So, my relative was given a vacation membership long ago. That membership should cost initially to buy in, but she was given for free. She only need to pay annual fee. Seem like good deal.

Now she is trying to give that membership away for free because she doesn’t like travelling to that place anymore, and don’t want to pay fee.

So i wonder, why just not cancel it. Stop paying to let it cancel by itself like your netflix account.

  • palebluethought@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Yes, your aunt has (probably) signed up for what’s essentially a scam. This is their whole business model, they know timeshares sound better than they end up being, so they intentionally trick people into signing contracts that are very difficult to get out of, so they can’t just dump it the moment they realize they don’t want it anymore.

    • The_v@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Timeshares are written up as if they were property. Property that she shares with other people and is contractually required to pay for the upkeep. It’s basically a never ending money generator for the owners. Think of it a hotel where all the rooms are rented out to people who agreed to pay for them no matter if they use it or not.

      As the owner of “property” she has a few choices. First off read the contract.

      The management company sometimes reserves the right to buy the property back. Usually a good option - the “Owner” loses money but gets out of the never-ending bills.

      She can also sell/give the timeshare to somebody else on the timeshare selling site. This transfers the ownership to somebody else who might like it.

      If the property has degraded in value because of lack of maintenance from the management she might be able to get out by civil lawsuit. This is unlikely as most timeshare companies do exactly the bare minimum to meet their contractual obligations.