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NASHVILLE, Tenn. - What if you bought a timeshare and could never use it?
A new lawsuit has claimed a Gatlinburg resort is selling dream vacations in the Smokies, but when you go to book that vacation, there are never any rooms available. And, it turns out, that's not the only surprise some consumers are getting.
Just like any other purchase, you have to actually research what you're purchasing, who you're purchasing it from and the structure of the association as part of your due diligence.
We go to Gatlinburg every now and then. The place is a tourist trap that ends up costing way more than what it should but it is close enough to drive so we go get our wallet beat up every once in a while. Anyway, back about 10 years ago we were there and were walking down the sidewalk visiting the shops and every so often there were these stands soliciting timeshares. The people working at them were literally yelling at and harassing people. I noticed it as we were walking toward them and I told my wife to get ready and ignore them. One of the guys started trying to get my attention and started yelling "sir" at me and then the color of my shirt and following behind me yelling. My wife knew I was about to snap and ducked into a store real quick and I turned around and lost it on the guy. I pretty much put two sentences together using nothing but cuss words including the F word along with some adjectives and verbs describing what I was going to do if he didn't shut the hell up. He turned around and headed back to the stand but I followed along behind him telling him I would buy anything from someone who followed me on the street yelling and other people around started applauding me for letting him have it. I would not be a bit surprised to find out that it was the same company the OP is referencing in this thread. To sum up the story, when I got home I emailed Gatlinburg city and their chamber of commerce complaining about the timeshare solicitors because they were all up and down the street at the time. It wasn't long the city passed a law banning that type of solicitation. It was that bad.
Disney has them for their resorts including Walt Disney World. They are quite popular and sell well but I think a lot of people are short sighted and not great with math. I took the tour and then sat down a couple weeks later at home and did the math. The "annual dues" were more than what I pay for a really nice hotel outside of Disney World and about the same as what they call a moderate resort hotel within their resort. The annual dues increase pretty much every year so the math still works out to costing just as much or more than just getting a good hotel. On top of that, you have to buy the points in the first place which can cost $35,000 or more. The math just doesn't work and I can't wrap my head around why so many people buy them. Besides all of that, you are locked into going to one of their resorts pretty much every year for the next 50 years. You can swap points with other timeshare companies like RCP but heck, we like to go on trips all over the country and every once in a while over seas.
We went to a timeshare presentation back in the '80s. They claimed that prices for everything would increase by 10x, and campsites were going to be $100 a night by the year 2000.
So I asked if their annual fee would increase at the same rate. Guy turned real nasty at that. That's when I decided that timeshares are for people bad at math.
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