Angela

I highly recommend timeshare Users group - www.tug2.com - best way to get a sense of the real value of a resort.

Louise

DON'T BUY AT THE SALES PRESENTATION!

Louise

RCI members can use rci.com to check out availabilities with out talking to operators. It gives you time to look at whats available at the time you would like. I was able to get the resort that I wanted in Arizona just by checking back frequently. It was confirmed by E-mail and a wriiten confirmation followed. We are new to RCI but so far I have no complaints. I have been going to different websites checking out resales and you can definetly get a much better deal. We were lucky to have gotten a reposessed unit at a South Florida resort at our first sales presentation and did not overpay for it. We love to take the mini vacations in the Endless Vacations magazine that RCI sends out. They can have some pretty good vacation offers especially if you are within driving distance and willing to sit in on their so called 90 minute presentations. Now that we have done our homework over the past few months there is nothing they can offer us that we would be interested in and they hate it that we know as much or more than they do. Jackie you are smart doing this research. If you like to vacation I think you wiil enjoy RCI, just make a wise purchase from the beginning. Be careful about the maintenance fees too, some of them can be pretty high.

JoAnn

The correct address for the Timeshare Users Group web site is WWW.TUG2.NET not com. I strongly suggest all of you timeshare owners who haven't already checked TUG out, please do so. You will learn so much.
Also, Brenda mentioned going to the RCI website (or II)and seeing what's available--you can only do that IF you have a regular week banked with them. Bonus weeks do not show up on that site--you do have to call.
Happy Timesharing!

TSTom

Don't fall for the Gold Crown scam. There are 2 things only that make a timeshare resort valuable for trading. That is supply and demand. This translates into location and time of the year. Quality of the resort ( i.e. Gold Crown, 5* ) only come into play as a distant third after location and time. Orlando has some of the nicest resorts around but is a very poor place to buy a timeshare if you want to exchange it. The reason is that there is an over abundance of timeshare resorts.

Hawaii and Coastal California are 2 areas where the demand exceeds the supply so the resorts have good trading power. There are other select areas that are pretty good as well. Just do NOT be suckered into believing that owning a Gold Crown t/s unit will guarantee you good trades. It doesn't work that way.

Insider

Yes, TSTom is correct. Each exchange company uses an internal system for judging quality of the timeshare resorts that it is affiliated with. The Gold Crown(RCI) and Five Star(II) titles do not reflect on the value of the trade. Time share works if YOU work IT. It is really good to see so many intelligent timeshare owners here at Fodor's. Jackie, you have received some really great advice. I would however have disagree about the previous post that Orlando timeshare has no value since there is an over abundance. The higher quality names in the industry provide very good trades. My advice to you is buy a holiday week and buy it used (frome a resale agency). Also, consider buying a LOCK-OFF unit. This is a condo unit that allows you to split the unit into 2 smaller units. You can deposit both sides, or stay in one side and deposit the other side. Note: Your exchange company has final say as to wether or not they'll take the smaller side. I hope this helps.

Amy

Louise,
I just read your previous post & was wondering exactly where on the RCI.COM website you can go in & check out what is available? Can you please let me know where on the site you can get that information??
Thanks so much,
Amy

JoAnn

Amy, its www.rci.com and you need to go into the members only section. You MUST be a member of RCI to get in with your RCI member number, and you MUST have a regular week banked to see what is available with what you have banked with RCI. Bonus weeks do NOT show up (I know, we have 2 bonus weeks & I will have to call RCI to use those weeks.) Hope this helps you some more. JoAnn

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susan

Some additional things to consider:
What kind of vacations do you like? We like to travel around and cover a wide area when we are going to a foreign country. When you are in a timeshare, you are stuck in one place. Therefore timeshare trading doesn't work for us when travelling abroad. Timeshare trading is good for beach trips since we stay in one place and soak up the sun. We have had ALOT of trouble trying to trade our ski timeshare. We give up every year and have had to let weeks expire. Plus alot of the resorts are hundreds of miles from an airport. Personaly, I would not recommend a timeshare to anyone who would not be happy going to their home resort every year for the rest of their life. And oh yeah, we don't ski anymore so even your tastes may change.

TSTom

I disagree with Susan's posting about exchnaging timeshares. I own at 2 different timeshare resorts and trade them all the time. We can exchange into anywhere we want in the world with very little fuss. It is simply a matter of buying timeshares with very high trading power and learning the system. I do NOT use RCI at all for my exchanges. There are many other options available. You do not have to necessarily buy Gold Crown nor 5* in order to get very high trading power. You just need to buy at a decent resort in a high demand area at peak time. You can pick up a great trading week for less than $5,000 in the US.

Candace

We have a timeshare and it has been great. We purchased a resale and made sure it had a good exchange rate by calling Rci before we agreed to purchase it. It's not gold crown but since in a desirable location during fourth of July we have always been able to trade for Gold Crown. Our maintenance fee's are low too. IN Wednesdays, Usa Today many timeshare resales are listed. Don't ever buy directly from a resort you end up paying double even after they keep dropping the price. Also, make sure you the maintenance fee's include property taxes and try to keep the maintenance fee around $300 though they change every year.

al

I agree with john above but stronger timeshares are for people who don't do the math. simple example 5000 cost up front or + interest at ??? if financed + maintainence fees usually 350+ a year so without finance charges or profit to be made on the initial investment if invested & no maintainence increases we have a total minimum of 8500.00 over 10 years or 850.00 per at that rate you could rent a condo almost anywhere for 850.00 a week without having to worry about if you can exchange it for what you really want!!!!!

Candace

Dear Al, with your fiqures your timeshare would have paid for itself in 10 years leaving the next 50+ years with just the cost of maintenance fees.
If you get to old to travel (heaven forbid) then you can give it to your grown child, sell it or rent it. I'm sure a lot of the places we stayed at would be over $850 a week. Don't forget it's a resort with activities not just a condo. But I agree never finance one. Also make sure to purchase a resale that has a high demand during the particular week owned own.

al

candice you need to figure in 5000 invested properly would amount to appx 30,000+ in 10 years & at a real conservative investment would be appx 15,000, now it goes a lot deeper than that but there is not enough room here to break it all down but take the 8500 mentioned in other post off either one of these investment figures & for your initial 5000 you have stayed where ever you wanted & with none of the timeshare headaches & a profit to boot. I would love to take 5000 from 52 people for a piece of property that would sell outright for less than 40% of what I collect & get them to maintain it too. Hope you enjoy it, but as far as I am concerned it has to make financial sense before I could even consider it.

Candace

Timesharing isn't for everyone and yes if the money is invested and never touched it would grow. As would any money not spent (ex. rent instead of mortgage some people think it's better to rent because it's cheaper but then the rent payment never goes away) but that's assuming you decide never to spend the money on vacationing.People should only be using disposable vacation money for a timeshare.

al

candice;I guess you didn't see the cost for rentals was taken out & still had $$$$ left. as far as your statement about renting or buying a house is concerned the offset is the write off only because you have to have someplace to live. this is the last I will say on the subject, I don't have time to do extensive financial consulting here. sorry if you haven't understood the simplified version here bye bye

Candace

Your right Al, I didn't get you have a way to take $850 out of interest income of $5000 savings each year and it would still grow to $30000 in 10 yesrs. Wow what an interest rate that must be!

sipry

We bought an RCI Timeshare 3 years ago in Cabo San Lucas. We really felt as thought we had been taken to the cleaners afterwards - heavy sell and we fell for it. We have been vactioning on Grand Cayman Island for quite some time now and found that the place we always stay at was among the many choices for exchanges. So, we bought in Cabo thinking that we could exchange for Cayman. Well, we have now found that the places on Cayman rarely come up for exchange and then, if they do, they have a rule that you can only exchange once in 4 years for their facility. Can anyone give me some info on how I would go about selling our timeshare in Cabo and buying in Cayman instead? The hotel in Cabo is beautiful but Mexico just isn't our first choice for vacations. If anyone has any information with regard to exchanging in Hilton Head South Carolina, that would be great. I'm looking for info on weather and info on the RCI sites in Hilton Head. Jackie, if I were to give you any advice, it would be to plan at least 2 years in advance. We have found that anything less than 2 years usually results in the property not being available. Right now we're trying to plan a trip to Hilton Head in 2002 and are not having much luck. Good luck!

Candace

That's too bad you have had such a bad experience. I would say a lot people who buy directly from a timeshare resort have a similar experience. Those sales people usually really know their job. If you put in timeshare resales in Yahoo search engine you should come up with a lot of places to list. I know Century 21 in Florida has one I think everything can be done by mail. We purchased ours from a resale company and everything was done by mail.