Will Legal Action Help Me Get Rid of my TS?

[DeniseM]

Just to clarify - it would not be a "buy back," it would be a "deed back," meaning you give them the deed back for free, and forfeit anything you have already paid.

Also - another problem is that you have no idea if you talked to someone who actually has the authority to make that statement. The entry level people have a standard response that they give everyone, and it may or may not be true.

 

[prosam]

Just to clarify - it would not be a "buy back," it would be a "deed back," meaning you give them the deed back for free, and forfeit anything you have already paid.

Also - another problem is that you have no idea if you talked to someone who actually has the authority to make that statement. The entry level people have a standard response that they give everyone, and it may or may not be true.

Very true. I might have indeed asked incorrectly. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[theo]

Just got off the phone with a Rep. I was not aware of this and wanted to inform everyone here. Westgate DOES NOT have a buy back deed in lieu of foreclosure program. They don't buy deeds back ever. According to this rep, financial hardship would only allow for a 2 month break in payments that would be added back towards the end of the payments.

How accurate is this information? Unless she was lying I guess it is accurate. So if anyone else on the forums ever asks. Wastegate WILL NOT buy back your deed. It's not even an option.

Westgate does indeed accept some "deedbacks" ("deebacks", to be very clear here, are entirely different from "buybacks"). Very few developers (maybe Marriott and a very few others) will ever consider a "buyback". Wastegate accepts deedbacks, but only if the proposed "deedback" involves a "free and clear" ownership (i.e, associated loans are satisfied), with the account also fully paid up to date on maintenance fees (which yours clearly is not) and, last but not least, an additional gratuitous fee paid to Wastegate ($1,500, if I recall correctly). None of that really matters to you however, since those "deedback acceptance" conditions are not relevant or applicable to your current situation.

It is not too unusual for delinquent timeshare accounts to be handed off to hired third party collection agencies. Such outfits collect a percentage of any payments that they can manage to wrangle, cajole or harass from a delinquent account holder. In fact, there are a few collection agencies which openly advertise their "timeshare collection specialization" services, including in the publication Timesharing Today.

If you intend to hold the line and pay nothing more (a personal choice certainly available to you), default and foreclosure will inevitably follow and a negative credit report "hit" is a near certainty. That being said, it is also your personal decision whether you really want to pay another penny toward something of virtually no value in the open resale market --- even if it was fully paid off and completely current right now, today. That's surely a very difficult concept to accept and swallow; it certainly seems counter-intuitive to consider paying thousands of dollars more for something which (even if paid off and owned free and clear and offered out in the open marketplace today) has essentially zero attraction and / or resale value to others.

You might want to consider a brief consultation with a local attorney you trust, just to discuss and understand the impact of looming consequences if you decide to stick to your guns and pay Wastegate not another cent. You can, for example, exercise some control over unwelcome collection calls.

 

[bnoble]

Just got off the phone with a Rep. I was not aware of this and wanted to inform everyone here. Westgate DOES NOT have a buy back deed in lieu of foreclosure program. They don't buy deeds back ever. According to this rep, financial hardship would only allow for a 2 month break in payments that would be added back towards the end of the payments.

How accurate is this information? Unless she was lying I guess it is accurate. So if anyone else on the forums ever asks. Wastegate WILL NOT buy back your deed. It's not even an option.

You already know the answer for you. You've sent the letter, they've told you your "offer" was not accepted. Whether that's true for others is immaterial.

Follow the instructions provided to stop the phone calls, and for the love of all that is good, stop calling them. Read everything they send you, and if they eventually send you something that requires your actions for a foreclosure, follow those instructions (checking in here first if you like.) Your credit scores will almost certainly take a hit, because you will have a (potentially sizable) loan that you committed yourself to, and that you did not pay off. How much will that cost you in the long run? Hard to say. If you are planning to finance a major purchase, apply for credit cards, etc. in the next several years, you will pay a higher interest rate on money borrowed, and may even end up being declined those loans/cards.

In the meantime, get the rest of your financial house in order. You've allowed a balance to build on the WG credit card. Do you have any other credit cards? Do you have balances on those too? If so, start doing everything you can to pay those down as fast as you can---and that means saving every dollar you can elsewhere. Go to Starbucks a few times a week for a $3 coffee? Stop doing that, and brew your own at home. Pick up a second, part-time job if you can swing it, and use every single dollar you earn in that to pay off any card balances you have.

 

[DeniseM]

I want to know WHERE you can get a $3 coffee at Starbucks!

 

[TUGBrian]

have had reports as recently as a week or so ago from members who have successfully surrendered their intervals back to westgate (it cost them a decent amount of money to do so, but it was done nonetheless).

it does however likely depend on the resort im sure, but you also likely need to get thru the bottom level operators to get a good answer.

 

[bnoble]

Denise: a medium drip coffee will be a bit less that that.

it does however likely depend on the resort im sure, but you also likely need to get thru the bottom level operators to get a good answer.

It probably has to be owned free and clear. OP still has a (possibly sizable) loan on the purchase price.

 

[prosam]

Hey All,
Its been a while since my last update (December 2016) on this and I've been meaning to comeback and do one more update. So here I am.

After this whole fiasco I did stop making payments and did opt out of the phone calls so those stopped. The letters also seemed to stop which is odd. I still get their promotional letters with their offers which is also odd being that I already own a timeshare, technically. So it seems I am in the clear. I don't have to worry about passing on this burden to my kids.

There was a silver lining to all this though. I dove head first into fixing my finances due to this mess. I had heard of Dave Ramsey, even had a friend let me borrow his financial peace university kit, but never really put much thought into it. I figured I was doing OK living paycheck to paycheck. Oh boy! This whole TM thing really opened my eyes to how wrong I was.

So I bought in hook, line and sinker to DR's teaching and in a year I have paid off 8 credit cards and half of a personal loan. I am on track to be debt free in less than 2 years. Due to this my credit score went from the 700s (not bad) to almost perfect at 825. The foreclosure of the TM has not affected me one bit, not even a ding, as someone had mentioned earlier in this thread.

I want to thank everyone who helped me out during this craziness, I really do appreciate it. Your advice really did calm down my nerves and anxiety and helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you.

 

[Passepartout]

prosam, that's all really good news. See, it seems that every dark cloud has a silver lining. Glad you found it.

 

[prosam]

prosam, that's all really good news. See, it seems that every dark cloud has a silver lining. Glad you found it.

Thanks @Passepartout indeed they do. Its just a little hard to see that lining when you all up in the darkness. LOL Gotta step out and find it.

 

[VacationForever]

@prosam Thanks for the update. We are glad it all worked out.

 

[LannyPC]

The foreclosure of the TM has not affected me one bit, not even a ding, as someone had mentioned earlier in this thread.

I'm glad to hear this as first-hand experience. Many here on TUG have been calling for ones like you with such first-hand experience as to what can/would happen if you stopped paying and let it go into foreclosure.

Of course, this does not mean that every situation like yours will turn out the way it did. There might be some delinquent owners out there who have had their credit affected but just not reported it here on TUG.