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I recently attended a timeshare presentation with a major brand name but didn’t buy…
August 11, 2008 by Forum Questions ·
I thought the idea however was really good but having researched more on the internet I only read bad things – so as a whole is timeshare good or bad?
Sarah Matthews, Non Owner, UK
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2 Responses to “I recently attended a timeshare presentation with a major brand name but didn’t buy…”
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There are a few angles at which this answer could be approached from so let’s go with a brief combined version of them all…
Timeshare has always been a great product, however quite some years ago due to little or no regulation in many parts of the world it was exploited by some not so ethical companies and its name was tarnished. But the product survived and today is sold by many of the major hospitality brands worldwide and leading developers who now have 20 and 30+ years experience in the marketplace. Governments have imposed stricter regulations and industry trade bodies work very hard to ensure the ethical trading of its members as well as concentrating efforts to expose any “holiday club” style company whose intent is to defraud consumers, as sometimes these can be wrongly classed as timeshare by the press.
In very recent times however, the press is now learning the difference between genuine timeshare companies and “holiday club” scam companies and in most cases gets it
right when reporting on exposed scams. In the coming years with the growing number of brands and the positively looked at fractional market emerging, you will see timeshare raise its profile in the media and expand further into the mainstream travel industry.
The internet however, as great as it is, remains the one place where you can submit any comment you wish on certain websites whether it is accurate, factual or pure fiction
and is paradise for the habitual complainer, yet innocent readers will believe it – as with newspapers “you can’t believe everything you read” and this phrase should be multiplied by ten at least for the internet. Even doctors suffer from and complain about the independent voice of the internet, as if you get ill and look up your symptoms online, often you are likely to nearly scare yourself to death, yet what you read may not even be accurate or dramatize only the worst case scenarios. Like the press, consumers also associate any holiday related scam with the word “timeshare” and so in many cases this is what comments can be referring to online.
When surfing online ask yourself this - are the bad comments from owners or non-owners? You will find that most are from non-owners, whereas most owners are happy
with their product.
So a little bit of common sense needs to be applied when deciding to purchase any form of shared ownership – firstly it is a lifestyle choice and this means that it doesn’t suit everyone; not everyone likes to stay in 5* hotels, but that doesn’t detract from them having the best standards.
If you are buying a recognizable brand, you know what you are getting; if you are buying from a resort that is a member of a recognized trade association such as ARDA, CRDA, OTE, ATHOC then you are assured that you are buying from a reputable company that abides by a set code of ethics.
Timeshare is a good product generally but the answer is looking at Bodies that are fully impartial.
I am afrraid that some trade bodies represent the bog companies not the consumser
I wuold advise you to consult sites like the TCA- timeshare consumers Association and Morps( Members of RCI points) to get fully indendent advice