redweeks4less

I'm considering a HGVC purchase from redweeks4less on ebay. Is anyone familiar with them and their reputation?

knpb said:

I'm considering a HGVC purchase from redweeks4less on ebay. Is anyone familiar with them and their reputation?

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Do a TUG search on the name. There are countless threads. AI Vacations, Redweek4less, Redweeks4less. They do not have a good reputation, at all.

This thread was started in 2013 and is currently being posted on.

http://tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199772

I think that you should reconsider your interest in their timeshare on eBay.

Thank you. You are why I posted here. Have a great day.

Saintsfanfl said:

Do a TUG search on the name. There are countless threads. AI Vacations, Redweek4less, Redweeks4less. They do not have a good reputation, at all.

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These are multiple names for the same seller. There must be a reason that they feel they need to use multiple names . . . .

Egret1986 said:

http://tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199772

I think that you should reconsider your interest in their timeshare on eBay.

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I think that you should reconsider your interest in any timeshare any of their entities list on eBay.

Run Away

Redweek4less is horrible, failed to deliver twice. Why would I buy twice? Their reputation is soooooooo bad, EBay auctions go really low.

knpb said:

I'm considering a HGVC purchase from redweeks4less on ebay. Is anyone familiar with them and their reputation?

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All you need to know:
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...anies/ia-vacations-in-sevierville-tn-90003947
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...-transfer/vp-title-in-sevierville-tn-90018552
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145835&page=2
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176043&page=4
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199772&page=5

Where to start. They use private listings to cover up shill bidders to bid up auctions, then you'll *immediately* be contacted after *losing* that they magically have a duplicate contract available. Since they are super efficient, they then use their shill bidder (who "won" multiple units therefore has multiple positive ratings) to leave positive seller feedback (which doesn't show the listing since it was private, so you can't tell they are relisting the same property over and over), which is how they maintain high rating, along with a lot of buyer ratings. Then they'll ask you to pay in *full* (which no legit title company will do), and worse ask you to pay *them* not the title company (which doesn't accept credit cards or PayPal is their excuse). The whole point of escrow is a third party holds the cash, so this is the first red flag. Then you'll notice the title company and IA Vacations (their real name) share the same physical address (see BBB above). Then they'll play cat and mouse, never actually submit your contract for ROFR, or submit a different unit under a different buyer name by "mistake" (probably one of the other buyers they sold the same unit to), and send it as "proof" they did something. Multiple people have stated they send the same estoppel to multiple buyers as "proof"--don't even bother changing the unit number. Multiple people have contacted Marriott, HGVC, etc. only to find the buyer name on the contract is "wrong" (e.g. one of the many other buyers they sold the same unit to) or was never submitted at all. The squeaky wheel ultimately gets the grease, which is how they manage to stay in business since *sometimes* they actually deliver a contract (after misrepresenting the ROFR no doubt and doubtful if they actually did a title search), and other times they'll refund the money after close to a year when threatened with lawsuits, BBB, police. By then, it's too late to leave negative feedback on eBay, or they'll refund your money in exchange for removing negative feedback. In the meantime they are holding on to millions of dollars of money paid upfront for timeshares never delivered. If 1 out of 10 people actually get their timeshare it gives hope to the greedy sheep to give it a shot, and since the majority get refunded, they are never caught for fraud, but if just 1 out of 10 people give up after getting tired of hounding them for money, then they can keep on scamming more people and eventually buy enough gold (which is the main thing they buy if you look at their inflated buyer ratings) and leave the country. Won't be pretty when this Ponzi scheme unravels. You've been warned.

None of the mass sellers use a truly independent title company and escrow. They are all controlled by the same people. So this fact alone is not what makes redweeks so bad. It is all the other stuff. The lies, deception, mistakes, and bad service. Sumday and the entities in Bozeman MT are great even though there are no truly independent closing companies.

Saintsfanfl said:

None of the mass sellers use a truly independent title company and escrow. They are all controlled by the same people. So this fact alone is not what makes redweeks so bad. ....

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SumDay discloses this fact and you sign a paper acknowledging that you know about it.

Saintsfanfl said:

None of the mass sellers use a truly independent title company and escrow. They are all controlled by the same people. So this fact alone is not what makes redweeks so bad. It is all the other stuff. The lies, deception, mistakes, and bad service. Sumday and the entities in Bozeman MT are great even though there are no truly independent closing companies.

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The problem is redweek4less/redweeks4less/IA Vacations make you pay *them* not the Title company. So you have no assurance your money is actually in escrow, and AFIACT no evidence either entity is licensed, registered, or insured, or actually provides Title services, Title Insurance, Escrow services, etc. Seems like two shell companies owned by another shell company, that uses shills to bid, shills to post positive reviews, shills to post reviews to TUG.

rfc0001 said:

The problem is redweek4less/redweeks4less/IA Vacations make you pay *them* not the Title company. So you have no assurance your money is actually in escrow, and AFIACT no evidence either entity is licensed, registered, or insured, or actually provides Title services, Title Insurance, Escrow services, etc. Seems like two shell companies owned by another shell company, that uses shills to bid, shills to post positive reviews, shills to post reviews to TUG.

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Sumday does the same thing, but they happen to be the very best mass timeshare reseller. While it might be a big red flag when buying a house, it is not what makes a seller so bad with timeshares. But make no mistake, the entity in question obviously has a horrible reputation.

If someone wants a truly independent escrow they need to stay away from all mass sellers, regardless of reputation. Even the ones that use a fully licensed title company, and you pay the closing entity directly rather than the selling entity, they still take full 100% of their direction from the selling entity. I realize it might be better than nothing but it is not an independent relationship. You will not receive a refund unless the selling entity says so, so in reality there is no difference than paying the selling entity directly. If push came to shove over a legal issue it "might" make a difference, but filing a lawsuit over a timeshare purchase is rarely cost effective.

EDIT: My basic point is not to be fooled by the illusion of independence. The worst reputation mass seller requires payment directly to the closing company, and they are a big step worse than redweeks4less.

Redweeks for less

They should get some smart 1st graders and they can probably do a better job than they are doing now. By the way don't question their motives or they will block you from bidding on any of all their auctions.

Have you noticed that they list on ebay hard to find timeshares? What is the probability of finding, say, a 148,000 staroption Westin consistently? I keep seeing 7000 pt HGVC and anywhere 81k or 148k staroptions.

Interesting.

Julian926 said:

Have you noticed that they list on ebay hard to find timeshares? What is the probability of finding, say, a 148,000 staroption Westin consistently? I keep seeing 7000 pt HGVC and anywhere 81k or 148k staroptions.

Interesting.

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It's hard to say but they save money by relisting rather than posting new. Posters have also previously speculated that they may have purposely or inadvertently run into a ponzi situation by owing refunds and not having the cash. It has been speculated that this has led to listing timeshares that they do not yet have and then they seek out the sellers. Any possible reasons would lead one to the advice of staying completely away from this operation.

I used them and everything worked out. It took a long time but that is normal with timeshares. A bit pushy after you win your bid but they worked for me and I would use them again!

Beating the odds...

homeland said:

I used them and everything worked out. It took a long time but that is normal with timeshares. A bit pushy after you win your bid but they worked for me and I would use them again!

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Your report of satisfaction with redweeks4less, if true, is a rare statistical anomaly. Consider maybe also buying a few lottery tickets since you may be "on a roll".

Then again, as far as statistical probability, your report of success brings to mind the saying that "even a blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn" --- or is it a nut?
Accordingly, maybe even redweeks4less manages to somehow get it right at least every now and then --- in spite of themselves.

homeland said:

I used them and everything worked out. It took a long time but that is normal with timeshares. A bit pushy after you win your bid but they worked for me and I would use them again!

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theo said:

Your report of satisfaction with redweeks4less, if true, is a rare statistical anomaly. Consider maybe also buying a few lottery tickets since you may be "on a roll".

Then again, as far as statistical probability, your report of success brings to mind the saying that "even a blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn" --- or is it a nut?
Accordingly, maybe even redweeks4less manages to somehow get it right at least every now and then --- in spite of themselves.

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Before you take one positive experience to give you confidence to do business with redweek4less/redweeks4less/IA vacations/VP Title, just check their reviews which are 100% negative:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ia-vacations-sevierville
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...anies/ia-vacations-in-sevierville-tn-90003947
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...-transfer/vp-title-in-sevierville-tn-90018552

If that's not enough, take the word of experienced members of this community who have no reason to lie and have publically stated that IA Vacations outright lied to them saying they submitted a timeshare transfer to ROFR only to find out from Marriott, HGVC, Wyndham, etc. that it was never submitted, was submitted under the "wrong name" (e.g. someone else they sold the same timeshare to), or sending the same estoppel to multiple buyers for the same unit. Are all these people lying?
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145835&page=2
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176043&page=4
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199772&page=5

Then consider they only use classified ad listings on eBay, which means eBay just makes money off the listing, not the sale, so doesn't have the normal restriction of offering it as a second chance offer only after first invalidating the first purchaser. This also means payments are made outside of eBay. As a result of these two facts, there is a) no way for eBay to detect a shill bidder for this seller, since they can't tell if the winning shill bidder paid or not and b) normally sellers don't want their shill bidder to win since this would mean they don't get paid (and ultimately will get caught for using shill bidders). However, redweeks4less/redweek4less shill bidders win 100% of the time but don't get caught because a) it's a classified listing therefore the payment is made outside of eBay so as long as the shill bidder marks the transaction as paid and leaves feedback for the seller and vice versa, everything appears legit. Keep in mind the sellers listings and feedback are classified so you can't tell they are using the same shill bidders over and over and can't tell the positive feedback is from shill buyers. The proof is in the pudding though -- 100% of buyers are outbid by shill bidders, then mysteriously win a "second chance offer" immediately following the auction since the "seller" just happened to have another identical unit. Seriously, will one person here confirm they actually won an auction without a second chance offer? The fact they use private listing is a red flag. The fact all winning bids are a second chance offer is confirmation of using shills to outbid buyers. The use of confidential reviews is further confirmation of shill bidders, which are even worse since they are providing shill feedback. To make matter even worse, they string buyers along until eBay closes feedback so they can't post negative feedback (thus their near perfect feedback on eBay). For the rare negative feedback that gets posted inside the window, they buy off the negative feedback by offering a refund in exchange for agreeing to retract the feedback (eBay feedback shows retracted feedback when it happens). To make matters even worse, the majority of their feedback is from sellers, not buyers, and the majority of sellers are selling gold (wonder where they are getting the money for that?).

In the mean time, this operation is taking in 100% of the funds up front and only paying out a timeshare in exchange after a year of badgering them -- making millions in revenue off the float in the meantime -- which you can cover up while the economy is getting better and you can always find more buyers to dump more cash to pay out the refunds for the sale they can't complete, this will all come collapsing down on them when the economy hits the skids and buyers disappear. If you like playing roulette with thousands of dollars, be my guest

P.S. In addition to using shill bidders and shill reviewers on eBay, they are using shill posters here on TUG (see the previous three links above where posters saying they had positive experience with them only posted 1-2 posts on TUG, all providing positive feedback on redweeks4less -- definite shills. Any company who goes to the extreme of using shills to defend themselves on TUG are absolute scams.

rfc0001 said:

Before you take one positive experience to give you confidence to do business with redweek4less/redweeks4less/IA vacations/VP Title, just check their reviews which are 100% negative:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ia-vacations-sevierville
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...anies/ia-vacations-in-sevierville-tn-90003947
http://www.bbb.org/knoxville/busine...-transfer/vp-title-in-sevierville-tn-90018552

If that's not enough, take the word of experienced members of this community who have no reason to lie and have publically stated that IA Vacations outright lied to them saying they submitted a timeshare transfer to ROFR only to find out from Marriott, HGVC, Wyndham, etc. that it was never submitted, was submitted under the "wrong name" (e.g. someone else they sold the same timeshare to), or sending the same estoppel to multiple buyers for the same unit. Are all these people lying?
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145835&page=2
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176043&page=4
http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199772&page=5

Then consider they only use classified ad listings on eBay, which means eBay just makes money off the listing, not the sale, so doesn't have the normal restriction of offering it as a second chance offer only after first invalidating the first purchaser. This also means payments are made outside of eBay. As a result of these two facts, there is a) no way for eBay to detect a shill bidder for this seller, since they can't tell if the winning shill bidder paid or not and b) normally sellers don't want their shill bidder to win since this would mean they don't get paid (and ultimately will get caught for using shill bidders). However, redweeks4less/redweek4less shill bidders win 100% of the time but don't get caught because a) it's a classified listing therefore the payment is made outside of eBay so as long as the shill bidder marks the transaction as paid and leaves feedback for the seller and vice versa, everything appears legit. Keep in mind the sellers listings and feedback are classified so you can't tell they are using the same shill bidders over and over and can't tell the positive feedback is from shill buyers. The proof is in the pudding though -- 100% of buyers are outbid by shill bidders, then mysteriously win a "second chance offer" immediately following the auction since the "seller" just happened to have another identical unit. Seriously, will one person here confirm they actually won an auction without a second chance offer? The fact they use private listing is a red flag. The fact all winning bids are a second chance offer is confirmation of using shills to outbid buyers. The use of confidential reviews is further confirmation of shill bidders, which are even worse since they are providing shill feedback. To make matter even worse, they string buyers along until eBay closes feedback so they can't post negative feedback (thus their near perfect feedback on eBay). For the rare negative feedback that gets posted inside the window, they buy off the negative feedback by offering a refund in exchange for agreeing to retract the feedback (eBay feedback shows retracted feedback when it happens). To make matters even worse, the majority of their feedback is from sellers, not buyers, and the majority of sellers are selling gold (wonder where they are getting the money for that?).

In the mean time, this operation is taking in 100% of the funds up front and only paying out a timeshare in exchange after a year of badgering them -- making millions in revenue off the float in the meantime -- which you can cover up while the economy is getting better and you can always find more buyers to dump more cash to pay out the refunds for the sale they can't complete, this will all come collapsing down on them when the economy hits the skids and buyers disappear. If you like playing roulette with thousands of dollars, be my guest

P.S. In addition to using shill bidders and shill reviewers on eBay, they are using shill posters here on TUG (see the previous three links above where posters saying they had positive experience with them only posted 1-2 posts on TUG, all providing positive feedback on redweeks4less -- definite shills. Any company who goes to the extreme of using shills to defend themselves on TUG are absolute scams.

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I don't think the part I put in red is accurate. Any classified listing I've found on eBay for timeshares or any other items are not in a bid format. They have a set price and a way to contact the seller.

Are you thinking of something other than a "classified" listing?

Not to mention e bay gets a flat final value fee, so they have no interest in the selling price for Real Estate Listings

I would never purchase from them. After reading all of their horror stories posted here. I value my time and money to much to waste either one of those precious commodities

I think it shows the true character of a company that blocks you from asking questions or from complaint and seeking a refund for monies owed to you from a TS that was never able to close.

I have them on MY do not buy list

Sugarcubesea said:

I would never purchase from them. After reading all of their horror stories posted here. I value my time and money to much to waste either one of those precious commodities

I think it shows the true character of a company that blocks you from asking questions or from complaint and seeking a refund for monies owed to you from a TS that was never able to close.

I have them on MY do not buy list

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This is GREAT !

P.S. In addition to using shill bidders and shill reviewers on eBay, they are using shill posters here on TUG (see the previous three links above where posters saying they had positive experience with them only posted 1-2 posts on TUG, all providing positive feedback on redweeks4less -- definite shills. Any company who goes to the extreme of using shills to defend themselves on TUG are absolute scams.[/QUOTE]

I see how this works. Anyone with a different opinion to yours is obviously fake! Most people tend to only give the negative reviews and rarely post the positive.

I have no horse in this race but I do take exception to someone saying my post is fake!!!

I used them in late 2013 and things went fine. A little slow, but about at the late end of the timeline they gave me. That said, given all of the recent horor stories I don't think I would try my luck again.

Lawduck, This is very much my experience. It went very slow and I contacted them multiple times. I did get a great deal on a HHI Marriott property and transfer went through. My purchase was in 2010 so a few years ago.

I am not sure with negative reviews if it is worth the risk and I believe I purchased might have been the low point for Marriott resales. Just a few months after the cutoff date for enrolling into points.

csxjohn said:

I don't think the part I put in red is accurate. Any classified listing I've found on eBay for timeshares or any other items are not in a bid format. They have a set price and a way to contact the seller.

Are you thinking of something other than a "classified" listing?

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Long story short, I was on the phone with eBay for 6 hours troubleshooting why I couldn't click Buy It Now for any item on eBay, referenced the "second chance offer" on this listing and they said it was a classified listing which is why I couldn't click Buy It Now (that wasn't the reason, but that was what they said). It's not listed as a classified listing, but works the same way -- they can offer as many second chance offers as they want and pay the same fee. It has to work this way since you are paying outside of eBay so eBay has no idea whether or not you paid, which is why they are unable to detect shill bidders (since the shill bidder can just Mark as Paid on the purchases and not actually pay, which makes them look legit, *and* gives them the ability to leave a positive review which shill bidders normally can't do (since they would have to actually pay for the item).

homeland said:

I see how this works. Anyone with a different opinion to yours is obviously fake! Most people tend to only give the negative reviews and rarely post the positive.

I have no horse in this race but I do take exception to someone saying my post is fake!!!

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a) it has nothing to do with what my opinion is
b) it doesn't matter what the shill says -- they are technically a shill regardless if they only register to post a positive review of a company and never post subsequently
c) your not a shill

Keep in mind the only way scams like this work is because of the positive reviews.