In 1995, I finally convinced my wife to spend a vacation in South Padre. She said "I want a room where I can see the ocean from window. I was still in survival mode in the insurance business so I scrambled and found a condo that wasn’t on the water but you could see the channel connecting Laguna Madre to the Gulf. Schlitterbohn was directly below. We had to walk across a hot ass parking lot and the Holiday Inn to get to the beach.
She falls in love with So Padre.
A few weeks later, in one of those papers they throw in your yard was an ad for a 1 week timeshare for sale. It was $1300 and had a $427 annual for fees. I bought it and we started going every year.
It’s a Saturday to Saturday week and every Friday I would complain, “it’s just not long enough”. So I bought a 2nd week a few years later for $2500.
Today, the fees have risen to $800 for each week. So for $1600/year I get two weeks in a beach condo.
I hear all the ads on the radio to get out of your timeshare and realize there is an anti-timeshare attitude out there. I’m not one of them. I do have to make my reservation a year out to secure the dates I like and have to pay the $1600 as well, I just booked June - July 2027 today.
My thoughts are if you can drive to a timeshare, they make sense but, only, if you enjoy going there annually.
South Padre is good because we spend our money in Texas, the water is lovely and we shop in Mexico at least once. I also bought a dental crown for my tooth in Mexico as it cost $400 instead on the $1600 my dentist wanted.
I just wondered what other posters felt about their timeshare experience.
I remember when I lived in Hawaii that there were people that had high rise time shares in Honolulu like it was going out of style.
Never quite saw the appeal though. To me, Hawaii is a great vacation spot to experience…ONCE…but not repeatedly, and it gets old if you have to live there for three years, as I did.
My neighbors have one in Kawai. She is a retired United Air employee so they pay nothing to fly and next to nothing to spend a couple of weeks in Hawaii.
Still, when you fly, you’re limited in what you can bring.
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Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
5
Don’t buy a timeshare if you think you’re goiing to make money off it and absolutely don’t buy it thinking its some sort of tax strategy.
Funny, I can rent my condo out for about $2500/week so I would never get rid of it. My son already said he wants it when we get to the point we can’t physically make a go of it. I hope I assume room temp before that happens
Well, since you asked, my unvarnished view is people who sell time-shares are the spawn of Satan. The following is a cautionary tale for anyone considering a coupon offer at a time-share resort.
After your night with luxury accommodations in a king-size bed and a sumptuous breakfast, you’ll be dealing with a series of used-car salesman. After a half-hour of politely listening to the pitch (“After an initial $3000 fee, you get 30-60% discounts . . . “), your mind will begin to wander (“. . . on thousands of hotels!”).
To keep from losing my mind, I begin to take notes, a strategy I learned during years of teacher inservice. For now, Time-Share Man sees I’m writing down stuff and turns his attention to my wife. Poor thing. She never spent time in a faculty meeting so she never internalized the Golden Rule of Teacher Meetings: “Never ask questions. It only prolongs the agony, and your only reward will be another shovelful of s**t.”
After an hour, I want to ask if we can just pay for the breakfast and call it a day. If only it were that simple. You see, we are staying in an EXCLUSIVE ALL-INCLUSIVE HOTEL. Comes with a flush toilet, towels and a bathroom with a shower head that doesn’t spray all over the place and soak the roll of toilet paper.
After TWO hours, I’ve got my short list of objections memorized:
I don’t like to pay any up-front fees.
I don’t like any kind of commitment.
What part of NO are you confused with?
How soon until wheels-up at the airport?
What kind of school do time-share promoters attend that thinks badgering an open-minded → skeptical → hostile audience is an acceptable strategy? So help me, we sat for THREE hours. Well, actually I had stood up for one minute of the three hours during a spiel of one of the FIVE arm-twisters who point-blank told me to sit down. He also reminded me after I refused to play his game anymore that unless I began answering questions that our coupon would be cancelled. A gain, how long until wheels-up to escape this temporal hell?
Evidently, their only option at some point is to ruin the entire vacation for the wouldn’t-be clients. Mission accomplished. At this point, I wish I had never come. Now I understand why AM radio runs so many ads about canceling time-share contracts.
I’ve sat through two different time shares with my wife. First one was a lot like this one, rough.
The second one we had our toddler twins in tow. And those turn tables turned. They didn’t have a kid dumping area (their mistake). We let those two run amok, I mean we had to sit through presentation after all. I’ve never had a pitch man go so fast and look so defeated.
Nope, it does seem that nobody has owned one. Just a person who enjoyed a free hotel room and breakfast with an energetic sales pitch.
I would think it would be a good product for my brother and his wife. The only place she wants to go is Disneyworld. Now that she’s become a grandma, I expect even more trips.
I would say that it could be an good option for them to look into then. I would never say “no one should ever buy into a time share.” For some it’s a really good choice. I’m not one of those people personally, but I’m not going to tell anyone how to spend their vacation dollars.
Personally never understood the appeal of timeshares. My wife and I are way too busy in our life to commit the little time we have for vacations to the upfront costs, contracts, or vacation restrictions of a timeshare.
My college roommate had an aunt that worked at a country club around Conroe. She tipped us off to a deal where you could have two nights and breakfasts plus unlimited golf if you sat through half a day TS presentation. We bugged out midway through the talk so we could go play golf. The timeshare people dispatched this old guy that looked like Ed Asner to run us off the golf course. He was following us in a golf cart yelling. I’m convinced it was the first documented case of road rage in Texas.
Note: I would donate to Alabama’s NIL consortium before I bought a timeshare.
If you can find a financial advisor who thinks these are a good idea, buy lottery tickets, you’ve found a unicorn. They are historically a bad idea. That being said, I know tons of people who love their Disney Vacation Club, so what do I know.
Last time my family went to Mexico, we stayed at an all-inclusive resort that had their salesman bothering people while waiting in line for breakfast. It got so bad my wife flipped out on them after being bothered at least a dozen times. Won’t ever stay there again, so I hope they make enough on the suckers to make it worth not having repeat business.
Years ago my dad purchased a week at Hyatt Wild Oak Ranch San Antonio. He never used it. My brother and I alternated using it. I took the family to the spot he purchased and my brother would trade his time for a ski vacation.
This worked out pretty well while my dad lived and was footing the $1k+ dues. Once he passed my son was aging out of the family fun and my brother was tired of working the system to try and get a good trade off week.
The salesmen make it sound like a breeze to trade your week for anywhere in the world but it’s anything but simple.
Long story short - neither one of us claimed it when my dad passed as we let it revert back to Hyatt. Neither of us was willing to get stuck with the never ending dues. Even after dad spent 40k to buy it.
If you know for sure you want to go back to the same place year after year you can likely save some $$.
If someone was to want one - skip the hard sale and go to resale market where these can be bought for a song
