The Score has been running that Timeshare commercial non-stop. Basically, the service will help you get out of your timeshare.

Over the years, I have had many an argument with friends about the value of timeshares. As a financial guy, I recognize that the entire thing is one big scam. Why would you buy a lifetime's worth of vacations in advance? You don't buy a lifetime's worth of food or cable viewing in advance. Even worse, there are restrictions around the use of the timeshare, and they are so expensive that many people finance them. It becomes a simple time value of money discussion. Yet, many intelligent people are sold that these are a great idea.

But if you fast forward, these same folks eventually realize the folly of their purchase. Their initial enthusiasm can be chalked up to trying to convince themselves they made a great decision. Eventually they see that the maintenance fees and other restrictions aren't worth it. Plus you have locked in and committed yourself to taking a vacation each year, which is a luxury in good times but a big cost in lean times.

Any one else have a story to share about these?

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I don't think you should go into them expecting to save money. I also wouldn't get one that locked you in to only one location or only one week out of the year.

There are ones out there that let you swap out your week for other locations in the network(through the company and not a buy/sell with other owners) or convert them to points which can be used at other non-time share properties. I know people who have really enjoyed those as they can basically travel around the world on them with a fixed price and nice amenities.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

My cousin told me this great story that I can't really do justice to. You'd have to see her eye-rolling and facial expressions for it to have its full humor and effect. But anyway, she and her longtime boyfriend were in Florida and were offered a five hour fishing trip for free if they attended a one-hour timeshare seminar. My cousin found the idea ridiculous but her boyfriend insisted on getting the free fishing trip. Like a typical beaten down wife she grudgingly agreed. They went to the "seminar" and these sales dogs brought it hard. Total Glengarry Glen Ross stuff. Hard closes. All kind of technique. What else would you expect? Her boyfriend sat like a fucking stone. After an hour he began asking where the boat was. The sales guys kept trying to close. My cousin said, "Do you really want to go on a boat with these guys for five hours?" But her boyfriend was gonna get his fishing trip come hell or high water. They eventually got on the boat. The sales guys kept selling the entire time. The boyfriend just kept fishing and ignoring their overtures. My cousin was angry and miserable.

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Freedom is our Strength.

just sounds like a terrible idea. like wife sharing. not gonna work out well.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Yeap for sure. You know when they have to sell that hard it is not a great deal. For the life of me I can't figure why anyone would lock themselves into a timeshare even though you can trade around to other locations. If you have the money for it, then your opportunity cost is what you would have earned in investment return on said money spent up front. If you don't have the money, then you have no business going on vacation anyway.

We go on a family vacation every year, and I have no restrictions. The good news is that if I lost my job, I would not be locked into a vacation that I cannot afford. You still have to pay for flights, food, and entertainment, so it's not like some all costs paid trip.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

My grandparents had one. The main place was in Mexico but you could transfer anywhere in their network around the world. Eventually they got tired of traveling each year and sold a week to my mom and week to my uncle. The Mexico resort was nice but all the other places you could transfer ended up being pretty shitty. After 4 or 5 years my mom sold the other week to my uncle. As far as I know he still has the two weeks.

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Well, the person I know who did it enjoys it for these reasons.

1) It forces them to go to new places and makes it fairly painless to go there.
2) The amenities are often better. These are basically mini-apartments with full kitchens and multiple rooms.
3) They get huge upgrades sometimes when they travel in that network. We are talking like nicest room in the whole resort if it is unused for that week.
4) The locations are basically every place you would want to go.
5) They are now retired and it makes a lot of travel really easy.

As long as you don't view it as an investment then it has benefits that can be worth it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

My mother in law bought one a few years back in Florida. It was a total pain in the ass. She thought it was going to be this great deal where she could go on vacation every year and she could let her daughters have it at times to take her grandkids to Disney, etc. It never worked out as they advertised it to her. She could never get the weeks she wanted. My wife and I wanted to use it for our honeymoon. We got married in May and the week we ended up getting to be able to use it was in the next January. Then when you did get to use it you had to sit through your own afternoon of people trying to get you to buy your own. You dont want to depend on your mothernlaws timeshare, you need your own timeshare. Think of your kids, they deserve this. It was quite the scene. You had to basically tell the salesmen to go fuck themselves to get them to let you leave. My mothernlaw finally decided to sell hers and that was a huge ordeal as well and took forever. Once she was finally done with it she was so relieved and she made all her kids promise to never get involved in such a scam

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Rick you could go to all those places without paying for it in advance. It's a time value of money argument. But yes, the lovers have outlined all those points.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

You could also do a vacation in the same town you live in and save even more money!

That doesn't change the fact that there are benefits, at least for the program they are in, that give them enough value for them to consider it worth it.

Some people don't make vacation decisions solely on how to save the most money.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

If you could pay cash and rent it out with some consistency when you're not there, it might be worth it. Otherwise, I see no value. My brother has friends who have some that he visits in Colorado every year.

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Timeshares are great,they allow smart people the opportunity to rent them for dirt cheap from the idiots who bought them.

I'm going to Cancun in an month, staying at Le Blanc, the #1 rated adults only all inclusive in Mexico. Went to book it off their website and it was going to cost $7000 for 6 days. On a hunch, went on ebay and sure enough there were people selling off their reserved weeks from their timeshare commitments. Ended up buying one for a full 7days and it cost me $3500.

I highly recommend checking out EBay if you're planning a vacation, you can find amazing deals like that for all sorts of great places.

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With sites like air BNB and vbo youd really have to be nuts to buy a timeshare. It is a dying industry

It's not their fault! They were misled! It's not fair!

I wouldn't do it, but I suppose I can see how people would get worn down and eventually give in.

You seem to have had quite an extensive discussion with this "other" person about the reasons behind their timeshare purchase.

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They let me use one of their weeks so there was plenty of time to discuss.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

OK.

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I went through one of these as a college student to get tickets for Disney because an ex wanted to go. They run you though the ringer for a couple of hours. A younger girl gave us the first tour, when she did not close apologized for what would happen next. Some ex-military type got in our face and called us stupid and irresponsible for not recognizing the opportunity. When I said no it don't make sense to buy one of these, he threatened to fire the girl who gave us the tour unless we signed-up. Just in your face bullshit for close to half an hour. Left without signing-up, and I could hear him bitching her out and threatening to send her back to sales training. Really though it was worth it for almost $180 in tickets and learning a lesson on how the world worked.

One thing they continued to say as if it was a positive was that the founder was a billionaire many times over and paid for all of his properties in cash. Yeah, by fleecing all of the people looking for free stuff and going home with a $30,000 "right" to have essentially a hotel room near an attraction for two weeks out of the year.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

When we went to LeBlanc for our honeymoon they try and rope you in to one of those 3 hour timeshare sales pitches, but I hit them with my sternest white man privilege voice and told them there was no fucking way I was going to sit down with them for even 30 seconds so don't even bother. They got the hint and left us alone.

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my grand uncle had at least 3 of these. They love them. I being the cheapskate I am used one to go on my honeymoon for free...it was incredibly old, and everyone around was incredibly old. We ended up coming back home early, and I had to promise to do a second honeymoon on our ten year anniversary to replace that honeymoon in her memory bank.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

I would have been her boyfriend. It's just noise.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

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i have sat through a number of time share presentations for free stuff. my wife and i have a lot of fun at them. sometimes they are even more fun that seaworld or whatever tickets we got for doing it. one time a sales lady looked at my wife and goes "are you prepared to stay married to a person who wouldn't allow you the opportunity to get your vacation of a lifetime" man we lauggggghed. and i was like, ok in all honesty, does that actually work? shes like, excuse me? i'm like that tactic, do you make sales because like a husband is like oh shit i don't want my wife to leave me? thats fantastic. when does the mean one come in and try and bully us into buying. she was like, i guess i can't help you, sue here will come and tell you about your prizes....sue was like an 65 yr old lady and she was a bulllll dog. said that whats her face was gonna be fired probably for not closing us. dropped the price a whooooole bunch. she sent us to like a guy with a lock box who gave us our stuff.

however, we were like 1 of 8 or so couples in there. i'd say at least 3 of them were signing up.

my good buddy inherited a timeshare and its been nothing short of a disaster for them.

I was invited to one by a college buddy that had that set up in Palm Beach. Mini-apartment, on the beach, can switch to other sweet resorts. It was great.

I can't afford it but they could so good for them. I was happy to be invited.

That guy in the documentary about building a Versailles in Florida for his tramp wife made his fortune on time shares

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

And lost his fortune on timeshares.

Everyone who has a timeshare appears either to desperately getting rid of it or letting other people use it.

My wife had us go to one of those pitches in some building in Rosemont for free stuff back when we first got married. I told her before what it was but she was insistent and there was no way I was letting her go alone. That was back when we had time to waste so it was no big deal to burn through a night.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I think he's back on top again. Westgate in Vegas.

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Freedom is our Strength.

That documentary made me very angry. That is about the most vile family that I have ever seen.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

I'm writing a memoir about the year 1990 (my experiences that year and the glorious White Sox season). I worked in a warehouse and one of the guys I worked with had been talked into a time share in 1985--when his job wasn't as hopeless as it was in 1990--and he was bitter. It sat empty for three of his four weeks. If he scraped, he'd have had the money to get to North Carolina, but his weeks changed and sometimes (he says) he got the worst possible times (January, February, Christmas). Once he came into work and told us he had just found out one of his weeks started the following Monday, and he had to eat a few days of pay.

The funny thing was that this guy was one of the greatest guys I ever worked with--just a hell of a guy--and the shitty company (Sears) that he devoted his life to was fucking him (and everyone else who worked there) up the ass. He was still a great guy and it's not like he was consumed by bitterness, but . . . Anyway, when he got back, he said he wanted to burn the timeshare condo down.

Sorry about this incredible blandness, but I just happened to be thinking about all of this.

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