Cathy, I've read this whole thread and it's seems you have two main goals:
1) You want to stay in nice timeshares at a reasonable price
2) You don't want to be stuck paying high maintenance fees on a timeshare you can't get rid of.
Both of these are very good goals. But, it sounds as if Westgate is the main (or only?) system you've looked into so far. And, I don’t think Westgate is a good option – it really won’t get you to either of your goals. There are much, much better timeshare options to achieve your goals.
For the first goal, it sounds like the Westgate you are considering actually has quite high maintenance fees. You said the fee was $419 a year, correct? And I assume you pay that *every* year, even though you only get usage once every *other* year? So, that actually makes the fee $838 for each usage. And, you only get four nights each usage, not seven? If so, that works out to $209.50 per night, which is $1466.5 per seven nights. That is a REALLY high maintenance fees.
Plus, it’s not clear if you can actually trade this in II. Yes, Westgate told you that you could. But, you said yourself that Westgate is a bunch of liars. Maybe the sales staff in Vegas seemed nice, but when it comes to exchanges, you will be dealing with Westgate HQ in Florida – the same group of people you despised back when you owned your Florida timeshare.
As for your second goal, Westgate timeshares are among the hardest to get rid of. I doubt you can get Westgate to insert a buy-back clause in their contract. And even if you did, you’d probably have to go to court to enforce it. As for giving a timeshare away to another owner, probably the best place to do that is here on TUG. But, hardly anyone on TUG will even consider a Westgate ownership.
Here are a couple of options that would work better:
1) Buy a summer every-other-year Fairways of the Mountains (Lake Lure, NC) two-bedroom. These actually “lock-off” into two one-bedroom units. So, this gives you a one-bedroom unit to trade each year. The MF is about $350 every year. This resort trades very well in II. And, with summer units, Interval will give you an “Accommodation Certificate” (bonus week) for each one-bedroom. The Accommodation Certificates have much, much better availability than Interval’s lower-priced Getaways. (By the way, the Getaway you saw priced at $2500 probably isn’t available as an exchange at all.) This resort trades in RCI, not just II, so you would also have access to RCI’s rentals as well. (It’s only a so-so trader in RCI.) These weeks are really quite rare, but I can give you tips on finding one.
2) Buy a small Worldmark contract. This costs more than Fairways of the Mountains, but Worldmark resale contracts hold their value very, very well. Even during the worst of the Great Recession, no one was giving Worldmark contracts away. The prices went down, but you still had to pay to get one. For $2000, you can buy a small Worldmark contract. This will allow you to join both II and RCI and get rentals from both. It will also allow you one very powerful trade in II or RCI every other year. The annual fee would be about $500, and I think that includes a “free” RCI membership (not sure.) You can also rent one-time use of Worldmark credits to give you another powerful trading week each year.
By the way, you said you want to travel a lot, but didn’t say how many weeks a year you mean. If you want to travel a *lot* -- say, 8 weeks or more per year – you best option would probably be a UDI ownership at Christmas Mountain Village in the Wisconsin Dells. This very unusual ownership allows booking many weeks per year. The MF is $1200, plus a $95 cleaning fee per week. If you book 8 weeks a year (very doable), that works out to a fee of $245 per week booked. The units are all two-bedrooms, and they trade very well in both II and RCI. It’s also pretty easy to rent a summer week out as a way of reducing your total cost.
I love my (many) timeshares, and I encourage you to buy a timeshare. Actual exchanges have much more availability than low-priced rentals and getaways. But please, expand your search beyond Westgate!