Timeshares - another one of mankind's attempts to give people something they do not need at a specific date every year for the rest of their life. Bad idea! Bad, bad idea!
I am speaking from personal experience. Buying a timeshare is like having a baby. You own it and the fees and it is a part of you for the rest of your life. You can only use that one pitiful week and of course you bought the white week because the salesman told you it was easy to trade up and get a different week by putting it in the pool where everyone can pick and choose, but it is not that easy and certain restrictions apply. No kidding.
Before my ex and I were married, I had attended several of these sales pitches and never bought into the thing. I looked at it as a way to get some crappy free gifts and spend the night at a resort. In 1987, my ex-husband and I went to a sales pitch for a timeshare. The salesman pitched and he pitched and finally he convinced my ex that it was a good deal. Then they both started on me. I just couldn't hold out and we signed a contract.
The name of the place is Quail Hollow and it is located around Lancaster Pennsylvania and it is run by Crown Resorts, Ltd. The yearly fees that were about $200.00 in the beginning slowly advanced over the years and are now over $500.00. We paid over $5,000.00 for the week. Yes, that's right, a week. They actually issue you a deed for a week at a resort. Then you have interest and other fees and because it is a pseudo-real estate transaction there are title fees and deed fees and fees and fees. After 20 years the total amount paid in to such a fiasco is anywhere from $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 for a week of each year until you die or you find someone to take it off your hands. And if you only use it once, the per use cost is $10,000.00 to $20,000.00. That is a heck of a cost for one week of being miserable.
I am being contacted by the time share yearly maintenance people because I have neglected (after 18 years of paying the maintenance fees with great animosity) to pay the fees for the past 2 or more years. I do not have the money being unemployed and all and it is on the bottom of my list of things that need to be paid. Actually, it is not on the need list at all. It is on the don't need and don't want list.
My last email to them included the following.
"About 18 years ago I sent a certified copy of the quit claim paper to your office. I was told after they got the paperwork that it could not be completed until the balance due was paid. So now you tell me that you do not have the paperwork and his name is still on the deed and you want to resolve the issue but cannot because his name is still on the deed. To my knowledge, he never paid anything on the week and you all never tried to contact him to try to get him to pay anything so I doubt that you are going to accomplish that at this juncture.
"It appears that we are at an impasse. I will not be sending in any money. I have used up all my savings and have nothing left to pay on a week in Pennsylvania that I used a total of ONCE. That one time was the first year we owned it. I never wanted to buy that thing in the first place because my job transferred me around every 2 years. I told that salesman that same thing when we got saddled with all that promotional junk for listening to the sales pitch. He convinced my ex-husband that it was a great deal because we could use it anywhere in the whole entire world. That was the biggest bunch of Biscuit Snot I ever remember hearing. I have tried to sell it and tried give it away. I even tried eBay. No one wants it. I have had time share liquidators tell me that if I gave them $500.00 they would try to sell it but there would be no guarantees and I would be out $500.00. There was supposedly a Thousand Trails campsite membership that was to go along with that for as long as we owned the week. That ended 2 years later. They quit sending membership cards after the 2nd year.
"Now, I realize that the high pressure salesman who sold us this bill of goods is probably living somewhere in the Cayman Islands now with all the money he made off the commissions for these so-called properties. At this point I really do not care. I just want out of this mess. From my calculations I spent around $10,000.00 - $20,000.00 for a one week vacation in the Pennsylvania mountains when it was not fishing season; it was not warm; it was cloudy, overcast and downright miserable and my ex-husband insisted that he was going to catch a fish and embarrassed me beyond all reason because he eventually did catch a fish using a safety pin attached to a string on a skinny tree branch and someone saw him and he had to throw the poor little fish back in the water. I remember that week well. It was downright miserable. I hated it and wished I had never heard of Quail Hollow.
"I am through ranting, for now. If you would kindly email me the paperwork, I will obtain the necessary signatures. If you do not email the paperwork to me with a proper address to return the signed documents to, I will not be able to return said documents to you.
"Thank you very much for your kind attention to this matter."
That is the way it is in timeshare land. I have only spoken with one person who had any kind of timeshare that actually worked out for them. They had 5 children and it would have cost them much more to take their children anywhere and stay for a week. With 5 children, you do look for a way to take them somewhere for a week and they got a blue week which they did trade for other places. I wonder what they are doing now that the kids are grown. Probably taking the grandchildren.
If you don't think the consequences of sin follow you after you are saved or reborn or regenerated, just remember the story of the timeshare. It still follows me and I came to know The Messiah as my Saviour in 1992, several years after I bought the timeshare with my ex-husband.
Shalom. Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.
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