I appreciate this forum to learn more on RCI and timeshare and your negative experiences with this. I am glad that i did not agree to buy the timeshare that was being offered to me last night (a resort here in the philippines that is affilliated with RCI). The sales agent was urging us to accept the offer on the same day. Probably so that we would not know any negative experiences that other had experieced with it. I almost sign in and paid the downpayment fee that they were asking me. Thanks.

Anthony

We have been members of RCI weeks for almost 20 years. We learned from the gitgo, if you want a certain resort and you are not flexible with planning out 12-24 months (weeks only) you more then likely will not get it. Do I always get what I want? No. Close, Yes. I have traded all over the US and Canada with only a few glitches.

Like most all of you, I have my own issues with RCI. Maybe I’ve been lucky 150+ times.
One thing I have learned to do is put a resort on “Hold” check it out on the internet before I confirm my reservation. For those of you who are sticking with timesharing, I’m looking into other sources as, DAE, Platinum Exchange, Redweek, etc; Good Luck!

We owners pay RCI them to take our units so we can be screwed, and so they can earn substantial revenue from our assets without recompense. They make us pay a fee to belong to an entity that we allow to screw us. How many landlords would allow their tenants to sub-lease leased space at a profit with not even a rent being received back by the landlord. Effectively that is what we are doing.

However, what we really need is an formal advertised “RCI-boycott” internet site where we would soon have enough hits and enough members for this site to be high on the list people see as soon as they type RCI. This site should be sure to have only accurate information as shown by the court case and its totally ridiculous outcome, and that is my intent here.

As I understand it, RCI can and will rent out your banked week within 30 days if they are able to. If I am incorrect in that understanding please advise me of the correct interpretation. If RCI are able to rent out all banked weeks there will be no weeks left for exchange. At least only less or totally unattractive weeks are left.

If all members stopped giving them weeks, resigned their memberships and paid no dues, and stopped renting weeks from them they would be forced into higher advertising cost to rent their weeks and would run out of weeks to rent that they do not own them selves. The executives might even have to start living like the rest of us.

I would actually like to see an international “not for profit” company created with each private time share unit owner becoming a voting shareholder for some nominal amount (less than a membership to RCI, and charging reasonable transfer fees to hire management and staff to operate this entity. A singe transaction fee whether you or a guest is using the unit, or at least only the cost of preparing and sending such a certificate, when necessary.
We could all vote by internet for a volunteer board of directors, to set and enforce owner beneficial policies, to be carried out by our employees. It would take an initial infusion of capital through the initial share offering to legitimate unit owners to start up. The amount per owner small in relation to years of fees for little real benefit. The shares could have restricted sale, by requiring them to be transferred with unit ownership. Further we could restrict maximum votes per owner to a reasonable number, to avoid creation of a controlling block owned by developers or corporations such as RCI. With voting by internet, security password controlled, we could decide not allow proxy voting to further limit a voting block control developing.

The owners of time share exchange companies, management companies, etc. make huge money. See how they live and where they live. Do they live better than you?

That why they are in a business where the asset owners have no power. There are immense profits made at our expense. If we had all individual unit owners participating, we could negotiate from strength with developers, management companies to limit the immense profits being removed from owners and to, not just put a hold on maintenance fees but to, begin to reduce them. Imagine taking all of the profits from all of the parasites that live on we owners and putting those profits towards maintenance fee reductions, reduction of trading fees, banking fee and other fees.

I, as a professionally certified accountant, would love to see some lawyer time share owners, some private business person time share owners, other finance orientated time share owners and any one with appropriate business skills, that would like to start such an entity to get together and take on the parasites.

Lets hear it owners, are we going to just roll over, stick our legs and arms in the air and keep taking it, or can we all put a few bucks where our mouths are and start the boycott and put together a founding committee for our own non profit trading entity.
interested? norcen@hotmail.com

Too much aggrevation and I know we will sell our timeshare. Anybody want a time share in Sedona, AZ??? RCI is running some kind of scam. I can never get any location I want.

In addition, availability of units to you is extremely poor once they have your money. I was told recently, when trying to exchange my week in Maui, that there was nothing available on the beach or on a lake in California. Yet I live near the beach in California and went to a local RCI affiliated resort to find out if they had units available, and they quite enthusiastically said they did and that we could even stay at a reduced rate if we were willing to attend a timeshare sales presentation. What?!?!? Needless to say, I am one of the many involved in a class action lawsuit against RCI and am allowing my membership to lapse.

I do not understate the case when I say they provide the worst customer service of ANY organization I have ever been associated with. EVERY time you call to make an exchange, they will aggressively try to take more of your money in fees by trying to extend your membership. Even after I explain how unhappy I am with them, they STILL try to get me to extend my membership for additional fees. It’s almost comical, really, as if they have no ability to listen to their customers at all.

You may want to believe I am just a disgruntled RCI member trying to slander
RCI, or that RCI may work for you in your individual circumstance. But this is the first time I have ever been unhappy enough with a company to complain about them on the internet. If you are able to plan your vacations a year in advance outside of holiday and school breaks, and you are able to look at a unit in advance to ensure the quality, you may have an “OK” experience with RCI. But there are so many better companies and options out there, why even bother with this bureaucratic, dieing dinosaur?

Even a floating timeshare week (not points) is risky. Who is to say that the resort will make available to you a week that is even half-desireable? What is to stop them from offering the floaters only the bad weeks, hoping you’ll “bank your week till next year, and lose it”, so they can rent the best weeks out for cash?

Even the safest timeshare (fixed week) seems risky. Who is auditing the books to see where the maintenance fees go. And when other owners become deadbeats and don’t pay, who foots the bill?

I am not a timeshare expert, so I may have raised some irrational fears here. I hope others can clarify with their experiences.

Point 2: Timeshare can still be a good deal, if, and only if, you want to return to the resort where you own, and where you are of course guaranteed to be able to use your weeks or points every year – and you don’t need to be in RCI to do that. It then works out much cheaper than renting at the same resort, once you’ve been more than 3 or 4 times, and you are protected against inflation, apart from the maintenance fees (and check the contract carefully to see what options the resort has to increment these).

Point 3. You have almost no chance of exchanging into anything comparable to what you own. This is for two reasons: people who own good weeks at good resorts simply use them, rather than banking them for exchange; and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that RCI manipulates the exchange process, which of course they control completely, so that good weeks never become visible to ordinary exchange-seekers. Let’s hope that the current court case exposes the shady practices by RCI that many of us suspect, such as selling banked weeks for cash, rather than putting them in the exchange pool.

Point 4: The whole Points Partners system is a scam. The exchange value of points is pitiful. You will waste thousands of points getting $100 off a car rental. Like airmiles, you can use them except when you really want to.

So in summary, stay away from timeshare altogether unless you know you want to keep coming back to the resort where you are buying; and stay away from RCI unless you have total flexibility on time, don’t really care where you may end up, and are prepared to jump on the phone or website the very day that any inventory does become available.

After waiting the 2 weeks and hearing nothing, we called Premier (several times until we were finally able to get someone on the phone) only to be told the buyer had backed out last minute. We were also told that our “title search” funds were non-refundable and they abruptly brushed us off. We realized at this point we had been taken. We have since been given the run around by Premier Representatives, and no sale or follow up whatsoever.

So we began to do some research on this firm and found many others on line who have had same or similar experiences with this same firm. It turns out this company was just incorporated 2 weeks before the call we received from them. We have also searched all the addresses on the corporations of C&G Marketing Associates and the many other corporations under similar names with the same officers, and they are either private residences or mail boxes. After looking further we believe this firm was not even a licensed marketing firm in the state of Florida.

It appears (at least to us) that this is nothing more than a scam which takes advantage of people like us who wish they had never even bought a timeshare to begin with. To add insult to injury we are now scammed for another $1,250.00 which we truly cannot afford in this economy. It is heartbreaking!

“What is important to understand is that criminals come from every walk of life,” said Stanton E. Samenow, the author of Inside the Criminal Mind. “They may be highly educated, they may have family and friends and to all outward appearance not only seem normal, but superlative. They commit a crime not because they need the money or they hate humanity or they had a terrible childhood or a smothering mother, or because they are Jewish or Catholic or Christian. What connects them is basic: Their self-esteem rises or falls at the expense of another. Bernard Madoff shares personality traits with embezzlers and serial killers.”

We feel the bottom line is not only do the TS salespersons make a lot of money doing what they do but part of them actually gets off on screwing people. Our sales rep actually took us out to dinner at an excellent restaurant in PV with his family. He has his family involved! We’d passed emails for many months, talked on the phone and exchanged Christmas cards. This is the length they’re willing to go and the best thing to do is to not even go to the presentation. The presentation is not mandatory! The problem is how do we get the message to the unwitting traveler going to PV? We’re all here because we realize we’ve been scammed but most likely they have no idea what they’re about to get themselves into. Maybe somebody on this blog has some ideas.

I to have been in contact with Gonzalez and Gonzlez and would like to know more from anybody who has worked with them.