hahha, good one Judy

Don't know anything about timeshares at Wyndham, own a unit on Kauai with Marriott, wish I had known about the resale market when we bought in 1997. It is all paid off now and since my husband passed away I am trying to sell with no luck unless I want to walk away with $2500 (paid $16k). You have gotten good advice from other posters here.

NEVER buy a 'time' share. It's like buying options that may or may not apply when and where you want to use them. If someone called you at home and offered to sell you this stuff, wouldn't you hang up?

*IF* you want to own vacation real estate, buy a vacation rental condo! You will be in charge of who maintains it and who rents it. You'll use it as you please. You will get tax deductions. (You can even deduct your airfare to visit it "to conduct maintenance".) Given time, it will be worth more than you paid for it.

If you want to vacation somewhere, rent a place or buy it.

clar4284, would you mind sharing where your time share is and the particulars? My parents purchased on just outside of Disney. I cannot pay someone to use our week there and I end up going places that I do not want to go and paying additional trading fees just to use the week instead of losing our annual maintenance fee which has gone up about 30% since purchase.

I will admit that when my parents retired they got a lot of use out of it because they had no restrictions on time or place. As long as there was a golf course withing 20 miles, and most do, they would go. Now that I am using it, it seems that most resorts are at the beach or inland but no where near anything of interest. The last one we stayed at was on a golf course but to get dinner at somewhere other than the clubhouse it was a 30 min drive one way.

Save yourself the frustration and limitation and put the money in the bank for future vacations. As for the sales pressure. You are in control of you. Just walk out the door and go have a nice dinner. You are not under any obligation to buy.

LOL. Reminds me of our salesman on Kauai - back in '86 - Mike Hawkins. He said - I will give you a list of 10 property managers and you can easily rent your week out for a couple thousand dollars if you don't use it every year.

Hey - we were on a honeymoon and i had a very good year, so I didn't hold up closing for that - but never saw old Mike again.

He was a dang good salesman - and I told somebody else at the Cliffs Club - that I would hire him as a salesman - but would make sure I have a very good malpractice type insurance. :)

Without getting into the good and bad of timeshares (we have two weeks in Palm Desert which has worked out very well for us, but only because it's a lockout so we actually get 4 weeks of use/exchange). I wanted to comment on ChiSue's post which includes statements about tax deductions and writing off your airfare, etc. let me just say do your research. That is such a broad statement, it's laughable. If you use your vacation condo door more than a certain number of days you don't get to take depreciation and your deductions are limited to the amount of income you make from the property. If you use it and don't rent it out, you can NEVER take deductions for flying there to do maintenance, etc. DO YOUR RESEARCH.

clar4284 on Aug 3, 12 at 8:15am
<<I am glad that I stumbled upon this website and discussion. I completely DISAGREE to the assessment given on Wyndham timeshares. I have 2 of them and I love them...>>

Interesting that clar (joined August 2012) just found out about Fodor's and went straight for the Lounge and straight for this topic.

good one clar!!
can you spell t-r-o-l-l

I thought I had replied to this post - but it may have been another similar one.

We own a timeshare that we bought in the mid 1980's. Do not buy a timeshare if you can't afford to throw money away. If you can that is fine because that is what you are doing.

You can stay at a top notch hotel for a week and it will still be cheaper.

You can exchange thru RCI which is what we do, but even so, you'll find that certain cities have few to no timeshares to exchange. In addition, we've been trying to use our timeshare in the pacific northwest for many, many years and have never gotten an exchange.

"You can stay at a top notch hotek for a wek and it will still be cheaper"

Let's just say a top-notch hotel would cost, what $500 a night, that's $3500 for a week I just don't understand the math.

The fuzzy math one listens to in a timeshare presentation is what is hard to understand.

They first try to show you how much you are spending on hotels etc each year.

Hey - I love the Internet for checking out good hotel deals, and you do not have to spend $500 a night to stay at a top hotel/resort period. You can stay in nice accommodations for far less, unless of course, you just have to have a specific hotel during busy season, etc.

Additionally - if you check ahead - you can many times find a nice condo on a weekly deal for far less than you would expect, especially if you can travel during the offseason.

Also to review prior discussions/comments - aside from your out of pocket cost for the timeshare purchase, most people overlook their annual HOA dues for timeshares, and ours in Princeville, Kauai - which we paid cash for back in '86 - is now about $1,000 a year. Times change - and we don't get over to Paradise as much as we used to - so we are selling it - and we might net enough to pay this year's HOA dues. :)

Secondly, the fuzzy math ones try to show how much over the next 20? years you will save with your timeshare - but Q pleez: What is the initial value of my "investment" (today - a "standard" 2BR 2 BA timeshare will probably be in the $20,000 plus range? - but holy shxx: Some were trying to double that on the first go-around before "knuckles" is called in to show you all the newly found flexibility you have - and if you buy a lockoff room - ever other year - you only have to spend this teeny little amount......................).

So, if you take that $20k+ and invest it now - very conservatively - say 3% on average for the next 20 years - you will have a good chunk of change in 20 years to use for travel, etc - whereas if you buy the timeshare - you have pretty much zippo at the end of that time, or have you not checked the "resale" - read "Repossession" sheets on timeshares lately.

Finally - there is the expense for most timeshare owners of belonging to a timeshare exchange company - and the added expense of actually exchanging your week.

The only real benefit I will say I/we had over the years was using "bonus" time to stay at some resorts in Park City - and also in Palm Springs years ago - - which was from a timeshare my in-laws bought at the Heidelberg Inn in June Lake (a week we now own f & c - and may keep) - which was part of the old Glen Ivy system - but now - even bonus time is harder to find, and costs more.

Ergo - my best advice is don't buy a timeshare or into a points system (Wyndham, etc), unless you are absolutely convinced you will love and visit your home resort every year for the next couple of decades, and believe me - that is very hard to predict.

Don't do it.

I can vacation WAY cheaper and better on my own than any timeshare I have ever seen. The couple people I know who got persuaded and bought on a vacation have been forever sorry. It's a moneypit for them with very little reward.

This may be the one and only time I agree with Tom. These are only to benefit the developer. Save your money so you won't have buyers remorse.

Thanks to one and all. I am going to just kick back and enjo.ay the rest of my vacation. And not think about it ---except to enjoy the dinner we paid for by listening to the schpiel. Mahalo and aloha
?

They fed you dinner? I'm surprised they didn't starve you!

My parents had RCI, now just mom. And for some reason, while using it in Vegas with my sister, mom signed up with Wyndham! WTF?! The last time she tried, she had second thoughts and put me on the phone with the woman, since I was in law school at the time. I did the whole spiel: recent widow, elderly, taking advantage, who would a jury side with, etc. Mom got out of that one. Why did she do this again? Because she can be so...unthinking. Yeah, I'll go with unthinking.

LOL SF7: In addition to the "pressure" - you can get some great perks by going to timeshare presentations (dinner chits, show tix, etc) - and I love just to hear the new sales pitches, and then politely tell them no, tell them no again, and by the 3rd NO - start standing up and looking a wee bit irritated.

Plus - despite what they say - you can always come back and buy the same deal - even if they give you the old dog and pony show about Today, only Today, repeat ad nauseam - only TODAY - can we offer these incredible deal points................................. - because God above said so..........................

And believe me - as propita says - many people do succumb to the pressure. Not for nuttin do the timeshare marketing programs bring in the numbers - by offering great perks - as they know it's all a numbers game: Get enough warm bodies in here and we will close some of them.

Hey - I plan to go to a timeshare presentation in Cabo San Lucas in the late fall - where according to my fishing buddy (an ole grade school friend) - the various timeshare resorts have reps all over the airport trying to stop you - and they offer a free fishing day - so - HOOKUP!!!!!!!!!!! :)

As for DebitNM: Come on now girl - you have at least grudgingly agreed with me before - even if I am not yet properly informed about the merits of your Albuquerque, but prefer Sante Fe, or points north such as Taos. Double :)

You can have some nice vacations with a timeshare, but in the long run they won't be cheap. Our annual maintenance fees are $650. To trade, I have to pay $100+ to RCI. If you have some limits on when you can take vacations, you will find it very hard to book sites. If you really want a timeshare, do NOT buy it from the company. You can find timeshares on the resale market for as low as 10% of what they are asking, depending on the site.

Remember also that timeshares are built in vacation spots, not in interesting urban areas, even in Europe. There is one in Manhattan that is great (if you can get it) but just about everything else is rural and is based on golf or skiing. (Oh, yeah. . . Las Vegas and Orlando.)

My beautician told me the trick for getting out of a timeshare presentation. Don't ask any questions and don't rebut their points. Just let them talk. They are like a evangelical trying to save an athetist.They have a counter point to everything. If you don't try to argue they run out of the lines in their script.

My vacation time is way to precious to waste on something like that - no amount of freebies would be worth the irritation.