EagleEye
TUG Member
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2017
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 113
- Resorts Owned
- HGVC - Elara
Hi everyone,
I am new here. Wish I had found this place a couple of years ago – would be several thousand dollars wealthier.
My wife and I bought an Elara biennial timeshare in Las Vegas around Christmas 2014 – I don’t know what we were drinking. We bought into their whole spiel, ”this will only increase in value with time”, “Las Vegas is the most desirable place for timeshares”, etc., and I thought a golden week had to be the best (their idea of a “Golden” week is August in Las Vegas!).
We expected to only spend time in Las Vegas once in a great while. They seemed to have some reasonable ways to substitute points for cruises and time at other timeshares, so we caved and bought.
I went on disability a few months later and I'm still out. We have been using our points to go on cruises, and after a couple cruises using our points realize this is a ripoff also. $1,000 (for maintenance fees) I thought would at minimum take more than $1,000 off the cruise cost, but not the case. It ends up costing us about $300 more than what we could have obtained using expedia when taking into account the MFs.
I've been very busy trying to get healthy again, and my wife just works, works, works; now I'm beginning to pay more attention as I slowly recover. Since I now believe HGVC are pirates, I’m very concerned of MFs skyrocketing – it seems they have absolute authority to do whatever they please. They even had the gall to ask me to donate to their legal defense fund on our latest MF bill! I wish we had the sheets of paper they were scribbling all their lies on as evidence, but we were just soooo naïve. I think they were spiking the drinks. I’m amazed there are not any class action lawsuits against HGVC. I could not find any.
Anyway, we would very much like to get out of this timeshare. I don't like to do business with any entity this sleazy. I fear they will manage to take more of our hard earned money. It appears several of you here are making a go of it, but I'm afraid it takes more savvy than we have to deal with people who seem to have no conscience.
The principal is paid off, so I thought about just stopping payments on MFs. I know the hit on the credit rating might be substantial, but if this thing is worth absolutely nothing, perhaps it’s worth taking the hit.
I asked HGVC if they were interested in taking the deed back and was told no. They sent me over to HGVC resale who said that they would be able to sell it but it was only worth about $2,000 to $3000. Buuuut, I would have to sign up for a year-and-a-half exclusive contract with them to sell it. If I was not so untrusting of anything Hilton after this experience, I would probably have signed up.
So, I thought I would try to sell it on TUG. However, after perusing around TUG ads for a while I’m wondering if this thing is worth anything. I read through one of the stickies on the TUG Forum on how to sell your timeshare but immediately became confused on how to assess our timeshare's value (or perhaps should I say non-value). I see that some people in their ads have a week, while some people have points and a week. How does one compare the points versus a week in order to come up with a reasonable price? We have 5000 points but the contract also states that we have week 33 on odd years.
Very much appreciate any help.
EagleEye (not feeling so Eagle Eye'ish at the moment )
I am new here. Wish I had found this place a couple of years ago – would be several thousand dollars wealthier.
My wife and I bought an Elara biennial timeshare in Las Vegas around Christmas 2014 – I don’t know what we were drinking. We bought into their whole spiel, ”this will only increase in value with time”, “Las Vegas is the most desirable place for timeshares”, etc., and I thought a golden week had to be the best (their idea of a “Golden” week is August in Las Vegas!).
We expected to only spend time in Las Vegas once in a great while. They seemed to have some reasonable ways to substitute points for cruises and time at other timeshares, so we caved and bought.
I went on disability a few months later and I'm still out. We have been using our points to go on cruises, and after a couple cruises using our points realize this is a ripoff also. $1,000 (for maintenance fees) I thought would at minimum take more than $1,000 off the cruise cost, but not the case. It ends up costing us about $300 more than what we could have obtained using expedia when taking into account the MFs.
I've been very busy trying to get healthy again, and my wife just works, works, works; now I'm beginning to pay more attention as I slowly recover. Since I now believe HGVC are pirates, I’m very concerned of MFs skyrocketing – it seems they have absolute authority to do whatever they please. They even had the gall to ask me to donate to their legal defense fund on our latest MF bill! I wish we had the sheets of paper they were scribbling all their lies on as evidence, but we were just soooo naïve. I think they were spiking the drinks. I’m amazed there are not any class action lawsuits against HGVC. I could not find any.
Anyway, we would very much like to get out of this timeshare. I don't like to do business with any entity this sleazy. I fear they will manage to take more of our hard earned money. It appears several of you here are making a go of it, but I'm afraid it takes more savvy than we have to deal with people who seem to have no conscience.
The principal is paid off, so I thought about just stopping payments on MFs. I know the hit on the credit rating might be substantial, but if this thing is worth absolutely nothing, perhaps it’s worth taking the hit.
I asked HGVC if they were interested in taking the deed back and was told no. They sent me over to HGVC resale who said that they would be able to sell it but it was only worth about $2,000 to $3000. Buuuut, I would have to sign up for a year-and-a-half exclusive contract with them to sell it. If I was not so untrusting of anything Hilton after this experience, I would probably have signed up.
So, I thought I would try to sell it on TUG. However, after perusing around TUG ads for a while I’m wondering if this thing is worth anything. I read through one of the stickies on the TUG Forum on how to sell your timeshare but immediately became confused on how to assess our timeshare's value (or perhaps should I say non-value). I see that some people in their ads have a week, while some people have points and a week. How does one compare the points versus a week in order to come up with a reasonable price? We have 5000 points but the contract also states that we have week 33 on odd years.
Very much appreciate any help.
EagleEye (not feeling so Eagle Eye'ish at the moment )