How Advice From A Timeshare Association Can Help You Avoid Costly Mistakes
Timeshare Association
A timeshare association can give you useful and helpful advice in negotiating one of the most hazardous and difficult of all markets. There are many such associations, and they are not official trade bodies but groups set up to further the interests of buyers and sellers of timeshare. They have no powers to impose sanctions upon any operator, no matter how dishonest they may be, but they can give a lot of useful advice to people looking to trade safely.
The timeshare industry has long been in need of this type of reassuring presence, as it has been consistently blighted by stories of high pressure selling and blatant dishonesty. This goes back to the early days of timeshare, when the concept was little understood. At the time, it was far easier for resort owners with units to sell to try to sell them by direct face to face marketing than it was to pay for advertising. Any promotional advertising would have needed to explain the concept, before it could even begin to try to convince people to buy.
The hard selling techniques have not really changed, even though people are far more knowledgeable now about both timeshare, and the tactics which are used to try and sell it. People are still being enticed to visit resort areas on some very flimsy pretenses, such as having won a prize which turns out to be virtually worthless, and they are still being given a vicious hard sell. It is not unheard of for a salesman to tell a prospect that he doesn’t care about his children, just because he has not immediately bought a very expensive timeshare to give them a great vacation.
Protection against this type of hard sell is difficult, and the bast advice as ever is not to become involved in the first place. If you are offered a prize which you then have to go and collect from a resort area, you need to ask yourself why? Bulky items such as TV sets and DVD recorders are routinely ordered through the mail or online, and the warehouses deliver them to the customer using couriers. Why would the company offering a prize not do the same?
When it comes to selling timeshare, a timeshare association can also give you good advice. The most common scam here is the one where you are asked to pay a fee up front, and then you will be connected with a buyer. Often, no buyer will appear, but the fees you paid covered “legal advice” so they will not be returned to you. On other occasions the buyer will turn out to be the sister company to the broker, and there will be a derisory offer made for the timeshare. You can avoid these problems by avoiding anyone asking for up front money, and taking advice from a timeshare association.
