That’s a creative way of finding marks. Timeshares are a notoriously bad investment[1]; people with a timeshare might be easier to rope into another bad investment (a scam).
[1]: https://moneywise.com/investing/real-estate/why-buying-a-tim...
That article is useful context for this—it points out that there are way more people trying to sell timeshares than buy them, which means that people who want to get out from under one can't do so easily. That creates an environment ripe for scammers who can promise to finally take this bad investment off your hands.
I do not know about other US states, but in mine, it is not uncommon to hear radio advertisements for lawyers who specialize in getting people out of timeshares. We have a large population of 50+ individuals who like to spend a good chunk of the year in Florida and they are absolute suckers for timeshares and other methods that promise them cheap or discounted ways to do so.
It's so bad, I bet some of you can guess which state I live in.
I don’t know why anyone would want a timeshare. I don’t know exactly how they work. All I know is that I hear way more ads pushing ways to get out of a timeshare than I hear ads for timeshares. So all I know is that people want to get out of them, but can’t!
They don't have to advertise. Some outfit may gift you a week of timeshare, or a hotel concierge might be in cahoots with timeshare salespeople, and offer you boat rides or whatever in exchange for a sit with the TS salespeople. They push as if their lives were on the line for each sale. It's intense. You can find touts for the salespeople offering goodies at certain airports, lining the only exit aisle.
Only TS I recall unloading was the one in Waikiki that was sold to another corporation. Weeks went poof, but so did the fees.
SF bay radio has lots of "get rid of your timeshare" ads.
The basic idea is reasonable enough: split ownership of a vacation home among multiple owners so that they can all efficiently use it for vacations, with each co-owner having a regular time slot assigned. But in practice the contracts around them are often predatory, with excessive financing costs and annual maintenance fees. And since it's a share that you own, you (nominally) can't get out of the fees without transferring your share to someone else. However, since the downsides have become well-known, people have sometimes found that they can't even give away their shares, let alone recoup much of their initial purchase cost.
The thing is you can keep your money and spend it on going anywhere you want on vacation later on. It makes no sense.
Group ownership is pretty much a massive hassle. Different people have wildly different visions for things like maintenance and how a house should be outfitted.
I've always taken the philosophy of putting the money in my piggy bank with no cost and obligation. Given certain circumstances, could investing in real estate been a good deal? Almost certainly. But not without risk or future obligation.
Yeah. With a lot of assumptions, they can maybe work outside of financial shenanigans. But people often want to travel at the same time. They want to vary locations. If you always want to go to the same location multiple times per year and are pretty flexible about dates? Maybe?
Buy a house, put it on airBnB through a management company, go to other AirBnB’s using rental income from first AirBnB. Or you could not try and run a business and simply invest nominally while paying market rate for a rental.
Sharing informally between friends and family when people have vacation properties in desirable locations works better but the barriers to entry are really high.
My parents had a vacation home in Mexico for a while that they rented out (pre-AirBnB). But, being Mexico, they had on-site staff, my mother was retired, and the whole thing still seemed way more hassle than I would have had any interest in. (Building it was also pretty much a nightmare.)
I do use my brother's second home up in Maine and that works pretty well.
> It's so bad, I bet some of you can guess which state I live in.
FL: NY's graveyard.
Growing up in Ontario, a couple of my friends families had timeshares in Florida or Carolina. Are they pretty universally understood to be a bad investment?
After doing basic napkin math I've always thought it was pretty obvious. Buy-in + annual maintenance fees that are pretty close to what a condo rental outside of a contract would be. Then you add in the other factors such that you're locked into certain locations and whatever timeframe is not booked, don't actually own anything other than a lease, and the only way to get out of it is to sell it yourself... no thank you.
They aren't an investment, period. You generally can't sell them. The complex can assess whatever maintainance fee they wish with little to no requirements for justification.
Well, I'm in Florida, and we have the same ads here. Not sure which state you're in. Michigan?
Indeed! Perhaps the ads for lawyers getting people out of timeshares is part of the Great Timeshare Conspiracy between our two states.
Indiana is like this but I'd guess a lot of the Midwest is similar.
But why don’t they go down in price until there is an equilibrium?
Here is an example as to why: $0 to buy, maint fee $1076
https://www.redweek.com/posting/R1228603
The relationship is perverse. You cannot simply leave, so there is zero reason for the timeshare company not to bleed you dry in fees. You can sell your share for $0 or even pay someone to take it, but the management company still gets their due. They are not like a landlord who would ever have to contend with an empty unit if they get too uppity.
> > But why don’t they go down in price until there is an equilibrium?
> Here is an example as to why: $0 to buy, maint fee $1076
Prices can also be less than 0 USD.
Such negative prices do occur in an economy, for example to get free from obligations that accompany the object, which is the case here.
If prices are negative, there will only be a market if sellers can afford (and are willing) to pay buyers the market price.
Is there a business model where people could pay to sell their timeshares to a shell company and then having the company go insolvent?
The contracts usually state that they can go after the original owner if the new one can't pay. So even paying a terminally ill patient to take it over won't work.
Is that considered a legal contract?
Well, it is either a legal contract or an illegal contract that you will have to fight about in court. Rich people who can afford attorneys generally do not buy timeshares. No lawyer would ever suggest that any client buy a timeshare. So, in other words, anyone with access to a family lawyer would never buy a timeshare.
That’s why many countries have government “watchdogs” you can report illegal contracts to, who will investigate it and potentially sue the company if they believe its a scam or somehow against consumer rights.
If it's illegal, you can simply not pay, and THEY have to fight it in court.
You can also do this if it's legal, but the court might not be favourable to you.
>> you can simply not pay, and THEY have to fight it in court.
Yes. They will sue you in court. Then, when you don't answer and/or attempt to represent yourself, you will end up paying the default judgement. A judge isn't going to nullify a contract on their own. You have to explain to them why the contract is illegal, which is not as easy as everyone seems to think. That is what lawyers are paid to do.
I believe most timeshare owners are contractually bound only to sell to individuals, not to LLCs or some other legal entity for this exact purpose.
Couldn't you just find a real person who is on the verge of bankruptcy and offer them $10 to take the timeshare?
Sounds like fraudulent conveyance.
Oh because a contract that is like a cronic disease is the highest point of lawfulness
It's not a question of what's lawful or not, it's a question of how much of a pain the litigation is going to be.
Reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance it doesnt seem like it fits to me, but ianal.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure that would be considered fraud.
The "Texas two-step" has been used by plenty of companies and is structured around exactly those sort of shenanigans. https://www.investopedia.com/texas-two-step-bankruptcy-defin...
The "Texas two step" is also notably controversial and has been overturned by courts several times, including the most recent attempt: https://www.reuters.com/legal/jjs-ltl-units-bankruptcy-dismi...
If you need to take your case to an appeals court to be protected, it's not a protection for an everyday person.
Though from the wikipedia article [0], it looks like it has only been used successfully three times (2017, 2019, and 2020). There's a fourth in-progress by Johnson&Johnson, where the summaries state that the bankruptcy has been twice dismissed by courts as being invalid.
Heh, TIL.
Permanent timeshares should absolutely be illegal. It's ridiculous to allow a permanent obligation to maintain a property that the "owner" isn't allowed to destroy.
How do you destroy an apartment? It's the same legally as any condo. When you bought it, you promised all the other owners to help maintain the building in exchange for them all doing the same. You need everyone's consent to undo that. You can't get out of a contract because it's a bad deal. Timeshares are just such a bad idea because you dilute the ownership to worthless levels and the management companies add on exorbitant fees of their own.
> You can't get out of a contract because it's a bad deal.
I think there is a difference between something that you dont know is a bad deal because it depends on future events (real estate market shifts or whatever) vs something that is a bad deal because you were mislead or didn't understand the contract.
If you take a risk and it doesn't work out - that is life. However that is a little different from the timeshare case, which seems less about risk and more about tricking people.
There's much worse tricks, like convincing you to fight a war as a soldier where you can't leave under threat of arrest or death, depending on the country, for example.
Ok... your point? That is also awful and bad.
This reads as yet another symptom of the US mentality which sees government regulation and taxes as evil, but property rights and contracts as sacrosanct.
It shouldn't be possible to sign a contract that binds you to arbitrary amounts of future fees. When buying a property, you shouldn't be locked into doing whatever maintenance the co-property fancies unless you at least own a voting stake in that co-property. (And even then, only within reasonable limits.)
This is the same mentality that somehow sees student loans with >10% interest rate as anything but a symptom of a disfunctional economy.
At the very least, for cases like these, the government should tell scammers creating those constracts "You're free to put that ink on paper, but we're not going to use our monopoly on legitimate violence to enforce it".
The UK is way ahead on this one. Enter into a contract to own part of a property as an "affordable" option. Get screwed by service charges that have no limit.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/sep/22/affordable-sha...
> It shouldn't be possible to sign a contract that binds you to arbitrary amounts of future fees.
In the US? Cable TV? Cell phone service? Restaurant bill?
I've never had to sign a contract to eat in a restaurant. Are you referring to a specific restaurant?
Contracts don't necessarily need a signature to be valid. If you order food at a restaurant, there is an implied contract that you will pay for the meal.
However, this amount is almost always stated in the menu, so it isn't arbitrary. In fact, in each of the above cases, the amount you pay is almost never arbitrary, but based on usage or a preset price.
I think they just mean that in many restaurants you pay only after receiving your food, but it's really not a very good comparison for a number of reasons.
Especially since all of the above listed things, but especially restaurants, have stated prices and often a means of negotiating them down or being entirely un-obligated if the providing party fails too severely.
And since, though not fully related, a restaurant can choose not to accept credit cards for instance, but there's often an obligation to state that clearly and visibly somewhere obvious beforehand, and always (in the US) an obligation to accept cash for debts owed in this manner.
Service charge? Mandatory tip?
Tip is never mandatory, a service charge has to be clear up front to be valid.
I am allowed to cancel my cable service and cell phone plan. You can't cancel a timeshare.
But you still have no idea how much you'll actually pay when you sign up. Even if you can cancel it later.
I don't know how these contracts work in the US, but in the UK if you buy a leasehold apartment where you own the individual unit without having ownership of the building itself, there will be clause in the agreement that states if you fail to pay the maintenance fees or to keep the unit in good repair ownership can be reclaimed by the owner of the building.
There are no end of issues with leasehold properties, but there is at least a way out if you decide you can't deal with the maintenance fees attached. You'll probably end up with a terrible credit record for defaulting on your mortgage, but at least you can get out.
Yeah, it's the same. The timeshare association can reclaim the timeshare, but again, if it's worth approximately -$2,000, why would the timeshare association reclaim that unless it absolutely has to?
Condos are also generally a scam. Owning real estate but not the land under it is to become a victim of incredibly perverse economic motives.
Presumably the difference with a condo is that the condo owner has a fair vote in the buildings management (usually an HOA in the US) and enough votes can be used to destroy the building if it achieves high enough liability-to-value ratio. That does not exist for a timeshare, the timeshare owners can never band together to change the governance of the building
That's a great observation. I've always wondered while biking past old apartment complexes in Mountain View being torn down: who foots the bill for the value destroyed, and who makes those decisions. If you owned one of those units, could you just get outvoted a lose a million-dollar condo like that?
> If you owned one of those units, could you just get outvoted a lose a million-dollar condo like that?
You'd have a share of the claim on the value of the land.
Presumably everyone voted to tear it down because the building costs more to maintain as-is, than to tear down and rebuild.
My guess is the condo votes to sell the land to someone else, distribute the money to the condo owners and then dissolve. Generally the condo isn't worth a million dollars anymore though as the building is old. Or maybe it is worth a million but you were paid 1.1 million to get out as whatever replaces it is that much more valuable (if it really was worth a million I'd guess not, but the million dollar condos of 1950 are not worth nearly that much today but the land itself is worth a new million dollar condo.
It is also possible the condo voted to tear down the building and build new - if you owned the condo before you will have one again in 2 years, but you are required to live elsewhere in the mean time. (Million dollar condos in Iowa implies you can afford a second house/apartment, while in San Francisco it would not)
Where do you live that this is the condo ownership model?
Generally, condo owners have an undivided interest in the land on which the property is built.
now I wonder if identity thieves go around signing people up for timeshares.
Because a time share is not an asset, it's a liability. It is sold as "ownership" but in fact it is an obligation to pay for a vacation rental in perpetuity, except that "rent" is called "maintenance fees". It is a scam pure and simple, and no one in their right mind would ever buy one at any price.
Ebay is full of $1 timeshares. There’s even a website with 17,000 timeshares for a dollar called sellmytimesharenow.com
Much like most trades above a negligible threshold, there are too many rules in place for it to be a free market (which would allow an equilibrium to occur).
Perhaps AirBnB should focus on timeshares instead?
Because the equilibrium is $0.
The timeshare maintenance fees are the entire cost of ownership.
With the exception of a few top end timeshares, the residual value is not more than 0.
Because you can't give away a timeshare, it's a liability.
There's a sucker retiring every minute.
About a decade ago I took a holiday with my now wife and some friends at her step-mother's timeshare for a huge discounted rate.
The whole time we were hounded by salesmen who thought it was her step mother and not some 18 year olds sipping beers at the pool, they constantly tried to sell us more timeshares we could never afford, we could barely make our way there!
I was binge-watching South Park some eighteen years ago without knowing much about the US lifestyle. Jokes were hilarious, situations ridiculous and obviously made up.
I'm amazed that up until today I still learn things that make me think "ohh that one is real actually". It started in 2013 when while on a business trip I saw an actual Shake Weight on sale in a supermarket. Now goes the timeshare episode: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHzL0Q6sXg
Those situations are not made up. Come to Colorado, the real Southpark: Fairplay, CO is a great mining/ranching town turned to tourism. Then in Lakewood, CO we have Casa Bonita a type of creative possibly formerly somewhat-racist dinner club with actors who diving into a pool. It was purchased by the Southpark creators, and remodeled recently. There is a wait list to get in. The old place had notorious bad food. Its real man. Come I will show these situations were not made up by the creators solely embellished.
Hahaha! This is absolutely too accurate, I also ended up burning out my clutch there, maybe the mechanic was in on it too!
Wait until you find out about Margaritaville!
I wonder what is the general principle that would allow to understand that timeshares are a bad investment without a prior knowledge. I don't think it's the matter of "just reading the contract and understanding" for multiple reasons:
1) Anything that involves predictions of future expenses and profits is not certain and depends heavily on your understanding of the domain, it's not a direct consequence of the contract itself. And salesmen will surely fill any gaps you have with the most optimistic assumptions.
2) The hardest problems aren't mentioned in the contract at all. E.g. a somewhat reasonable assumption is that if you don't like your timeshare you can sell quickly by lowering the price. So your losses are capped by the purchase price plus service charges in between -- that IS normally the case with purchased assets. However here you can't even sell it for $1 after buying it for $10000 and it's not immediately obvious. Another problem mentioned here in comments is that despite the fees being $200 per month in the contract real bills turned out to be closer to $2000, that's also hard to foresee.
I have some thoughts regarding the principles in such cases but really curious to know other ideas here.
While not completely reliable, a lot of high pressure sales tactics are one pretty good flag. At least around where I live the residential solar scammers are back to knocking on doors again--in addition to being camped out at the big box hardware stores.
Commitments, in general, are also just something to be wary of. Whenever I've considered buying a small urban property to complement my rural house, I lie down and contemplate this thing called hotels as an alternative--which are a heck of a lot more flexible in many ways.
Thanks! What's the deal with residential solar scams? Is it a pure hit-and-run or something more sophisticated? Like you don't own the panels, but they are on your property, you can't get rid of them and get out of the lease?
I haven't looked into it deeply. But there are a lot of complicated financing arrangements, somewhat nebulous maintenance requirements, and unknown future technology transitions. I see the huge industrial solar farms where I live and it's hard for me to believe that a handful of panels (that don't actually provide me with battery backup which would cost even more and probably wouldn't make sense in New England) pencils out financially. For context, my electrical bill is <$200 month so there's no way the realistic payback is anywhere near 10 years.
Maybe new construction makes more sense but I've been told probably not even in that case in this area of the country.
Here's the deal: if anyone cold-calls you and asks you if you want to sell your house, your car, your timeshare, or make an investment, or anything else, or proposes some kind of deal that involves you paying for anything or sending any money up-front to cover "administrative fees," there is a very good chance it's a scam. Especially if they are not a local broker or person. Verify, verify, verify. And if it seems to good to be true, it is. Ask a friend, or a local legal aid organization for a reality check.
I told myself early on "make no decisions on the phone". If it's a one time deal, whatever, I wouldn't know about it anyway if I missed the call. And for all other things, thinking it over for a day saves me from any scam.
Just never do any decisions while on the phone, it's a simple and effective rule.
There is exactly zero inbound communication that I will action via the incomming communication method.
Email, text, phone call, etc, I will follow up with people I know on a separate channel.
That's just for requests, of course I'd chat with people I know. But there are vanishingly small reasons for anyone to need my information, so any request is cause for pause.
Money is a hard no. Sorry Prince of Nairobi, you'll have to meet me in person to resolve your financial woes.
Basically if anybody cold calls me for any reason at all they're an asshole up to no good.
Back in the day, when companies tried to get you to switch long distance providers, I had a cold caller call just as I was heading out...
Cold caller: Hi. Would you like to save money on your long distance bills?
Me: No.
Cold caller: Ummmmm. Ohhh Kay...
Me: Bye
Took them out of their opening book in one move.
Check and mate.
I get a lot of door-to-door salesmen offering window replacements.
I just tell them "We're a Linux household, no interest in windows" and slam the door. I think the look of bewilderment is worth it.
Always consult with someone you trust
Here’s the deal: if anyone cold-calls you ever, there is a very good chance it’s a scam.
I have a friend who is part of a timeshare in Colorado. He actually gets good value out of it. The difference is, it's a private timeshare he split with longtime family friends. He didn't buy it from a timeshare re-seller.
Basically, his family and about 5 or 6 other families formed an LLC, bought a property under the LLC and then basically meet once or twice a year to divvy up who's going to use the unit and when. They split the property taxes evenly and then split the upkeep/maintenance costs proportionately relative to how much time each member spends at the property. There's no corporate overlord involved, just a split between longtime friends. Originally, there was one more family involved, and when they wanted out, the group just bought back the family's "shares" in the LLC at the current valuation of the property. My friend said there was no bad blood, everything was by the books, nothing shady.
If things were done this way, all good. But when you get "Always Be Closing" scam artists on the case, well, things just tend to go south.
Yes, this is the correct way to do timeshares.
I've thought of making a portal connecting people like this before, especially digital nomads.
Find a group of DNs who like the same countries as you (think a circuit), pool money to buy property in the 3 or 4 countries, then just hop over.
To be honest, pooling money with strangers to buy property sounds like a recipe for disaster. But then I'm sure I'm not the target demographic.
Sounds like a dream to me, as I live my life on a 3 city rotation like this. Practically speaking, I just rent a house seasonally which is not so hard to do. There’s a small premium, but then I get to keep my equity in the market instead. A lot less headache and someone else gets to worry about the hurricane heading right for my Oct to Jan rental.
This is an area I’m passionate about and am willing to start something if I can see the demand. Setup a form here if you want to reply: https://forms.gle/A6u433hGYSsybeig6
The equity part is a good point. I think the math can work out so that it’s similar to the existing buy vs rent issue people have for a main house.
A nomad style appeals to some people for a (often short) window in their lives. As you say, mixing that up with a bunch of property ownership seems a lot less appealing as a practical matter.
Plus, several times now we have changed one of our bases for a new city. Much easier to call up a short term rental agency and get a new furnished rental.
The feature you need to emulate from this example is not the LLC without a scammer in the spanner, it's the fact that they're all friends.
I went to a timeshare presentation once, fully with the mindset of saying no. It was scary how, at certain points, I started to actually open up to it. But I just kept to my script, saying no, even when they pressed. At the end of the day I don’t need to convince them they need to convince me.
At some point it was done and I got my discounted theme park tickets or whatever.
But I can easily see how the high pressure sales process works on people. They have a bag full of manipulative tricks.
It’s funny when engineers think they are immune to sales and marketing. Strength is knowing your human weakness and avoiding it, rather than having super will power.
A friend of mine liked to say she doesn't understand why companies pay for ads, she doesn't buy stuff because of ads.
Needless to say she liked branded bags and stuff.
The more you think you're immune, the easier it is to influence you.
This was probably the influential topic I had in English class in HS (ads work on everyone, perhaps even especially on those who think they have no effect).
I took it to heart and consume extremely little media with ads, because they are so insidious.
There’s also strength in testing your weaknesses from time to time.
I just tell them I have to sleep on all big decisions, which isn't a "no" so they have no recourse. Except the one time where, after multiple levels of sales people whittling down the commitment to around $500, the head sales person came over and said something along the lines of, "you're just here for the tickets, aren't you". That's the only time I even broke my script and said, "yes, and I've been here for 90 minutes, so where do I pick them up".
I went to one of those Disney vacation home pitches and the sale pitch was very convincing.
You've just paid about $10K for your ONE Disney vacation for your family of four. For just a little bit more, you could come to Disney as many times as you'd like, stay in your own modern condo and and have park perks. It essentially "pays for itself" if you take two or more full Disney vacations each year.
The sales pitch for any timeshare is similar. For slightly more than the cost of 1 trip, you could have 2+ trips (just pay for airfare!).
> At some point it was done and I got my discounted theme park tickets or whatever.
My aunt used to do this. Fit the profile of a mark - retired school employee from the northeast visiting Florida. She'd go on the hotel retreat or get a nice meal in return for listening to their pitch. Never budged on the high-pressure sales tactics.
I’m glad that my mind tends to instantly shut down anyone who starts to fast-talk me or pressure me into something. I don’t any big choices without giving it a week to cogitate in my brain. If they can’t wait on that then well it’s of high probability it’s a scam/partial truth/ReallyBadChoice(TM)
Long thread but somewhat far I haven't seen what my family do, which is to take the other side of the trade. You can buy weeks on Redweek from timeshare owners (not outright, just a week in one year) and get a decent deal on vacation accommodation. Once you do it once the owners will often do a direct transaction at lower cost next year to avoid Redweek fees. We've stayed in many timeshares and been happy with the price/performance ratio.
I guess my feeling is that, at least for many years, I haven't been sufficiently in need for a too good to be true bargain that I wanted to get anywhere near opportunities like this. Probably a case of risk aversion to some degree. I have very rarely used AirBnB either.
The web site looks like a typical crypto scam.[1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230216090211/https://ecurrency...
It doesn't even matter what the website looks like, that's what trips people up - thinking they have any capacity to judge how legitimate something is from what it looks like. Almost all scams follow this same pattern that everybody should learn:
1) Stranger approaches you
2) They tell you some things
3) They ask for money
That process looks like a legitimate cold-calling salesman, but you can treat them the same way and not miss out. After step 2), assume everything they said is possibly a lie and go find the actual person/organization you already know and trust and contact them yourself to do whatever it is. If it's not somebody you already trust, as in this case, then abort.
I would add a bit of nuance to this. I always say there are three parts of any scam:
1. Claim of authority (timeshare purchase agent in this case) 2. Call to action (send me just a bit of money to sell your timeshare) 3. Sense of urgency (buyer will go with someone else if you don't act now)
You'd be surprised how often all three of these are present in a phishing attack of any variety.
Absolutely. Once had exposure to a sales course at a leading institution and biggest takeaway for me was learning the tactics, to then be able to recognise the tactics when used on me. And when these things all line up, I become deeply sceptical. Examples:
Sense of urgency - limited time offer!
Social proof - everyone else is doing it!
Call to authority - #1 doctor recommended!
For scammers, the way I think about it… there is no choice but to be exceptional at the sales process and understanding what drives people, because there is no product. It doesn’t necessarily indicate someone who is good at sales is a scammer, but seeing these tactics always shifts me into a sceptical mode.
Looking for signs in the tealeaves is risky though. For example, my doctors sometimes sends me text messages saying something like "Hello enigmaflare, your XYZ Medical Center invoice for $83.00 is due in 7 days. Please pay to 01-2345-67890123-00." It's not using salesman tactics, but a scammer could replicate that and collect the money himself.
Another example I experienced was a door-to-door salesman who say your home has been identified by the government to be eligible for a heavily discounted air conditioner installation. Our company is authorized to provide that. There's limited funding available so buy quick to avoid missing out. So it ticks all your boxes but it wasn't a scam and I did buy it and it really was a great deal. BUT I didn't trust a word the salesman said. I checked with the government myself, found their company from the list of authorized installers, and called them back through that channel to order it. That's that part people keep getting wrong. They don't go through another channel to re-contact them.
Authority can just be identity of anyone though. For example pretending to be a relative asking for money for an emergency. And urgency isn't always present, as in catphishing and other long-con scams.
Old people are simply too easy to fool. Their brains don’t work fully, it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Then you realize these people vote and elect our officials and the world makes a lot more sense. My parents are having these same issues where they don’t recognize obvious scams. It’s like they don’t speak the same language of the internet the rest of us do.
It's not just old people. Younger people (and especially GenZ) are falling for (social media) scams at an astounding rate.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spo...
There is virtually no difference between a "parasocial relationship" and a confidence scam.
I am getting “parasocial relationship”/“confidence scammed” for currently $1.23 a month, which feels like a quantitative difference from the situation in the article if not a qualitative one
There are scams sized to fit everybody, big and small.
Is there no consumer protection and enforcement in the US? For years I've been reading about huge and abundant scams in the US. How the fuck does there not exist a massive immune system against this? If the respective agencies are overwhelmed with detection, try tapping into wisdom of the crowd via whistleblower programs.
The US has CFPB which just survived the Supreme Court. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-backs-consume...
It's not necessarily about their brains not working but rather about lacking experience with online communication and fraud tactics! And it's not just old people
It's old people particularly and most of it is being done over the phone; something they've used their whole lives. Cognitive decline with age is real, no sense in denying it.
I think they’re just saying no one group is immune.
Yes, and thinking about it, I believe they choose specific tactics of deception or scams for each group
Walking through a fair in Austin, TX I came upon a pop-up selling timeshares and next to it another pop-up saying "how to get out of a timeshare". Honestly, I didn't know what these things were but they sound like a bad idea from the fact that the second pop-up existed.
OTOH I'm surprised they pulled this scam. A friend of a friend lost his vacation home in Mexico to the cartel and there wasn't this much fanfare around it.
I won't be surprised if the "how to get out of a timeshare" popup is also shady, and they and the "buy a timeshare" crowd are in cahoots.
People who bought timeshares are a great source of leads for a scammer.
Indeed… the gullible have been pre-selected for them.
what happens to your estate if you die with a timeshare? does it just have to stay in probate forever while they take out a management fee every month?
In the UK you can't pick and choose from a will, so if you refuse the timeshare you have to refuse the whole inheritance. The exception is if you set it up in advance where the timeshare is willed separately as a nominated "benefit", in which case the "beneficiary" (who has to be someone outside the rest of the will) is able to refuse it.
Read yesterday that one strategy for getting rid of a timeshare is to make sure it’s in the name of the old person who owns it. After they die the probate administrator sends a letter to the timeshare company, ‘no one wanted to take over this contractual obligation, so we’re returning it to you.’
https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/diamond-owners-both-deceas...
I doubt they could do that, take a management fee from the estate forever until the timeshare is somehow passed on.
More likely there is a huge exit fee (that the "owner" could pay at any time to "give" the timeshare back to the operator) which would be extracted from the estate.
Yeah I can add 1 real anecdote - my lawyer for my family member’s estate suggested completely ignoring the timeshare and just letting that past of the estate go.
I have no idea what happens with the actual physical location but at least from the beneficiary’s perspective it seemed fine to just ignore it.
There is no physical property linked to a timeshare. It's a /share/ in physical property. Nothing is going derelict, because the management company will probably just "mint" another share to sell to a new victim.
This is exactly what my lawyer told me when I "inherited" a timeshare. I never signed a contract and that I should just stop paying. We tried to sell the timeshare first, but that was as much of a scam as buying one. I read somewhere a joke that it's the same scummy people selling you the timeshares during the day and moonlighting as agents to help people get rid of timeshares at night.
For anyone curious to hear more about how this happens, and a discussion with someone who was a former police officer (maybe even detective?) yet still fell victim, The Daily did an episode on this in April as well
In general, I've seen lots of 'victim blaming' with these sorts of scams. I mean, I do understand that it's easy to sit there and think 'I understand sending money the first time, but how do you still fall for it the 6th time they ask you to send more money?'. But I think it's important to remember that victims are often older or new to the country*. These scams are designed and refined to make you feel trapped.
* I'm aware the OP involves a Canadian couple and the NYT story involves an American couple. I don't think the direct country matters. Most of these scams are all about scaring and isolating someone.
NYT link - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/podcasts/the-daily/scam-c...
Timeshares themselves are already shady, and there are many people desperate to offload them.
Also, there are psychological biases at play too, regardless of whether you are older or newer to the country. One of key bias in the engine that runs scams and cons is that, once you have done something for someone, you are more likely to keep doing things for them. Even knowing this does not really inoculate you to that effect.
Correct.
Ebay is full of timeshare listings for next to nothing (if you don't consider even paying the annual fees isn't worth it in most cases).
Years back my GF got roped into a timeshare presentation because she wanted free nights in a hotel room. After gently scolding her I printed off pages of Ebay timeshare listings and went to the presentation with her. What a high pressure scam. Anyway, we stayed the required time and when the guy took us off to "close the deal" I whipped the listings out of my pocket and said "Look at this! I can get a better deal on a better resort for $1!". The poor salesman just stood there with his mouth opened then finally said they would have our complimentary tickets at the desk thanks for attending.
My wife and I signed. It was exhausting. I did a token effort at looking at the contract and found the recension clause they had to include as required by law. When I asked about it, the way everyone else froze in that moment and then tried to downplay it stuck in my mind, but we were too exhausted and finished the paperwork.
Immediately upon walking out and got to a local restaurant, my wife and I looked at each other and knew we made a mistake. We ended up looking up how to give notice for the recension and was able to execute it (even though their office was closed for the weekend; it was a good thing I've written and executed business contracts before). (For those curious, you state that you are giving notice of recension for the new property; and then you send it in at least three different ways in accordance to the contract, and get paper trail for each of those ways to prove that you sent them).
It's how I knew about how people get trapped into this through property laws that normally protect property owners.
Since then, I've let myself get impolite at timeshare salesmen. The high pressure sales start at those tables, even before you get invited for the pitch. They abuse the tendency for civil people to be polite and redirect civility to continue the pitch. (And the slickest of them will guilt trip you on being nasty to explain yourself ... at which they can keep pitching ...)
They use your good nature against you.
We get free vacations by sitting through timeshare presentations. The trick is to get the timeframe in writing before you go. And to only tell them your name, and repeating the phrase, "we will not sign any contract or agreement."
Literally say nothing else.
We've been to Cancun, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Colorado for weeks for free doing this.
What would happen if you just don't go to the presentation? Do you get charged for the stay?
Usually there's a penalty on top of the cost of the hotel.
You really have to be selective, and read the fine print, though. Often they try to make you pay fees for the free room, and the fees almost equal the cost of the room. Read everything, and be sure you can say no to people before you even think about doing this.
Yes. At exorbitant rates.
I like toying with them as well. Got some tickets and tours from 30 min playing with those goofballs. But it’s not for the faint of heart. My wife plays the good cop and I am the bad cop. Even though I am soft spoken and kind of shy. They don’t know what to make of us and just throw the whatever they’ve promised at us look away in the end.
I've been told the other trick is to turn to your spouse and say "I don't know honey, we would have to sell the RV". They know people never sell the RV and so they will let you out the door as it is a waste of their time. (You don't need an RV, you just need them to think you have an RV.)
Note if you are thinking about an RV, rent them. A timeshare is a better deal than buying an RV for most people, even though timeshares are scams and RVs are not.
I’ve seen the same “civility trap” with other salesmen. It’s truely dispicable.
Another example, although less palatable, is beggers. Not the obvious poor kind but the ones that approach you at a parking lot or gas station, with some sob story while being dressed relatively neat and not "hobo" like. They abuse polite good nature ontop of the guilt. As a young adult I realized I can't help everyone in the world and learned to tell them no. As an older adult I unfortunately don't even look their way anymore and just shake my head. They know what this means and like a good shakedown artist they move on to the next mark because it's a numbers game.
The stats here in South Africa are shocking. Some beggars here make more money than genuine workers. And they even have "turf wars" over the lucrative begging spots and busy intersections.
Good for you to get out of it in time! I nearly got tricked into signing myself, but did a bit of research during a bathroom visit, had the contract in front of me, and stopped myself when I saw the same red flags in the contract that people warned about online.
Small vocabulary correction: the term for what you did to get out of it, and the clause that allowed you to do so, is recission, not recension.
We went to a pitch once since we got like $100 or something. We had 0 intention of signing anything since we are of the opinion time shares at worst are a scam and at best just not for us. The sales guy was so pushy it was comical. I finally stopped him:
“I want to be clear, we aren’t buying this. We have 0 intent here”
He looked at me puzzled and said:
“Why would you waste an hour of your vacation? For $100? You’re just wasting your vacation for that?!”
Getting really upset and slightly personal. I had to respond
“We wanted to see how big a scam these really are and I can’t believe you find suckers that sign on”
He was pretty upset and said the front desk has our gift and huffed out.
> Since then, I've let myself get impolite at timeshare salesmen. The high pressure sales start at those tables, even before you get invited for the pitch. They abuse the tendency for civil people to be polite and redirect civility to continue the pitch. (And the slickest of them will guilt trip you on being nasty to explain yourself ... at which they can keep pitching ...)
Treat them as you would any other predator, like a lion, a grizzly bear, or a mugger. Because that's what they are.
Did you pause to wonder if you could think of even a single way of behaving that would be equally appropriate when confronted with a timeshare salesman as with a mugger, or with a grizzly bear?
I mean, I guess running away as fast as you can would technically count but in that case I'd suggest there are more fun ways to get exercise and easier ways to get rid of an annoying salesman...
If you run they'll chase you. Yell loudly at them until they run away. Bear spray is also a good idea. I'm talking about timeshare salesmen of course.
Yeah I also got dragged into one of those while on vacation in a timeshare property in exchange for some tour tickets. The tactics are truly despicable. They insisted that me and my wife shouldn't talk to each other in our language because "it's not polite". We didn't speak the local language very well (although we could understand it), so this was obviously to keep us from talking to each other and be more vulnerable. They tried to waste as much of our time as possible in the hopes that we just sign the damn contract to get rid of them and enjoy our vacation.
I'd never heard of timeshare back then, but luckily the deal sounded really bad anyway and we were very adamant on not making any decisions under pressure even if it meant losing this "once in a lifetime offer". In the end they begrudgingly gave our tickets to the tours and ushered us out.
The real reason people "fall" for these pressure scams is that law enforcement will not help protect the victim against the predator, but because the victim is upstanding citizen but the predator is not, the predator or law enforcement will harm the victim if the victim tries to actively defend themselves against the predator.
People who are gullible enough to buy shady timeshares are gullible for other scams too.
You can be not gullible, and they will find some way to get at you. Like to argue? They will jujutsu that. Think you are too intelligent to fall for this? They'll use that. If you find a trick that works, they learn and adapt.
Best way is to walk away. Easier said than done for a lot of people.
Robert Greene has a book about this. In one of the examples, he talked about a scammer trying to scam Henry Ford. Ford had no imagination. The scammer failed. Most people are not a Henry Ford.
> Think you are too intelligent to fall for this?
Thinking you are too smart to ever fall for something is a sure sign that you are probably a good victim.
I sold cars for a decade in the SV area. The amount of times I've seen engineers, lawyers, accountants, doctors and higher level executives make errors is pretty high. No one is 100% ON all the time.
The amount of times I watched very financially conscious people explain to me that they want to lease and then buy their vehicle afterwards, yet forget about sales tax during the buyout after lease end is comical. They were always surprised that even with a high money factor a lease to purchase still paid off...... Depending on how nice they were I would sometimes show them what the forgot.
I read this over and over again, and I'm not sure I believe it.
Or maybe the correct wording for my own case is that I'm too skeptical/cynical to fall for something.
But it could be smarts too, because I enjoy learning about scams.
I remember reading that there were entire product lines that omit you ever bought one mail order you were forever on the lists of “suckers who buy nose hair trimmers mail order” and they passed those lists around like candy.
'I understand sending money the first time, but how do you still fall for it the 6th time they ask you to send more money?'.
I think that falls under the "sunk cost fallacy". Like they are thinking "Well, I've invested so much money already and I'm so close to the payoff now, I may as well send a little more"
I listened to that podcast. I remember being really frustrated with the ex-cop and thinking there were so many red flags. I wonder if it really unfolded as presented.
> I mean, I do understand that it's easy to sit there and think 'I understand sending money the first time, but how do you still fall for it the 6th time they ask you to send more money?'.
Such an assumption would show a clear lack of empathy, no? Esp. on HN where nearly all are familiar with data-mining and relentless targeting of people based on data.
Time share companies are notoriously aggressive in their sales pitch. So "the set of people who bought time shares" already selects for people who have a much higher propensity to send money to these scammers, even multiple times. And upon being scammed, they probably also get their data sold to hundreds other scammers and get stuck in a recursive loop of scam attempts at a much higher rate than the average HN-er.
Seniors had the fortunate, and unfortunate now, opportunity to grow up in a considerably more high trust society than we currently live in. I've seen multiple elderly fall for this same style of scam - in some cases it is due to aging and not having all of the mental faculties that were once available, but in many other cases it's because these people lived most of their lives when you weren't conditioned to assume everyone is lying to you until proven otherwise.
In some ways I envy them for living in a time period where immediate distrust wasn't the status quo.
Seniors had the fortunate, and unfortunate now, opportunity to grow up in a considerably more high trust society than we currently live in.
I question that. “Swamp land in Florida” has been a thing since before this retiree was born. Sales of similarly useless land in Arizona. Look up “California City” for another example. Cemetery plots, hmm, I’m sure I’ve missed others. Let’s not get started on car dealers.
I don’t recall a time, and I’m confident my parents will say the same thing, where one didn’t distrust a salesperson by default.
Ponzi schemes are literally named for a guy from the 1920s. He did it through the post office, no internet required.
Timeshare scams far predate widespread adoption of the Internet by about two decades, and scamming was far from uncommon before that. Hucksters and charlatans have always been about us, but the level of sophistication today is higher because the tools available are more numerous and it's easier to target multitudes vs. single individuals.
The concept of scamming wasn't invented on the internet. People have been getting conned ever since money was a thing (and probably well before that).
The aluminum siding scams in the 50's and 60's were so popular, Hollywood made a movie out of it called Tin Men.
I have a bridge to sell you ...
Why is that? What changed? Can anything be done to restore the honor?
> Comparing the two scenarios, we found that about half of the observed decline in US social trust may stem from: i) ever more unemployment experiences, ii) ever less confidence in political institutions, and iii) a slight but systematic decrease in satisfaction with income.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X2...
I would also wager it has to do with increasing social and economic stratification and decreasing homogeneity.
> Why is that? What changed?
There is more opportunity for scams.
You didn't have ~20% of the population being old and feeble and rich until relatively recently.
In 2000, <10% of the population was seniors. It's been going up rapidly since then, and the growth rate won't slow until around 2030.
After 2030, it'll take another 30 years for the rate to increase ~7%. It only took about the last 10 years for it to go up ~10%.
Not to mention, in 2000, seniors didn't have the type of housing equity they have now (in REAL terms).
The government post Great Depression and New Deal was a much stronger regulator as well. They would regularly go after scammers and schemes. That is far less true these days since "regulation" is now a swear word to many people.
They had no term limits, a well whipped supermajority, and an immense amount of political capital. Nowadays, Presidents are term-limited, majorities are transient and fickle, and political capital is diffuse and quickly spent.
Plus it is much easier to cast a giant net these days.
I'm not sure it was like that. Back then they had scams. Postal scams, work-at-home scams, beauty product scams, etc.
One possible different might be the internet. Allowing scammers access to so many people makes it easier to fish. There was probably an increase in scamming after the mainstream use of the telephone.
I’m not American, nor do I own a timeshare, but weren’t timeshares scams in and of themselves? I remember reading about them about 15~20 years ago.
Targeting victims of previous scams is common in crypto and MLM circles. The trick is almost always promising them an out of their previous losses with a new venture and this venture is sold to them on the basis of them being ‘experienced’ or ‘knowledgeable’ about the previous venture.
My friend's wife attended a timeshare presentation and, unfortunately, she ended up signing. She thought she got a great deal - "We can go to Hawaii twice-per-year, and pay far less than staying at a hotel!" Well, almost immediately, they started receiving invoices with outrageous charges, like "maintenance fees" and dubious property taxes. The original contract was for $200/month, but all the additional charges brought the cost to around $2000/month. They tried to get out of the contract. The timeshare company wouldn't return their calls. Finally, after a few months they talked to someone who told them there was no getting out of the contract - basically, "Sorry, you signed a contract." My friend and his wife ended up declaring bankruptcy, just to get out of the timeshare contract. They never even went to the timeshare. Not once.
That story seems to be missing some pieces. Most people would just refuse to pay the invoices and wait for the timeshare company to sue. I suspect your friends might have had other financial problems beyond just the timeshare.
Seems quite nutty to think you’d find yourself flying to Hawaii twice per year even if the housing was free
It's a long flight, but it's not an unreasonably expensive flight. Especially if you live in a place with winter, it might be nice to visit in novemberish and marchish to get a warm week in between your cold at home. There's lots of people who live near me and visit Hawaii once a year.
Personally, I'd be more likely to do a two week stay than two one week stays, I'd rather reduce my time on an airplane. But leaving for two weeks is harder than leaving for one for all sorts of reasons.
Yes. But interests change. Life interferes. Etc.
There are certain trips I try to do annually but I have zero interest in being locked into someplace like Hawaii on a schedule.
I agree that, especially, after semi-retiring, my goal isn't really to travel less but to spend less time on planes.
Also, like, how do you even handle the resentment?
Odds are you're just staying with tourists most of the time, and whenever you do need to deal with the locals you have to ignore their thinly-veiled contempt mixed with self-loathing for depending on your patronage.
I hear it gets kind of awkward for Paris people getting summer homes in Britanny. I'm pretty sure the degree of hostility towards mainland Americans getting winter homes in Hawai must be much higher.
In places like Hawaii where the economy is pure tourism there isn't much hostility. You're a paycheck to them.
Also tourism economies are terrible and create a bunch of terrible perverse incentives for both business and government.
Source: Grew up in one
A round-trip flight from the West coast is ~$300.
A beach hotel starts at ~$300/night.
Even from the west coast it's a 6 hr flight. Combined with time difference, it often means 2 days on travelling alone. Even worse for people in mid west or near west coast, which is the majority of where the population is [0]. For most people I know, Hawaii is a trip once every few years, and definitely not twice a year.
This is a week vacation though, not a weekend. I agree it doesn't work for a weekend, but if you take a full week off things look much better. If you really do want to go to that exact place in Hawaii for one week a year every year for the rest of your life a timeshare is a great deal (assuming the fees are as stated, sometimes what looks like $100/month turns out to be $2000/month) - but I don't know many people who vacation like that. I do plan to go back to Hawaii, but I also have vacation plans for Boston, Florida, California, Spain... Even the people I know who do vacation like that don't do it for life (I make regular trips to visit my in-laws, but they are thinking about moving states so I may have already taken my last visit to their current home)
In the end, the best case a timeshare does save money. However for most people the restrictions mean you are never in the best case and often you are in the worst case and lose money.
The crazy thing to me is always going to the same place for vacation. Really? No variety, ever?
Some of them are “points-based” and you can spend your points at different resorts that they own and hypothetically have some flexibility in time but “points” should be a bad smell, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzle_(game)
Where they actually cheat to help you get enough points that you think you could win them when they stop cheating the game is unwinnable. If the cops show up they will see the carnie playing ‘honestly’ and not see anything wrong. In terms of psychology it is the king of scams.
In the case of the timeshare schemes you will find all sorts of problems and limitations when you try to redeem your points, it is like the limitations on airline frequent flier points but raised to the Nth power.
They cover that in their sales pitch. There's supposedly a market for trading timeshares, so you can trade in your timeshare for someone else's, specially if you have a highly coveted one
Of course none of it is as easy as they make it sound.
Right. "Supposedly." I've always avoided options that more or less locked me into a single location.
I do go up to my dad's--now brother's--place in Maine a few times a year but that's as much for family as having a need to go to a specific location. Absent family, I'd probably even vary that a bit.
It’s pretty sweet if you’re on the west coast and you have young kids. Extremely high chance of a good, relaxing time for everyone, and it’s a non stop flight for most people. Plus, many people take multiple vacations in a year.
Obviously, not every worth buying a timeshare.
Idk, as a canadian, going to a tropical island twice a year in the middle of winter sounds pretty nice, even if its the same island.
All things equal, sure. But is the cost of the hotel really the thing stopping you from doing that?
Isn't there usually some cooldown period for contracts like these? Or is that not a US thing? Any sales contract that I have signed in the past came with a 15-30 day cooldown period, where if I change my mind I can cancel no matter what.
I had to do it once where I caved under the pressure of a particularly aggressive "life insurance" salesperson, only realized my mistake a day after signing, so I called them up and exercised my right to "cool down".
Yes, but it's short (three days in some states), and they'll do everything in their power to dodge your attempts to use it.
> and they'll do everything in their power to dodge your attempts to use it.
A gym I was interested in joining had a pay-for-one-month deal, so I said, “sure, why not?” Their system took my e-signature for authorizing the one-time credit card transaction and copied (forged) it onto a shitty gym contract with auto-renewal and a bunch of other terms I didn’t agree to.
Fortunately, my state had a 3-day right of recision, so I followed the requirements in the law to the letter. It only required written notification that I’m exercising my right, so I printed a letter as such, brought a notary friend and another friend as witness, and hand-delivered it to the manager on duty and asked them to sign a receipt for it (which was witnessed and notarized). They tried to give me all kinds of crap about “the company cancellation process,” which I said is great and all, but not applicable because state law trumps company policy and state law says that as of 30 seconds ago our contract never existed. They ultimately relented, especially since they were nervous about the forgery aspect too.
The most important part of any contract is the termination clause.
Timeshares / Vacation Clubs (they are basically the same thing) are massive scams. They use tricky math, high pressure sales tactics, etc. to push people who can't afford it into taking out massive loans to pay into contracts they can basically never get out of.
I went to a vacation club presentation for a bunch of free stuff once, it wasn't worth it. But its crazy the things they push onto you. They make up numbers on how expensive vacations are to pressure people into thinking they have a deal. Then they try and sell a huge package ($50k+) and to push people into a 20%+ APR loan. Then if you do sign, they stick monthly fees on top of it in perpetuity.
Its a bad idea, but I could see how people that don't have a sharp eye and a mathematical maturity might fall for it.
Went to one once, one of the kids pooped. It was a bad one. The sales team wanted to keep going even as they enveloped by an incredibly thick stinky pungent hazardous stench. Real focus, reminded me of the movie quote “ABC always be closing.” Was interesting to be on the receiving end, a lot to study and not just the offers of “amazing places” but more so in terms of presentation and tactics. Leave your pocket book at home but everyone should experience one. (Oh yeah, didn’t sign of course, the rental locations were all on air bnb but cheaper and with none of the extra fees that they would have charged forever. Ha. Woops.)
The ABC thing is very evident when you are on the end of it. Every excuse to keep you there and try to get you to sign, they have a response for it. No money? We have loans. Bad credit? Lets get a cosigner. Anything to keep you there or to sign.
I've had door-to-door salespeople go "I see you have a no-soliciting sign but ...". They don't get to finish that sentence before the door closes.
Not sure about other cultures, but Americans lives in general I think would be a bit less stressful if there wasn't some weird aversion to just saying 'no' to things you don't want to do, rather than reaching for excuses. Is it seen as rude? I much prefer the directness of it on the receiving end, but maybe I'm weird.
It's actually the opposite. People don't really take no for an answer anymore, and that's doubly true of anyone trying to sell you stuff, so instead of saying "no/ will not", we try to justify why we "cannot/are physically unable to" to stop the onslaught.
Like canceling cable, home internet. It's not that we're using something else, not using it at all, don't want it. It's "we're moving/going to jail for 5 years/dying Thursday and thus cannot continue using this service"
I had a door to door salesman ask if I was racist after I told him I wasn't interested, as if to try to pressure me into proving I wasn't a racist by listening to his pitch/buying into whatever he was selling. It's gotten to the point where I have a video door bell so know when I can skip it all by not answering//pretending I'm not home.
If they don't take the polite "no", immediately reach for insults. People who intentionally annoy you don't deserve civility - they're not showing any themselves.
My personal favorites is along the lines of: "Are you hard of hearing, you stupid clown?" - no overly foul language and safe to use in most company.
Few will try selling stuff to someone hurling nothing but insults at them. There's really only one group of people this doesn't work on, and they're the bottom of the barrel trying to find victims on public transport and the like. If you figure out a way to reliably get rid of them, let me know!
Funnily enough, this reminds me of my Dad's approach years back. After he said no and they'd start again, he'd say "oh sorry, are ya deaf or dumb, boy?" in a way you couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
They'd usually be speechless or say 'neither', and he'd explain that he already said no, so they must either be hard of hearing or their brain's not processing it. Always caught them off guard. I don't remember if it was effective or not in getting them to go away, oddly enough.
I'm 6'4" and decently fit, but I wouldn't go around calling other men stupid clowns.
I worked in car sales for a decade and a decent 10%+ of salespeople IMO would get aggressive to your face over that.
Or do you only say that to the non criminal looking ones?
Indeed. Even if this worked 95% of the time, that 5% where it escalates things just isn't worth it IMO. Also, pissing people off that know where you live isn't a great idea.
It's basically WarGames. The only winning move is not to play. I don't answer the door when I'm certain it's a salesman. I don't make eye contact/respond to the ones that are setup outside of a store. Same with the ones setup in malls/stores (looking at you, Costco).
Read the room and maybe don't do it to that unhinged looking guy from the subway.
Personally I enjoy a bit of excitement, but most people don't want confrontation, which is why appearing confrontational before they're committed works for making them do a u-turn quickly.
The internet companies have mobile offerings now to push on you when you move. I thought while recently moving it would be a quick call to disconnect and still got a retention sales pitch...
What was he selling?
It's been a few years and I can't recall. Probably renting solar panels? That was a popular one for a while. Not that it matters, he could have been offering me free money. What matters is he didn't respect my right to say no. That's an extreme accusation to lob just to prevent the conversation from ending.
To qualify my previous comment, it's not that saying no is seen as rude, it's that salesmen are beyond rude if you try to say no. I have to hide in my home, pretend I'm renting/house sitting, etc because it's less hassle than opening the door and saying no.
> the rental locations were all on air bnb but cheaper and with none of the extra fees that they would have charged forever
Exactly! Came here to echo this. I have family that got roped into this arrangement and the annual maintenance fees (and other misc fees at every turn) coupled with the up-front cost is absolutely ridiculous when compared to just booking an AirBnB/VRBO/etc for a couple weeks.
Also agree on sitting through one with zero intention to sign, once. It's a unique experience, and I feel like most people not already doing sales/marketing professionally might learn something from it.
I’d be vary wary of going even if you have zero intention of being sucked in. They’re literally trained and adept at exactly those kinds of people - so don’t go unless you can sign over a durable power of attorney to someone offsite for the duration.
I ran a similar experiment many years ago, not with a timeshare but with a multi-level marketing scheme. The tactics they used were very similar. I kept saying no and they kept inventing new reasons for me to sign up. I finally got bored and said no, thanks, I'm done, and walked out--but even then they were trying new reasons on me until I got out the door.
A classic experience!
I haven't tried this (yet), but I read that pointing out how much more cheaply one could get a timeshare on eBay gets you an immediate out from the negotiation process.
Timeshares on eBay are crazy cheap by comparison. A timeshare in Hawaii during prime season can be had for $50k or something like that, which sounds like a lot until you realize that the vacation clubs will sell that timeshare for, like, $500k.
> I went to a vacation club presentation for a bunch of free stuff once, it wasn't worth it.
My wife and I signed up for a snorkel tour a few years ago, one of those "attend this 45 minute presentation and get your tour for half price!" deals.
We skipped the presentation and ended up being charged the full tour cost plus something extra, I think $25/person on a $200/person tour.
That has to be close to the best 50 bucks I ever spent.
I went to one of those timeshare presentations before just because the free prize for sitting through it was especially desirable.
My impression is that they were heavily targeting people who were bad at math. Every time I ran the numbers (I had a lot of opportunities while trapped in the room waiting for the prize counter to open) it just made no sense whatsoever. Beyond the amount you were overpaying for the apartment, the fees we so expensive that you could vacation on what you would have been paying in fees for a long time. The fees didn't even get you much, you still had to do all of the cleaning and a lot of the maintenance as they were not included. The fees only really covered exterior maintenance and mowing the lawns, and were about two or three orders of magnitude higher than they should be for those services if you assumed every unit in the complex was paying them 52 times a year.
Timeshares as a concept could in theory work, but the entire industry consists of grifters far more focused on getting rich than providing a service to their customers. It is ironic that the primary focus of the presentations is how expensive it would be to take a beach vacation every year, which is true, and how timeshares in concept could make this much more affordable, which is also true, but then they show you the numbers and the reality is completely opposite.
Out of curiosity: what kind of freebies are there during such presentations? (I am form France and we don't really have that concept here)
Free weekend vacation at Disney World, including admission to the parks. You actually stayed in one of the timeshare units they were trying to sell. The presentation was about 3 hours long, and mostly consisted of a high pressure sales pitch full of dubious claims. The salesguys were not impressed by the math.
I think the prizes I've seen are generally in the range of $300-600 cash value. To get it you have to sit through the hardest and most annoying sales pitch imaginable. I did it once. I was never tempted even slightly to buy their scam, but it was so miserable to sit through that it's not something I'd ever do again.
After some negotiation (don’t settle for the first "prize" they offer you) I got a free flight and hotel to Orlando, FL and I used the time to visit the Air Force Missile Museum at Cape Canaveral (at the time, I had a badge that let me get on base to visit the museum).
You do need to be prepared for a hard sell. They are clearly making money otherwise they wouldn’t fly me around the country.
They usually offer heavily discounted stays at hotels in prime locations, free cruises, and other vacation-y things.
They get them in bulk so they’re often not all that great in value.
However if your time isn’t worth $50/hr or more (as in you’re a college student, etc) and you’re strong willed it can be worth it. Maybe.
I don't think scam is the right word. Timeshare sales may be predatory, but they're not fraudulent.
Calling something a scam can just mean they profit off highly immoral behavior or are inherently deceptive. Loan sharks are scams. Pyramid schemes were scams, even when they weren't illegal.
It's wild that "predatory" doesn't sound at least as bad as "fraudulent". Customers aren't prey just as much as they're not people to be lied to!
I've never seen a single timeshare that makes sense in terms of cost to value ratio. There's always a more flexible/cheaper/profitable way to do whatever it is you're trying to do than a timeshare, unless of course you're the one selling it. Very fair to call it a scam.
Scam is more general than outright fraud. I would say they mislead you about the financials enough to count.
They’re certainly scammy and overpriced, but probably still a better deal than owning a full vacation home that sits empty most of the year….
In a “Vacation club” you own a bag of “points” that you can use to book a unit at a resort. You are not guaranteed that units will be available, nor are you guaranteed a price (i.e. how many points you’ll have to use). You will have to pay for points every year no matter what.
True “shared ownership of a single unit at a resort” is far less common these days.
> but probably still a better deal than owning a full vacation home that sits empty most of the year
If you can walk away: then 100% yes. I've considered a timeshare at a ski resort during the popular school vacation week.
The problem is that often you can't walk away. IE, with a vacation home, you can sell it; or otherwise default on the mortgage / taxes. With a timeshare, that's harder.
Personally, I just stay in hotels. So much easier, and the hotel bill is cheaper than whatever monthly payment the timeshare / vacation home is.
Also that sort of specific time is an issue for this type of arrangement. Because large share of participants would want the same time. Which unless they share the places during stay...
In the end just buying it piece meal is most likely best option.
That one week is super popular, all the other weeks are dirt cheap
> but probably still a better deal than owning a full vacation home that sits empty most of the year
Timeshares give up a lot of the advantages of just owning a vacation home, without many advantages other than price.
You have even less control of the property than a coop/condo, you don't get the financial incentive of possible real estate appreciation, there is no real liquid open market for resale.. etc.
Time shares are like a casino where the house always wins. They control the costs/fees the same way a casino controls the odds/payouts. They are probably less regulated than a casino too.
The other advantage to a proper vacation home is.. if its a beach / ski / whatever place whatever, you leave all your gear there, changes of clothes, etc.. not hauling stuff.
I doubt it. You have the loan interest, annual service fees, and fact that you don’t have a sellable asset, at least for anything like what you paid for it. An empty vacation home is still an appreciating asset. Not a good investment in my circumstances but still better than a timeshare.
What is most amazing is that there is an entire industry of getting people out of timeshares. It's not cheap either. People are willing to pay large sums and take big losses for millstone removal. Timeshare companies pay a lot for every single successful sign up, so they are not willing to let them go without a fight.
Some timeshare companies have their own buyback / abandonment programs in response to the scammy exit companies:
HGVC: https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/hgvcs-deed-back-process.35...
Hyatt: https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/hyatt-now-has-a-buy-back-p...
Of course, these are not well advertised. And it contradicts the sales pitch of the timeshare maintaining / increasing in value if you are simply giving it back for free.
Yes but when most won’t let your heirs get out of the contract even that’s the problem. In principle they make sense, Disneys for example has got to be the least scammy of them.
Checked a little bit Disney. Picking a flexible option for a large family:
From $350 to $1,200 per month for a 10-year loan with a 10% down payment = $144,117
+ the annual fees.
Oh well...
"Ability to finance through our in house financing with no credit check" errrrm.
"A groundbreaking non-credit check model for financing DVC loans. No credit check, no debt-to-income ratios, simply financed based on the value of your purchase."
Though if you purchase from the secondary market ( = people reselling it), it gets cheap enough that it becomes interesting.
Resell is the real value, but you need to make sure you understand the limitations to benefits as only people that have bought enough points directly get access to certain benefits such as lounges.
And really the whole thing only makes sense if you pay upfront without a loan.
I've priced it out a few times and for me it doesn't make sense despite staying at WDW ~ 4+ weeks a year.
But when compared to other timeshares, it's not a total lock in and Disney has apparently started buying back contracts if you wanted out.
Also I've never noticed the high pressure sales tactics from DVC. It's usually "if you want to hear about DVC go talk to that guy with the blazer".
Thank you!
Not quite. You can sell the vacation home, you can (usually) rent it out.
It’s your property; within zoning restrictions, you can do whatever you want with it.
Not true with a timeshare.
Yes, you can but people that can afford vacation homes often let them sit empty and lose a lot of money because they don’t want anyone messing with it- it is expensive, and loses a ton of money but they can afford it.
You can rent out timeshares on Redweek. I've never used the service but it's often recommended to timeshare owners who are unable to stay in their timeshare properties.
> you can (usually) rent it out.
Only if you're lucky enough to own it in a place that hasn't outlawed AirBNB rentals yet.
You didn't hear it from me but the scheme is: an individual or group of investors will buy several properties to AirBNB in a moderately-popular vacation spot. Typically someplace fairly rural and off the beaten path. But desirable enough for photos that might trend briefly on pinterest. Then they (rather covertly) drum up local support for banning AirBNBs, while being careful to make sure their existing rentals are grandfathered in. Now their investments have a moat and they can charge whatever they want for them, especially if there are no hotels or resorts anywhere nearby.
That seems like a risky ploy. Guaranteeing that the existing AirBNBs get grandfathered in is far from certain. Then again, I've seen plenty of AirBNBs that just ignore the law so maybe it would be fine anyway. I once stayed in one that had explicit instructions on how to respond if someone asked you what you were doing at the house, which fake names to use and everything. Felt incredibly sketchy, but it was also about a third of the price of the cheapest hotel room in the area and didn't have cleaning fees or extensive checkout cleaning bullshit so that wasn't unexpected. Was a great location too.
Not really. They are cheaper in nominal dollar terms (capital, annual costs, etc) but you are typically paying multiples of that intrinsic value of the property (e.g. 2 weeks $100K up front, $5k year, but for a property that might be $1m not $2.4m and definitely doesn’t cost $120k a year to maintain) plus you get no appreciation upside, no tax benefits etc…
They aren't all scams, but they are not an "investment". As long as you understand the program terms and restrictions and you buy your timeshare in a place you'd go anyway, you can get good value out of the money.
But few people do that much research and find out that they don't use it as much as they thought they would either because they don't like the place enough to keep going back, or they didn't account for blackout dates, floating weeks, etc and can't find a time when they can go.
But if you do buy a timeshare, by on the secondary market, don't buy a new one, they quickly drop in value on resale.
They are all scams, because they all lock you into a single-vendor maintenance contract that can charge you anything they want, that you can never get out of.
Theoretically you can run a non-scammy timeshare, but why would you, when running a scam is the same work but so much more lucrative? The lemons push out the good ones in this market.
> They are all scams, because they all lock you into a single-vendor maintenance contract that can charge you anything they want, that you can never get out of.
This is simply factually incorrect. While I myself would never own a timeshare because it just would never make sense for me, some timeshare contracts are for limited lengths (e.g. 20 years) and maintenance fees are capped.
Kind of. Timeshare sales are famous for their high-pressure sales tactics (see the famous South Park episode), so there would be an assumption that these people are susceptible to these tactics.
The issue is less that timeshares are outright scams (though some are), but it's that buyers are locked into a very long term contract that is difficult and expensive to get out off. What may have seemed like a great idea to take the kids on an annual beach vacation now becomes a PITA when those kids are teenagers and now don't want to go on trips with their parents.
So with timeshare owners you have (a) people likely susceptible to high pressure sales tactics who (b) are likely highly motivated to get out of their contract. So a perfect target for scammers.
My parents had various timeshares and got good holidays from them and were generally happy, so I don’t think they are by default a scam.
We still go to one 30 years later, and the maintenance is about 1/3 of what you’d pay for an equivalent hotel room (€1,000 vs €3,000) so I think overall they are “up”.
Sounds like your family is much, much richer than the general population, so your experience probably isn't super meaningful to other people.
What gave you that idea?
> weren’t timeshares scams in and of themselves?
They're not technically scams. Just generally not good things to own for most people.
If you use your vacation time every year for the rest of your life, they can be decent.
It's just that most people don't want to vacation to the same place, the same week every year. And they're notoriously difficult to get out of.
My parents bought into Worldmark by Wyndham and they or us kids used it a ton, and the facilities were all pretty nice, so there are some that work out well.
Timeshares are very much scammy. What sucks is that it's all legal. If anything, the law -- the ones that protect the interests of real estate owners and lenders -- is used to lock people into making payments that are very difficult to get out of.
They’re notorious and have been featured in tons of episodes of TV shows (including a particularly good early-ish episode of South Park, among more-ordinary sitcoms and such) since at least the 90s. They’re a punch line.
My parents nonetheless fell for one in the early 20-teens. How they had missed this particular bit of common wisdom, I have no idea.
Everything happens at least twice. There actually is an established industry to supposedly help folks get out of timeshares.
When you say "to supposedly help", do you mean they actually help, or this industry is also scammers?
Asking because someone in my extended family owns a timeshare and got scammed with an exit offer. It sounded similar to the timeshare pitch itself.
I am very sorry to hear that and I hope they can properly escape this situation.
Maybe my opinion is biased (the media generally does not publish "everythibg is a-OK" articles), but my perception of the timeshare escape industry is that they are sketchy too.
I think this Last Week Tonight episode is very informative on the topic:
Also, there are plenty of scams in that same industry.
Timeshares: not even once.
John Oliver on timeshares:
> an ongoing timeshare scam that spans at least two dozen phony escrow, title and realty firms
If you’re savvy enough to run a scam like this, shouldn’t you be savvy enough to find an honest way to make money?
It's particularly alarming that such scams are linked to violent criminal enterprises
The first clue that it was a scam were the words "Timeshare"
> goldmansachs-investment[.]com
I wonder whether they use a domain name monitoring firm now.
Has anyone else noticed the elephant in the room?
The Krebs case study claims that the couple was unable to "legally sell" the timeshare due to their remaining payments.
So these scammers were asking them to do what--illegally sell to them? What are the consequences or repercussions of a premature sale?
"Hey, yeah, we know we've got a bad investment; looks like some Mexican sucker is calling us to let us off the hook!"
If this is true, and the couple was cooperating knowingly with a gray-market transaction, then their hands weren't clean at all, and I can't muster any sympathy here.
The usual litany of red flags: they cold-called you. You did no due diligence, probably because you knew they had to be shady. They promised you money, but then asked for advance fees. What legit consumer just falls for all that, unless they're desperate and shady themselves?
Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.
This is typical of confidence tricks like this. That's why we have the saying "You can't cheat an honest man".
Reminds me of the counterfeit Rolex trick in Better Call Saul.
The mark must be willing to (1) steal a rolex from a drunk man lying unconscious in an alley and leave without calling for help (2) cheat their "co-conspirator" out of most of the rolex's value.
If you fall for that, it's not like you can go to the police afterwards.
But while that makes for great prestige drama in reality it's simpler just to bully old/confused/desperate people into giving you their money.
This is a perceptive reading. But, I'd bet that if the sellers brought this up, the scammers would just say "that's something the timeshare companies tell you, those scammers. In fact it's completely legal, always has been—they just want you to think it isn't, so you keep paying them. Heh, imagine it being illegal to sell your own property, can you believe some people actually fall for that?"
People don't know the law, and are desperate to believe whatever willl get out from under a boondoggle that is sapping them of their fixed income. It's more likely they fell for something than that they are trying to break the law.
desperate. not shady. I can totally see me trying everything to get rid of my timeshare, I've watched too many cartoons not to fear having a timeshare
The victim didn't even think to report it to the police.
lol
you don't talk to the police. I would do anything I can to avoid calling them myself, unless I needed to for insurance reasons
I don't see their inner thoughts detailed in this article I am reading. Are you their pastor or something?
They didn't report it, because (A) they were themselves involved in illegal activity, and they knew it and/or (B) the drug cartel element, even if they were in Canada, may threaten them with imminent violence or great harm. (Although the three-nation cluster** nature of this crime makes that seem unlikely)
If you meet a new gentleman and he steals your purse on the first date, you may contact police. If you hired a prostitute, and wake up without your wallet, you may let that one slide.
Consider the drug buyer who calls the police because his dealer cheated him, or the trafficker who shows up at the impound facility to claim his wares, or the embezzler who reports the stolen income on his taxes... a rare breed indeed!
Get scammed by signing up for a timeshare contract. Then get scammed by “timeshare exit” companies. Then conned again by drug cartels.
These time share companies need to get bent. These platforms perpetuate the worst types of scams on our most vulnerable populations (elderly).
I went to one of these timeshare pitches because they were giving away free stays at an associated hotel — got a “free” 4 day/night accommodation. The catch here was I had to attend a 1-2 hour sales pitch for their “club” (timeshare).
Read the fine print before accepting the 4 day/night accommodation to make sure I did not have to accept a timeshare contract. Only obligation was the sales pitch and stay for the entire pitch.
Scheduled the pitch for later in the week of the vacation. Set a timer on my watch/phone as soon as I checked in for 1.5 hrs. Listened passively to their pitch. I feigned interest but ultimately declined each contract and each attempt to pull my credit report (do not give these people your SSN).
Each decline was met with:
- “I can go back to my manager and get a better deal. I’m making no profit”. Person comes back with a contract that throws in a bunch of “perks” (more “points” or something like that).
- high pressure sales tactics like: “this deal expires today”. “I’m basically giving this away for free”.
- Lies such as: “vacation anywhere you want in the world and any time”. But clearly contract and terms state otherwise and need to purchase additional “points” at certain locations. Doesn’t include holidays.
- more lies such as “after it’s paid off, you ‘own’ the time share”. Again, it’s bullshit. the “monthly maintenance fees” are in perpetuity (forever) and go up at any time at the discretion of club. You don’t “own” jack shit. The contract is worthless.
There were several other people as well in doing the sales pitch and made sure to call out the absurdities and lies so everyone could hear.
As soon as my watch/phone timer alerted. Got up, shake hands with sales person and manager, and I just left. I fulfilled my obligation.
A family member took over another family member's time share after they passed.
Their options and just getting anything scheduled was becoming harder and harder to the point that you couldn't schedule anything. They took your money and pretty much no dates were available....
It just so happened that this family member frequently traveled for work and were in some credit card + hotel points program that also was managed by the corporation that ran the time share. They went and checked what they could redeem their points for and ... it was the exact locations they used to be able to book via the timeshare.
The company had taken the timeshare owners money, now that they had it, they gave the benefits to their points / credit card customers.
In a semi related story I worked once with a timeshare company who wanted to "get into the digital age". I never worked with a more ignorant customer. Their standard operating procedure was to get their vendors on a conference call and tell them to "figure it out".
How is that not just ordinary fraud? That may be the best case scenario for getting out of the timeshare agreement, bring it up before the court and getting a judgement against the timeshare company.
> That may be the best case scenario for getting out of the timeshare agreement, bring it up before the court and getting a judgement against the timeshare company.
Suing someone requires money for lawyers. You can be out a significant chunk of a megabuck before you can land a solid judgement against someone. And I guarantee these scammers are experts at navigating the system.
It they won't let you out normally, you need to stop paying, let them foreclose and take the credit hit. You have to expect it to hit your credit, but often it doesn't because the timeshare companies don't want to attract the attention. Once you have signalled that you are willing to take the hit and you are not going to feed them any more money, most of them would rather not spend money foreclosing and would rather just move on to the next sucker.
Pretty much, but that's what timeshares kinda are...
It is ordinary fraud. That doesn't mean to expect justice to arrive swiftly. Look at what Trump does to vendors and event venues. https://www.newsweek.com/unpaid-debts-are-catching-donald-tr...
But, did you successfully receive that 4 day/night accommodation?
What harm could the data have? What do you have to hide? Why aren't we holding hands already?