Club Regina, Puerto Vallarta

Hello, fellow Tuggers! I'm looking for some advice and I'm new to TUG, so if this topic has been covered already, please excuse the repetition. In March, 2005 my family & I (hubby + 14-year-old daughter) went to Puerto Vallarta for a Spring Break holiday - our first time in Mexico.

Like so many others, we got sucked into a timeshare presentation which took place the day after we arrived. It was at the Club Regina in PV and at that time it was called The Westin Club Regina. To make a long story short, we were talked into purchasing a week every other year, with an exchange affiliation with Raintree - which would have been fine, except for the circumstances under which we bought.

We were being very careful about eating uncooked food and unbottled water, etc. but when it came time for the complimentary brunch at the Club Regina, the salesman insisted that everything at the brunch was safe, so my husband had a spinach salad with alfalfa sprouts and carrot strips on top. In less than two hours - during the signing of the purchase papers - he began to exhibit symptoms of severe food poisoning. I was worried about him and didn't pay as much attention to what we were doing as I probably should have. A couple of hours later, after we had returned to our own resort, he required emergency medical care. He spent three hours hooked up to an IV and being pumped full of antibiotics. He was out of commission for almost the whole week we were in PV.

In the years since, we have both now retired and are finding that we are not travelling nearly as much - and when we do, we prefer to go on cruises. We do occasionally make use of our RCI points to do exchanges but we have found that Raintree has been of absolutely no use whatsoever when it comes to trying to make exchanges.

This being the case - and given the terrible circumstances under which we bought into the Mexican timeshare not to mention the ever-increasing maintenance and membership fees for something we will NEVER use - we would like to rid ourselves of this burden. We will be paid up for 2016 and are willing to just give it away.

Should we try selling it for $1.00 (I notice from the TUG market ads that timeshares aren't selling for even that low amount)? Give it away? Walk away? (Probably not as we don't want our credit rating ruined.) We just want to be free.

If you have an outstanding mortgage on this timeshare, even giving it away isn't an option.

At this point, you can default, and let it go into foreclosure, but that's about your only realistic option.

Club Regina PV- Raintree

BettyBoop52 said:

In the years since, we have both now retired and are finding that we are not travelling nearly as much - and when we do, we prefer to go on cruises. We do occasionally make use of our RCI points to do exchanges but we have found that Raintree has been of absolutely no use whatsoever when it comes to trying to make exchanges.

the Mexican timeshare not to mention the ever-increasing maintenance and membership fees for something we will NEVER use - we would like to rid ourselves of this burden. We will be paid up for 2016 and are willing to just give it away.

Should we try selling it for $1.00 (I notice from the TUG market ads that timeshares aren't selling for even that low amount)? Give it away? Walk away? (Probably not as we don't want our credit rating ruined.) We just want to be free.

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Dear BettyBoop52.,
There are both Club Regina TS and Raintree Club Regina TS . I own neither Both can be sold / given away for $ 1 ( see below as to your probable total cost )
Go and read your contract and get the details of what you bought 10 years ago .

For example how many points ( 30K / 50K / 80K ) ( Raintree Pts)
what is the annual MF ( maintenance fee)
Is your next use year even /2016 or odd / 2017
when does the RTU( right to use ) expire .
I believe ( from reading TUG ) that Club Regina RTU ends in 2026 while most Raintree CR end in 2046.

I believe you could deposit your week/ use ownership for 2016 into RCI and use the TPU value or RCI points towards a cruise . This is not the best value - but - it is a better value than paying the MF. and then getting nothing .

To get rid of it will probably cost you the MF for 2016 plus resort transfer fee ( $499 / per a eBay sale I just looked up) and closing cost ( ? / $ 500 or possibly less)

Post further details and other TUG members as well as owners may
be able to help you achieve your goal (s)
I believe you would need to place it in TUG Marketplace with all the details listed .

I believe not paying the MF / defaulting will affect your credit and may end up in collection
since Raintree is based in USA

You noted that your daughter was 14 when you bought . Is there any chance your now 24 year old would like a free vacation in Puerto Vallarta from Mom & Dad ? If you have paid for it why not have it used by a family member .
It is a nice resort in the PV Marina - also not AI ( all inclusive ) so walking to the many restaurants in the Marina area is very easy to do - and having a kitchen can save money on breakfast ( and lunch & dinner ) The site is shared with the Westin Hotel which has restaurants as well .

Wee have stayed next door at the Mayan Palace - 6 times - and really enjoy the Marina location

You don't say how many points you own. My rule of thumb is that a Gold level membership has zero value. Anything less than gold has negative value. Platinum and higher will likely have value.

Raintree points directly equate to RCI points, and RCI membership is included in the Raintree club ownership. It's actually a pretty reasonable relationship. If you know how to use the RCI points system you can get decent value out of your Raintree points.

As regards your husband getting sick, two hours is generally less than the time required for food related gastroenteritis to manifest. If what sickened him was food, more likely it was something he ate the day before, for lunch or dinner. But there are a lot of ways other than food that gastroenteritis diseases can be transmitted.

DeniseM: Thank you for your comment. We don't have a mortgage or loan of any kind. We paid in full.

T-Dot-Traveller: Thank you for giving me suggestions as to what more info to include in my query. We have 125,000 Raintree points. The annual maintenance fee is $1250.00 and it will be fully paid for 2016. Our next use year is even. The RTU( right to use ) expires in 2046. The resort season is Gold Prime. Ownership type is “Right to use”. Thank you also for the info re the resort transfer fee and the closing cost. We’d be happy to pay those if it gets us out of this tangle.
Re our daughter using it: she's newly married and she & her husband are somewhat cash-strapped after the wedding & honeymoon expenses, so they won't be interested in travelling to Mexico for quite awhile - but that was a good suggestion. Nonetheless, we are more interested in getting out of a long-term commitment that we are no longer interested in - or can really afford on a reduced retirement income.

T_R_Oglodyte: Thank you for responding to my query. We have Gold membership with Raintree and Platinum membership with RCI and use the latter quite regularly. The 4 - 5 times we have tried to go through Raintree, however, we've always been told that nothing was available in their inventory when we needed it, so we've given up trying to use them.
With regard to my husband getting sick: his symptoms were consistent with staphylococcus which "can cause food poisoning when a food handler contaminates food and then the food is not properly refrigerated. Other sources of food contamination include the equipment and surfaces on which food is prepared." The pathogen is extremely fast-acting - symptoms can appear within 1-6 hours of ingestion - and it is killed through cooking or bleaching. We had eaten only cooked food until my husband had the salad at Club Regina. My daughter & I stuck with the cooked food at the brunch buffet & we were fine.
The only reason I brought up the food poisoning was because I truly believe that if he hadn't gotten sick, we would have been much more careful about signing anything plus we could have taken advantage of the "cooling off" period to reconsider the deal if we had signed. As it was, he was much too ill to leave our suite and I was focussed on caring for him rather than the deal.

BettyBoop52 said:

The 4 - 5 times we have tried to go through Raintree, however, we've always been told that nothing was available in their inventory when we needed it, so we've given up trying to use them.

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This is a critical point: Resorts have very specific reservation rules. You need to find out what the very first day to make a reservation is, and call on that date, because you are competing with all other owners who want to go on the same date.

This is not just your resort - it is the way it works with ALL timeshares. If you cannot plan well in advance, timesharing will be frustrating for you.

This is why I would do:

-Call reservations and find out EXACTLY what season/dates you can reserve with your ownership.

-Also - find out what the very first day to call and make a reservation is.

-Then - sit down with a calendar, and pick a date in 2017 that you'd like to go on vacation, AND mark the earliest date you can reserve it on your calendar.

-When that reservation day comes around - call the second the reservation lines open and make a reservation. Set an reminder on your phone, set the alarm clock to get up early - whatever it takes.

Hi Denise - Thanks again for trying to help but my husband and I are quite fed up with all that rigmarole. We just want out. We're happy with RCI and for the occasional time we decide to exchange it's easier for us to use it. I think we will try listing our Club Regina time share on the TUG market site for $1.00 and also try listing it on places like eBay. We will, of course, absorb all costs.
I've also read on TUG about the possibility of trying to talk the resort into just accepting a "quit claim" for the unit. It's worth a try anyway. We don't mind losing a certain amount of $$ if it means being rid of this millstone.

Club Regina Puerto Vallarta

We are members of Raintree and we are enjoying 9 wonderful weeks at Club Regina in P.V. right now. We drink the water and eat the food prepared here with no problem. We love it here. As someone said, you need to make your reservation early. We have already reserved January 2017.
I hear you that you just want to unload it so I will ask around if someone here is interested. I need clarification. It sounds like you have a gold (50,000 point) and a platinum (80,000 point) membership and they are every other year. Is that correct?
We have friends here who are renting from members. Maybe they would be interested. Is your $1250 maintenance fee due every year so that it is really $2500 for your usage every other year?
Are the membershipscombined or separate?
I will try to help you. I could also talk to sales manager to see if they have any take back plan.
You can email me at donnadanne@yahoo.com if you wish. Good luck!

Dear Donna ,
You may need to PM the OP - Betty Boop52 since she was a first time TUG poster when she started this thread and may not come back regularly,

DonnaD said:

I will try to help you. I could also talk to sales manager to see if they have any take back plan.

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The "take back" plan operated by Raintree is the Raintree 7 conversion program.

Thanks, Donna for your message. I have sent you an email with the pertinent info.
Thanks also to T-Dot-Traveller and T_R_Oglodyte for your suggestions. I was unwell all last week so haven't been on TUG for awhile. It was a good idea to suggest that Donna pm me.
Just to reiterate, in case anyone new is reading this thread:
We have two different memberships, one with Raintree and one with RCI. While Raintree and RCI are affiliated, our RCI membership is completely separate; that's the one we use and we plan on keeping it so it would not be part of any Club Regina transfer. We have Gold membership with Raintree and when I last checked, we had 125,000 Raintree points. The maintenance fee is due every second year and it has been paid for 2016. The next maintenance fee will be due in 2018. We also paid an "assessment fee" of $75.00. This year's maintenance fee was $1,078.00. The Raintree membership fee, however, has to be paid every year. This year's membership fee was $172.00 for a total of $1,250.00. In the odd years we just get a bill for the membership fee. Our next use year is even. The resort season is Gold Prime. Ownership type is “right to use” and it expires in 2046. The original price, in 2005, was $12,500.00 and we paid it off entirely in June of that year. There is no mortgage or anything owing other than the yearly Raintree membership & every-second-year maintenance payments.
There's no question that Club Regina is a gorgeous property. It's just that as we've gotten older, my husband and I are travelling less and when we do, it's often a cruise or a quick & easy booking with our RCI points. We were also with Interval International (since 1999) & for years did the early planning thing but now, with our changed circumstances, we find it easier to just use points.
Donna, if you could find someone to take over for us we would be eternally grateful. Thank you so much for trying. We would also be happy if the resort would accept a "quit claim" for the unit which I understand would let them put it up for sale right away. We will, of course, cover our lawyer's cost for any legal "stuff" that would be necessary as well as resort cancellation fees if any.