Totally clueless.... [Diamond Resorts]

Totally clueless....

My son and his family and I just spent a week at Diamond Resort's San Luis Bay Resort in California, we purchased the week from a member on
Craig's List ... a week for $375.00, wonderful deal for a one bedroom with an additional lock off!! We had a great stay and decided to attend a meeting to see if membership would be something we would be interested in. We didn't purchase at the time, came home to think about it, and I found this TUG website while I was researching (thank God!!). We were offered the same deal as DRI Newbie (about $10,000 for 2500 points) and were definitely going to go for it, now I'm thinking it is not a good idea. The part that really interested us was The Club, where you could reserve lodging in many different resorts for a week for around $350 for the week. My son travels a lot and this was a very interesting concept for his business travel. My question is.. if we purchase points from a resale, which sounds like the best option, is there a way to get into The Club so you can access the deals they offer. OR is there another TS out there that is a better deal than Diamond Resorts? Also, the maintenance fees seem outrageously priced, is there a TS that has lower fees? I am BRAND NEW at this, do not own a Time Share yet, but am very interested. Thank you.

Hi and welcome to TUG!

When you compare maintenance fees, have you considered how much it would cost to rent the same property? That's a good way to figure out if the maintenance fee is high or not. You can't really compare the maintenance fee to renting a hotel room. With a timeshare you get a condo with a kitchen, living area, private bedroom, and often laundry facilities, etc. So you are getting more value for your money.

There is a huge range - my 1 bedroom timeshare in Tahoe is about $500 a week and my 2 bdm. on Maui is about $2,200 a week.

What range are you looking for, in a maintenance fee?

Well like I said I am really just starting to research this, so don't know the numbers too well. Diamond Resorts didn't sell specific locations, they sell points to be used to rent at their resorts, and evidently 2500 points a year doesn't really amount to all that much. The Maintenance fee on 2500 points was about $800 a year. The more points you have, of course, the higher the maintenance fees. It seems if you want to book a 2 bedroom resort quite a ways out(timewise), you need about 10,000 points or so. But we were really interested in what they called The Club, and they showed us a book that had resorts in it, that if booked less than a month out got really fantastic rates, like $350 for a 2 bedroom for a week.

SheilaF said:

But we were really interested in what they called The Club, and they showed us a book that had resorts in it, that if booked less than a month out got really fantastic rates, like $350 for a 2 bedroom for a week.

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This is what they probably didn't tell you - almost everything good is gone at 1 month out. All the will be left is less desirable resorts and locations. So it's not really a good deal. It's certainly not worth the thousands more you would pay if you buy from the developer. You can pick up Diamond points for nearly free on the resale market.

That is pretty much what we are figuring out from reading the posts on here. Are there other timeshares that are better than Diamond? Like maybe Hyatt or Hilton or Marriott or any of those, I think it could be a while to make a decision, looks like I have a lot of learning to do!!

There are lots of options and they aren't really better or worse - it's what fits your needs the best.