Opinion Needed! [Offer on free timeshare from Mark Nayman]

[csxjohn]

A new buyer has just come along, asked a couple of minor questions about my timeshare, and she's now ready to start the closing process, and she wants us to use Timeshare Closing Services and take care of coordinating with TCS. The swiftness of her volunteering to take charge of the closing process - completely ignoring my earlier query if she's a TUG member, and my suggestion that we use LTT - makes me a bit uneasy and tells me to take things slowly.

Given the initial negative vibe, as seller i will control the closing process and that includes the choice of the closing company and i'll find out more about her suggested TCS.

I'm inclined to insist using LTT, but am open to using TCS if there's enough positive feedback from you out there. I'd greatly appreciate your input.
Thanks. Andy

This still doesn't smell right to me.

The TCS web site has a fraud warning that says if you're contacted by someone you can write to them and they'll verify if they have a relationship.

What's to stop them from telling you it's legit and be in on a scam themselves.

To me the web site looks a lot like other phony TS sites I've seen.

http://www.timeshareclosingservices.com/Credentials/tabid/685/Default.aspx

Stick to your guns and control the process yourself.

 

[andycus]

This still doesn't smell right to me.

The TCS web site has a fraud warning that says if you're contacted by someone you can write to them and they'll verify if they have a relationship.

What's to stop them from telling you it's legit and be in on a scam themselves.

To me the web site looks a lot like other phony TS sites I've seen.

http://www.timeshareclosingservices.com/Credentials/tabid/685/Default.aspx

Stick to your guns and control the process yourself.

Thanks for the advice. Will follow my gut feel and your advice - good bye buyer, and on to the next, till I find the right one. Since I'm a newbie and she's most likely an expert in her dark field, she could still find ways to outmaneuver me in the closing / transfer process, even if I prevail on the choice of a closing company. I'm safer ditching her.

I'm right now in the midst of closing my only other timeshare thru LTT, with a buyer who responded to my ad on TUG. My experience with this decent buyer is very different with the other 'buyers' I've described on this thread and a couple of other threads. My experience with him has provided me a valuable way of comparing how a real buyer behaves vs how a pseudo-buyer/scammer does - they're so different, from the initial email inquiry all the way through the closing process, I could feel the courtesy and reasonableness on one, and the brusqueness, haste and pressure on the other. I'm learning fast from the TUG community!

 

[wheniwasyoung]

FYI Mark Nayman is not the person who is contacting me.

 

[Coach]

I am responding to this thread since my name has been brought up as being associated with questionable transfers between someone stating they are me and "wheniwasyoung", "DandJ" and "Andycus"...
I Mark Nayman, am a real estate broker and not the person who had contacted "wheniwasyoung" and "DandJ" although I had email contact with Andycus. I was interested in purchasing one of Andycus' timeshares he had for sale. Andycus was being cautious (which was the right thing to do) in wanting the closing company of his choosing to be used in the transfer. I asked if he would be OK with a closing company I have been using well over 10 years and he declined which I respected. Discussions had ceased and there was and has been no further contact from that point.
As we continually hear and I stress, please be careful as to whom you do business with and ask for licensing information and references. I have had my company's identity stolen in the past year and now my name. This is not pleasant.

Mark

 

[theo]

My $0.02 worth...

A new buyer has just come along, asked a couple of minor questions about my timeshare, and she's now ready to start the closing process, and she wants us to use Timeshare Closing Services and take care of coordinating with TCS. The swiftness of her volunteering to take charge of the closing process - completely ignoring my earlier query if she's a TUG member, and my suggestion that we use LTT - makes me a bit uneasy and tells me to take things slowly.

Given the initial negative vibe, as seller i will control the closing process and that includes the choice of the closing company and i'll find out more about her suggested TCS.

I'm inclined to insist using LTT, but am open to using TCS if there's enough positive feedback from you out there. I'd greatly appreciate your input.
Thanks. Andy

Timeshare Closing Services (in Orlando, FL if I'm not mistaken) is the mandatory closing entity for some PCC's (PostCard Companies) who routinely advertise on eBay. That fact doesn't make them good or bad, but it certainly prompts me to wonder about the possibility of some undisclosed affiliation between your new insistent buyer and TCS. Otherwise, if the buyer wanted to steer the closing toward a particular entity, why not toward an independent closing entity (e.g., JRA Services, Timeshare Transfer, Inc, LTT?)

It's your timeshare and your prerogative to ensure that a completely independent closing entity is utilized, even if you have to absorb the closing costs yourself to make that happen. Somehow, this new proposal (...much like the last one you received) exudes a bit of a faint but distinctly suspicious "aroma", IMnsHO.

 

[andycus]

Timeshare Closing Services (in Orlando, FL if I'm not mistaken) is the mandatory closing entity for some PCC's (PostCard Companies) who routinely advertise on eBay. That fact doesn't make them good or bad, but it certainly prompts me to wonder about the possibility of some undisclosed affiliation between your new insistent buyer and TCS. Otherwise, if the buyer wanted to steer the closing toward a particular entity, why not toward an independent closing entity (e.g., JRA Services, Timeshare Transfer, Inc, LTT?)

It's your timeshare and your prerogative to ensure that a completely independent closing entity is utilized, even if you have to absorb the closing costs yourself to make that happen. Somehow, this new proposal (...much like the last one you received) exudes a bit of a faint but distinctly suspicious "aroma", IMnsHO.

Thanks. After I told my buyer that I'd be willing to proceed only if it were LTT, and not TCS, to close the deal, she disappeared, but not until after she gave this parting shot "I'm not a member of TUG but as the buyer I had to protect myself. I was referred to the closing company from one of the members at TUG. I have to question now if this is a legit post. I have read many scam stories and this feels a little like it." Funny that she would think my post/ad felt like it's a scam, when all I wanted was to use a reputable closing company - LTT for giving away my timeshare for USD1.00, and for her to pick up the MF tab at the resort (I didn't ask her to pay the MF directly to me!). This is 'turning the table' of a different kind!

 

[csxjohn]

.. Funny that she would think my post/ad felt like it's a scam, when all I wanted was to use a reputable closing company - LTT for giving away my timeshare for USD1.00, and for her to pick up the MF tab at the resort (I didn't ask her to pay the MF directly to me!). This is 'turning the table' of a different kind!

If you turn the table around and look at it from her side I can see how it might look like a scam to her.

Imagine a person who does not look here on TUG have a seller insist on using their closing company especially if another TUG member recommended someone else to her.

She wants to use someone recommended to her and you don't want to use that company, if she's being totally truthful.

Best to move on to a new taker, neither of you felt comfortable with each other.

Perhaps you could do her a favor and direct her to TUG and this thread. Who knows, we might end up with another enlightened member.

 

[andycus]

If you turn the table around and look at it from her side I can see how it might look like a scam to her.

Imagine a person who does not look here on TUG have a seller insist on using their closing company especially if another TUG member recommended someone else to her.

She wants to use someone recommended to her and you don't want to use that company, if she's being totally truthful. UNQUOTE

Buyer and I have both moved on, me disengaging first. But for my education...

I'm not very familiar with the scammer's many creative ways, but I still can't see how my post/ad/insistence on using a TUG endorsed closing company for a dollar sale of my timeshare, with the buyer picking up the MF tab payable directly to the resort and not to me, and she also paying the closing fee directly to the closing company and not to me (all of which payments and steps she had accepted, except for the choice of the closing company (TCS) and she taking care of coordinating and controling the closing process) could be construed as a scam by the seller. To me, the outlined process does not provide for an opportunity for me to get a single cent (well, one dollar, in theory), so how could she think it's a scam? But then again, I don't think like a scammer...

 

[DandJ]

Just to let everyone know. My timeshare sale came to a successful conclusion. The week is no longer deeded to me (saw the new deed on the county clerk website) and the contract with Vacation Village is also no longer in my name. All done by the buyer with no cost to me. It's actually not a very complex process.