Time Share Nightmare!

About 3 years ago my wife and I got a phone call offering us a 2 night 3 day stay in Charleston SC, all we had to do was take a 90 minute tour of their resort package. (Does that sound familiar?). The price was right, if I remember correctly somewhere around $96.00 or near that anyway the price was OK

We arrived at the designated motel, but we weren't instructed what to do prior to our arrival. After we got registered and situated into our room we decided to check with the desk clerk and see if they knew what we were supposed to do, the clerk said we had to go to the conference center and register for the tour.

After asking directions a couple of times we finally found the registration center and got registered. The actual location for the tour was in another part of the city, but luckily not to far from where we were staying.

The next morning we left early enough to get parking ($8.00 per day) and find the tour site. The tour finally begins and we meet our sales person and go through about one hour of explaining all the benefits of the time share plan which sounded  fantastic and guess what I fell for it, I persuaded my wife to go for it and we did. After about 3 hours we were finally signed up for a total of $21,000 and $900.00 per year maintenance fee.

We were told the 21,000 dollars was at a discount because someone had sold their time share back to their company and we could have the savings. During our conversations we told the salesman we were going to spend a couple days in Myrtle Beach because we had never been there before and he ask if we had made any arraignments for our stay and we told him no, his supervisor excused himself from the conversation and when he came back he told us he had made us reservations at this resort near Myrtle Beach.

The next morning we meet the salesman and his supervisor for an all paid breakfast, nice, I'm sure they could afford it at this point.

We arrived at the resort, checked in and I must admit it was very nice, 2 bedroom, nice kitchen, large living room, view over looking the golf course. We stayed the 2 nights and left with no charges at all.

After we got home we told our children what we had done, we bought into the Time Share so we all good enjoy some vacations together, guess what, they weren't interested in any Time Share. My wife and I had hoped this would be something we could leave them after we were deceased, but they wanted no part of it.

After taking a good look at the contract I realized we were in this thing for 20 years and no way out except to sell. Our estate would have been responsible for the maintenance fee for 20 years and any other fees the company decided they wanted to collect.

So I decided to sell. I found a reputable sales agent and for $3500.00 I finally got rid of the nightmare. The story did not end there, after everything was finalized, I had kept all my login information on my computer and one day I decided to check on my account,  and I discovered the ID number that had been assigned to me was now assigned to the original company that we had bought from in the first place. So it was just one big circle.

I suppose if a person has a lot of money, and take 2 to 3 vacations a year a Time Share would be OK, but for the family that doesn't have the finances for the long haul my advice would be stay away from a Time Share.