company claims they owe five months’ worth of payments.
Dale Dixon, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau in Boise, says complaints about timeshare companies are common.
“They have a terrible reputation,” Dixon says. “Once people are in that room, they make it difficult to leave without signing.”
He says metro areas such as the Treasure Valley are targets for timeshare companies, and complaints come in waves after heavy advertising campaigns.
World VIP Travel vice president [0x13]Steve Cuccia helped Bernard and Betty get out of their timeshares. They became members of his company, which offers alternatives to timeshares, booking cruises and resort-style vacations for its members.
“The biggest mistake we make as a timeshare owner is that, in our desperation to get out, we give financial information over the phone,” Cuccia says. “If they say, ‘We have a buyer,’ that’s great: ‘Send me the information. You get paid at escrow.’ ”
Meanwhile, the couple have hired an attorney to get their money back from the three companies that offered to help them get out but didn’t.
“I’m not too optimistic,” Betty says.
