Donate for a Cause - good news

I just want to say I have successfully transferred ownership of my weeks at both the Mayan Palace and Royal Holiday Club.

A TUG member took ownership of my RHC points. That sale took a couple of months to complete as RHC is slow completing docs, but it went smoothly.

I donated my two Mayan weeks to Donate for a Cause. I must admit I was very pleasantly surprised at how professional the people at Donate were. I paid them $995 for the transfer, of course concerned that my hard-earned money might be going down a deep hole.

To the contrary, the transfer of ownership was complete in 3 days. Donate for a Cause has an affiliate company, Resort Closings, Inc. that handles the escrow. Their associate Mr. Ed McKenna was polite and professional.

I was worried primarily because the Mayan wanted over $3200 to transfer my ownership to a private party. However, Donate and Resort Closings have effected an agreement with the Mayan to forgive the transfer fee with Donate, They gave me a document guaranteeing that in writing; I had them put it in writing in the contract that I would not be charged a transfer fee and that I would be refunded my $995 if the transaction failed.

A word of caution...I had a totally different experience with the so-called "resale companies" whom I had spoken with before I learned about TUG. Several of them hung up on me when I pressed them for written assurances they would guarantee my "sale." That is why I felt it important to state here on TUG that I had a very good experience with Donate for a Cause.

Best advice...get lots of feedback from the folks here on TUG before paying any resale company to "sell" your weeks.

Question - did they tell you that you could get a big tax write-off with this donation? Be sure you get a 2nd (professional) opinion on that. A tax write off is supposed to be at fair market value - if you have to pay someone to take your TS off your hands, the fair market value is zero!

Readbob

Since you had to pay them $995 for the transfer I wonder how did they justify that fee ? Surely legal costs would not be anywhere that high. Are the fees higher because the Mayan Palace is in Mexico ?

Kola

$995 is not just the transfer cost, it's what they charge to take a timeshare with no resale value off your hands. This week isn't being transferred back to the Mayan Palace - Donate for a Cause will be selling it on ebay or something similar.

Donate's motives

The Mayan must have an agreement with Donatge not to charge any future transfer fees, just so the Mayan can get new owners that will be paying their maint fees...plus the double maint fee every five years. That's whiy I wanted to get rid of it this year. Next year perhaps no one would have wanted it since the anniv date for 2 fees would be one year hence.

donate for a cause

I am presently working with donate for a cause. I have three timeshares that I'm hoping to get rid of. They informed me yesterday OCT 15 that I had to pay $1800 up front for each unit that I wanted to get rid of. They will give you a bit of "song and dance" if you ask what this pays for - but the bottom line from the president of the group was we charge $1800 up front for each unit. Then , of course, there are the transfer fees from the timeshare company.They informed me that they will have to charge me twice for the transfer fee. I pay one transfer fee to transfer to "donate for a cause" and then a second transfer fee for whoever buys the property.

Are we talking about the same company? I expect to pay to get rid of my timeshares, but I didn't expect that there would be such variation of costs within one company. Yesterday after I heard about the double transfer costs I checked with another company.

I told the salesperson that I just wanted to hear about the costs of me getting rid of my units. He needed to know the maintenance costs associated with each unit. Within 2 to 4 minutes he had the figure for me - very competitive with Donate For A Cause - and possibly several thousand cheaper. I gave him absolutely no information about Donate For A Cause.

I have talked with a "cracker jack" tax lawyer. He advised me to carefully determine what money actually goes to charity. He tells me that there are some unconventional interpretations of this "charity money" - such interpretations may turn out to be quite problematic with IRS.

The rest of the story (...as Paul Harvey used to say)

hofmanr said:

I am presently working with donate for a cause. I have three timeshares that I'm hoping to get rid of. They informed me yesterday OCT 15 that I had to pay $1800 up front for each unit that I wanted to get rid of. They will give you a bit of "song and dance" if you ask what this pays for - but the bottom line from the president of the group was we charge $1800 up front for each unit. Then , of course, there are the transfer fees from the timeshare company.They informed me that they will have to charge me twice for the transfer fee. I pay one transfer fee to transfer to "donate for a cause" and then a second transfer fee for whoever buys the property.

Are we talking about the same company? I expect to pay to get rid of my timeshares, but I didn't expect that there would be such variation of costs within one company. Yesterday after I heard about the double transfer costs I checked with another company.

I told the salesperson that I just wanted to hear about the costs of me getting rid of my units. He needed to know the maintenance costs associated with each unit. Within 2 to 4 minutes he had the figure for me - very competitive with Donate For A Cause - and possibly several thousand cheaper. I gave him absolutely no information about Donate For A Cause.

I have talked with a "cracker jack" tax lawyer. He advised me to carefully determine what money actually goes to charity. He tells me that there are some unconventional interpretations of this "charity money" - such interpretations may turn out to be quite problematic with IRS.

Click to expand...

I am certainly not "defending" Donate for a Cause, but the simple fact of the matter is that the amount of the DFAC "fee" charged is directly tied to their self-determined likelihood of their being able to promptly "part with" with the particular timeshare "donated". I believe that there is actually a very small closing fee for a readily marketable timeshare, while timeshare weeks of little or no demand or value will require some hefty fees (...after all, they might well end up paying mf's for several years on a low demand / low value week they can't readily "dump" on eBay). As far as tax deductions go, wisdom (...not mine, actual tax experts) says that you will derive no tax benefit anyhow, since a "donation" of a timeshare with zero market value accordingly and predictably provides zero deduction...

P.S. Fyi, Donate for a Cause and Resort Closings, Inc are essentially the very same people (Attorney James Tarpey, et al, located in Bozeman, Montana), merely wearing different "hats" for different parts of the donation / closing process.

hofmanr said:

I told the salesperson that I just wanted to hear about the costs of me getting rid of my units. He needed to know the maintenance costs associated with each unit. Within 2 to 4 minutes he had the figure for me - very competitive with Donate For A Cause - and possibly several thousand cheaper. I gave him absolutely no information about Donate For A Cause.

Click to expand...

If you decide to go this route be aware of exactly what type of transaction you complete. Many (if not most) operations in which you pay them to get rid of your timeshare actually don't take title of the timeshare. Rather they have you execute a Power of Attorney given them the ability to sell your timeshare for you. But with a POA, you are still the owner and if they can't sell your timeshare you remain the owner. Which means you will still be on the hook for annual fees, etc., even after paying the outfit to supposedly take the timeshare off your hands.

Should you go this route, what you want to execute is a deed in which you transfer ownership of the timeshare to the other entity.

hofmanr said:

I have talked with a "cracker jack" tax lawyer. He advised me to carefully determine what money actually goes to charity. He tells me that there are some unconventional interpretations of this "charity money" - such interpretations may turn out to be quite problematic with IRS.

Click to expand...

I don't see where there is any kind of IRS issue. For donation purposes you are allowed to deduct fair market value, which is what you could sell it for. If you have to pay someone to take it off your hands, your fair market value is pretty clearly zero, which means there is no charitable donation.

Please consider giving it away to a private individual who can use it, before you spend a cent with a company like this.

Why do it yourself?

There are two places on TUG where you can give away your TS's for free (no charge for the Ads.) There are other cheap and free sites on the internet, as well.

TUG Marketplace - the only cost is your TUG membership - $15 (List it for $1 and it will automatically go in the Bargain Basement Ads.)

Bargain Deals - Totally FREE! - just write a simple post with all the pertinent info. In your post, include the following info.:

To make it more attractive I would:


Good luck!