We signed a "trade in agreement" for a timeshare with Global Vacations when we bought into Grand Luxxe right before we found TUG. Read a bunch of posts on the subject here; some people have luck with them transferring the ownership promptly, some don't. Seems like they'll get it done if Vidanta pushes them. Ultimately we decided that we didn't want to send them money to take the TS off our hands; it's actually a very good trader in RCI points with a low MF/points ratio. The whole thing struck me as being a bit fishy in the first place anyway because Vidanta never verified our ownership prior to accepting it as a "trade in." There were a lot of other issues with the "trade in agreement" as well that struck me as making it unenforceable as a contract either for or against us; I posted my thoughts on that in an older thread you can probably find easily by searching for Global Vacation. The way things worked out for us was a few weeks after we got home we were contacted by Global to offer to sell us the timeshare we had "traded in," which would have been a good deal for them (having us pay them the $900 or so as a transfer fee, plus another sales fee to keep the TS; they started out at around $2900, I believe - bottom line is they would have taken ~$3800 from us to do nothing but make a couple of phone calls and send us a couple of e-mails). In the end, we contacted Vidanta member services and told them we just wanted to keep the TS for sentimental reasons and they had Global Vacation send us an email stating that we were released from the "trade in agreement."
My suggestion to you would be to go the route of having member services cancel the "trade in agreement" and give the TS away on TUG if you don't want it; alternatively you could just keep it like we did and use it as a trader still. The amount Global wants to execute the transfer is an up front payment for something that may or may not go through. I believe that member services could twist their arms to make them do it, but they'll try to "sell" the timeshare you still own back to you unless it is one that they (or you) could sell readily on their (your) own. I've run into some folks down in NV that said it worked out for them having the TS transferred, but the circumstances didn't add up for me to go forward with it. Interestingly enough, we upgraded w/Vidanta after that and they insisted on writing up additional "trade in agreements" and voiding them as part of the transaction to justify the costs we negotiated. It struck me as an odd thing to feel you have to do for a transaction, maybe a face-saving type of action that you see in some cultures. They didn't verify ownership of the TSs we were "trading in" for the upgrade, either.
Hope that helps.
We’re encountering the same thing right now. This is very confusing.
In early Nov. while at RM, we were given a 14,000 discount toward our purchase by selling our timeshare through “Timeshare Resale Market”. This week they called and gave us 2choices;either pay them $3000 dollars and keep our Timeshare OR pay them $2000 and they will sell it for us.
With the first option we get to keep all the profit from this sale “because it is obviously worth a lot more than the 10k we paid for it back in 1996”. I almost laughed out loud. Plus you can go to their website and see several units for sale for 16-30k, lol
But luckily I’ve been reading all over TUG and elsewhere and see that these units are selling for peanuts.
The second option we get to send them 2k and they will sell our timeshare. If it takes longer than a year, then we’re on the hook for another MF.
I wonder if I can simply tell Vidanta that I don’t want to sell our old timeshare and tell “Timeshare Resale Market” no thank you. It seems like Vidanta just discounted the price and it really didn’t matter what we owned. They didn’t check and our old timeshare still has us on the books as owners.
We did sign an equity value agreement saying we agree to sell it but I’m not positive that this is a binding agreement or more smoke up my pants since I just called and we still own it. If it is binding, I would rather counter offer them a lower amount and keep the timeshare and then dump it for cheap rather than pay them 3k to keep it or 2k to sell it.
It’s not worth the 2k I would sell it for but the reason I signed for it was because the 14k discount seemed like a good deal.
What do you think about our issue?
Would Vidanta care if we backed out of selling the old timeshare?especially since they have no financial interest in the sale.
Would they be willing to help us out of the deal with the resell company?
Also, When we went to rescind while at Vidanta two days later, were told by sales guy that it was too late because you only get one time per ten years to start the process of selling a timeshare, and that this process had already begun and if we stop the process, we would be stuck with it till 2027.
