When trades won't work, what do I do?

I was referred this forum for some advice on trading in my timeshare. For over a deacade, my family and I vacationed out in Key West, in Florida. The kids had a whole crew of friends out there and once I landed my first marlin I was hooked! We decided to get a timeshare because it worked out to be less than paying for a hotel, plus it came with amenities like a kitchen and garage. It was a pretty good set up for a while. Now the kids are grown up and the fishing has not been as good these past few years. My wife even tried to work out a timeshare swap for a place in Cancun, but there is nothing halfway decent available. Does anyone know of a way to get out of this type of timeshare?

I don't know how you were trying to trade, but check with the independent exchange companies like www.daelive.com or www.sfx-resorts.com or www.htse.net

If you still want to sell, try www.bidshares.com or eBay. The first has free auctions and if you have a starting bid of $1, you can be certain someone would buy it since Key West is pretty high demand.

How far in advance are you looking??

If you want to exchange, you'll have best luck by depositing your week a full year in advance of the check-in date at your resort and making your exchange request more than a year in advance. Doing both of those steps will enhance the trading power of your week and get you "in line" for the weeks you want in exchange, many of which are deposited by owners a year or so in advance. The more popular weeks may well be gone by the time you make an exchange request if you don't make your request early.

If you decide to sell your timeshare, see the "how to sell" article located at the top of the list of topics for this Buying, Selling, Renting forum. It has sound advice for generating a successful sale without getting scammed.

Based on the fact that it sounds like you have had this awhile, I'm guessing it's The Galleon.

If it is, they have a resale program, I believe. If it is a desirable week, it should not be hard to sell. You just have to understand that resale prices, generally, are much lower than prices when you buy from a resort or a developer.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet, through search engines.

If you want to see what weeks at your resort are selling for, resale, or to find sites where they are being offered, to select, try googling something like Key West Timeshares For Sale.

If you are search engine challenged, just say so and someone will be happy to walk you through it.

You received good advice here and now you have paid Timeshare Relief to take your timeshare? If you want to vacation, timeshare is the absolute best way to accomplish it. We traveled 9 weeks last year and stayed in timeshare every single night of those nine weeks. I will no longer use a hotel, even for a night.

I never believe these posts and have discovered more and more that these thread starts always lead to some off-hand advertisement of Timeshare Relief. Yours was one I was watching.

What is the name of this resort and the maintenance fees?

Did I miss something here? I didn't see anybody mention Timeshare Relief.

Joe, the guy is posting on another thread, telling all of us here that he paid Timeshare Relief to take his timeshare off his hands. It's too unbelievable after the advice he received.

http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43437

Actually, the OP has stated in the linked thread of having received advice to use Timeshare Relief, but I haven't seen anything that states the OP followed that advice.

All who post on this subject should ensure that the TUG "Be Courteous" rule is followed and that personal attacks are avoided.

I am sorry, Dave. I just kinda knew when I saw this original post that it was fishy (pun intended).

There was another person who posted as denisebirch and it was the same thing. This was followed by the other two posters. I just think it is as transparent as saran wrap.