Warning to Timeshare Sellers about Redweek Full Service

[taterhed]

I am new to this users group so i am not sure if this is allowed (feel free to delete if not allowed) but my dad is looking to get rid of xxxxxxxxxxxxxx- for free (buyer would only pay whatever closing / transfer costs) for xxxxxpoints so xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

There is a correct method to offer bargains (free) on the forum. This is not the correct way.

Start reading here: https://tugbbs.com/forums/index.php?forums/bargain-deals.55/

Read the stickies (red) at the top: "how to giveaway..." "Bargain Forum rules..." etc .

welcome to TUG

 

[Egret1986]

I appreciate that @mla and @tink10 are willing to follow up on these issues at Redweek.

RedWeek is obviously being proactive and making an effort to listen to the deficiencies being experienced by consumers with their full-service option.

(Keep in mind that the estoppel is only as good as the person completing it at the management company).

Very correct statement. I have received a couple of incorrect estoppels from Diamond Resorts, one which caused a buyer of mine (new to timeshare ownership) to walk away from the sale due to the inconsistency between what I stated and what the estoppel stated. It took weeks to get a corrected estoppel. By the time I received it and provided it to the closing company, the nervous buyer had decided to nix the purchase.

 

[HeidingOut]

I'm glad to see Redweek following up on this. But, seriously my husband and I own a small business. If our customers had to ask 4 times for something they deemed as a very important detail (regardless if we feel the same), we would be out of business.

As I mentioned in my original posting, the Trust is VERY important to a Bluegreen sale. No where on any of the information the sales rep provided did they give me this info even though I requested it 3-4 times. The responses I received were obviously taken from a script of some sort as the information that the agent gave me was repeated in all of her/his emails and never actually addressed the information I was requesting. I'm not going to publicly shame an individual who obviously did not receive proper training as I think it would be inappropriate. So, I've not listed that agents name or the listing purposely. It seems to be a repeating pattern from both inquiries I've made over the last 12 months not just an individual agent issue.

To add to that, I'm also interested in a Vistana resort where you have several listings - Redweek Full Service. Yet, the ads neglect to include very important details about StarOptions. Since this is a mandatory resort (the entire resort/all buildings), ALL of the corresponding ads should list the StarOptions value. Yes, I'm sure I could figure it out based on if it's annual/EOY, season, and the number of bedrooms. But, why would you not just list this information? It's another demonstration of the inexperience of these agents or whomever is posting this information and responding to sales inquiries. I am by no means an expert on any of this which is another reason I'd just rather see the copy of the estoppel. You can black out the owner information. Ebay sellers (presumably your competition) do this quite freely or at least the few I've contacted.

Just my two cents anyway. But, I can tell you that it's already costs you at least one sale (our Lagunamar contract) which I ended up buying off of Ebay last year. I'm reconsidering our BlueGreen purchase in favor of a Vistana/Wyndham. But, every time I see Full Service next to a listing, I literally click the next link as I just don't want the hassle.

 

[taterhed]

Hmm.... I too am glad to see RedWeek working to improve. Bully for them!

Obviously, things could be better than they are/were, but then again..... Tuggers are clearly much more educated, discerning and demanding (in a smart way) than most casual timeshare shoppers.
Remember: Half of the people shopping RedWeek just left a timeshare presentation/rescinded and are used to hearing lies, half-truths and incomplete information!!!!

Keep working on it RW!

 

[mla]

I'm not going to publicly shame an individual who obviously did not receive proper training as I think it would be inappropriate. So, I've not listed that agents name or the listing purposely.

Yes, thanks for that. But if you would message me the name/posting privately, I would appreciate it. I'd like to read actual threads so I can discuss it with our managers. Same goes for anyone else here. If you have a poor experience with the full-service team, please message me the details privately.

But, every time I see Full Service next to a listing, I literally click the next link as I just don't want the hassle.

It pains me to hear that. That's the exact opposite of what we're striving for; dealing with a full-service posting should be among the simplest. I'm going to research how to provide better access to the estoppels. We need to redact the personally identifying information first.

 

[chemteach]

I am pretty disappointed as a possible buyer with redweek full service. I sent in an offer, waited a few days for a response, and am now waiting for a reply to a question I asked about the unit. Their closing fees are much higher than many other companies as well...

I purposely made an offer on a unit that didn't have a "full service" mark on it in hopes that the seller will actually respond to my offer...

 

[CalGalTraveler]

I am pretty disappointed as a possible buyer with redweek full service. I sent in an offer, waited a few days for a response, and am now waiting for a reply to a question I asked about the unit.

This is similar to my experience. I cannot wait 3+ days to get a response to a basic question (if I get one at all) because I usually have several questions before I make an offer.

They also took a very long time to answer my questions on closing fees costs. It seems that this should be a relatively standard item easily answered (these were for a major timeshare brand in a popular location) but it seemed the real estate agents are either not prioritizing these responses, or are researching this behind the scenes. Perhaps estimates of this could be posted on Redweek for the major brands and States.

In one situation, it took 3+ days for the agent to respond that the unit I was considering was already under contract.

As a timeshare seller it is the early bird who gets the sale...

 

[kukenan]

In one situation, it took 3+ days for the agent to respond that the unit I was considering was already under contract.

As a timeshare seller it is the early bird who gets the sale...

Same experience for me, now I try to skip the full service listings. But lately, I am seeing more of the full service listings than normal listings.

 

[dioxide45]

Same experience for me, now I try to skip the full service listings. But lately, I am seeing more of the full service listings than normal listings.

This is my experience also. I glance past the Full Service listings looking for those that are not. Full service usually means higher costs. I don't want to fork over a ton of money for closing costs when I can work directly with an owner and pick my own low cost closing company.

 

[mla]

I am pretty disappointed as a possible buyer with redweek full service. I sent in an offer, waited a few days for a response, and am now waiting for a reply to a question I asked about the unit. Their closing fees are much higher than many other companies as well...

I purposely made an offer on a unit that didn't have a "full service" mark on it in hopes that the seller will actually respond to my offer...

@chemteach, could you please private message me some of the details (your RW username or email address, or the posting ID, or who you interacted with at RW, etc.)? I'd really like to read through some of these interactions. I've had approximately zero people private message me details so far.

How much were the closing fees and what did you expect? What other companies had lower fees? We want to provide the lowest closing costs possible (with a reputable closing service), so I'm very interested in how we can decrease them.

Thanks,

Maurice

 

[RLG]

A similar problem is that redweek "full service" doesn't seem to update the maintenance when it changes. I have a unit listed for sale at Lakeside (with the correct maintenance) and I see that there are five redweek verified listings with not a single one correct.

 

[Egret1986]

'Id really like to read through some of these interactions. I've had approximately zero people private message me details so far.

Thanks,

Maurice

It must be very frustrating for Maurice. His attempt to come on TUG and address stated problems is a very good effort on the part of Redweek. Folks have lots of negative things to say; however, no one is willing to provide details privately. Anonymity allows one to say whatever, no matter how disparaging (whether true or not). Look at the title of this thread. But when it comes to assisting the business in correcting the issues, no one's got anything to say. How can the issues be fixed without details? C'mon, folks, here's your opportunity if you'd really like to see improvements with Redweek's Full Service.

Way to go, Maurice, for your efforts. :clap:

 

[tink10]

A similar problem is that redweek "full service" doesn't seem to update the maintenance when it changes. I have a unit listed for sale at Lakeside (with the correct maintenance) and I see that there are five redweek verified listings with not a single one correct.

RLG, please know that we are currently discussing this to improve the postings. We do request updated maintenance fees from owners as the year closes out or at the beginning of the new year. But we don't always receive responses from owners, though we do certainly reach out. Please don't hesitate to PM me with either your posting number (so we can compare) or the incorrect posting numbers and I can assure you that we will look in to it.

 

[md8287]

My experience with both RedWeek full service sales (the one that was great and the one that was poor) was that both brokers were happy to accommodate my request to have LT Transfers handle the closing. Both stated that was the buyers option.

 

[presley]

I've had approximately zero people private message me details so far.

You can only do what you can do. If nobody is willing to give you specific information, perhaps there isn't really much to fix after all.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

FWIW, I sent a private message. Part of the problem is that I had trouble remembering the names of the brokers who responded since it was last fall. The one I could remember took 3+ days but should that broker get her hand slapped vs. the brokers that don't respond at all?

 

[Egret1986]

FWIW, I sent a private message. Part of the problem is that I had trouble remembering the names of the brokers who responded since it was last fall. The one I could remember took 3+ days but should that broker get her hand slapped vs. the brokers that don't respond at all?

As I am told with my position at work when I'm observing and documenting issues on the workroom floor, it's not about a "hand slap". It's an opportunity to correct an issue and provide additional training if necessary.

Redweek is obviously interested in correcting its deficiencies with their full service operations. That, alone, speaks volumes for me and I hope they receive enough information to make the improvements that will benefit them, as well as their customers.

I do my own timeshare sales, so I wouldn't feel the need to utilize their full service option. However, if I were interested, as it is now, I would be very hesitant to use the service due to the negative reports here on TUG.

Again, I applaud Redweek staff for coming on TUG and trying to resolve the issues being experienced by their customers.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

I also applaud Redweek for understanding and correcting issues as they roll out this new service. There is a book called The Growth Solution that talks about how failures are not the problem. The problem is not taking a failure and using it as an opportunity to correct (and grow).

Based on this, I suggest that we remove "warning" from the title of this thread as it is not accurate.

I want this service to succeed because brokers charge too much and a 3rd party closing company can do all of the closing for a fraction of the price. There is a place for brokers with newbies or high value transactions. But after closing several resale transactions I am now comfortable going to Redweek, and using a reputable 3rd party closing company.

The "Verified" label is valuable to a potential buyer who may be new to this to provide a level of comfort that the posting is legit.

 

[md8287]

I also applaud Redweek for understanding and correcting issues as they roll out this new service. There is a book called The Growth Solution that talks about how failures are not the problem. The problem is not taking a failure and using it as an opportunity to correct (and grow).

Based on this, I suggest that we remove "warning" from the title of this thread as it is not accurate.

I want this service to succeed because brokers charge too much and a 3rd party closing company can do all of the closing for a fraction of the price. There is a place for brokers with newbies or high value transactions. But after closing several resale transactions I am now comfortable going to Redweek, and using a reputable 3rd party closing company.

The "Verified" label is valuable to a potential buyer who may be new to this to provide a level of comfort that the posting is legit.

I thought the same yesterday that this thread should have new title as I think the discussion with RedWeek is very valuable.

 

[chemteach]

I did pm redweek to let them know my situation with trying to purchase a week. I got a quick response right afterward about a unit I was trying to purchase. The unit had been deeded back to the resort. So I made several more queries. And there were an additional 2 postings where the owner had already deeded the unit back to the resort.

 

[mla]

Thanks for the support, folks.

A couple of people have contacted me privately now and I'm looking through those cases. That's very helpful, thank you.

I do have some thoughts on how we can improve certain areas, and we're already making some changes in how information is posted (esp. the maintenance fees).
I'll provide some more details soon.

 

[mla]

Some thoughts.

First, it should be impossible for you to not receive a response. All inquiries go into our ticketing system and have to be resolved. So unless a team member is just closing tickets willy-nilly, you should get a response. If that's not happening, we need to figure out why. I haven't found a case where a ticket was closed without a response yet. If anyone can PM me their RedWeek username and posting ID or rough date that they made the inquiry, I'd like to find one. Maybe it's a spam filter issue or a problem with deliverability to or from our ticketing platform. I will protect your privacy on here, of course.

In terms for the response delays, I was thinking about it, and the 3-day lag doesn't surprise me. Because we now have three people communicating by email. Assume it takes us on average one day to forward a question to an owner. A day for the owner to reply back. And a day for us to forward it back to the requester. 3 days. Obviously if the stars align, it could be much quicker. But what if the owner takes > 24 hours (which is very likely since, after all, they delegated the job to us)?

I just read through one case. We asked the owner the status of 2018 maintenance fees by email. It was four days before they responded (and we had to end up calling them).

So it seems like the way to improve that is to 1) not have to contact the owner and 2) if we do, try to do it by phone or text message early on rather than as a last resort.

We can improve #1 by having as much of the info as possible up-front. This maintenance fee issue is clearly a common one, and maybe it isn't surprising that we're talking about it in early March. We have all of the late 2017 inventory up but without the 2018 maintenance fee updates. We do request updates, but I'm not sure how many responses we get.

One thing we're intending to do is list the year the maintenance fee was recorded. At least then, when you're looking through, you can see the fee is for the prior year.

Related to that is the question of inaccurate maintenance fees. In several cases, the reason why there was a discrepancy was due to various things being tacked on. e.g., the ARDA $5 voluntary contribution (which is on the estoppel), other fees that the owner wants reimbursed, etc. We're no longer doing that. From now on, the maintenance fee will just be the maintenance fee. Anything else will be listed in the description. We're going to go back and update existing postings to follow that rule but it will take some time.

In terms of closing costs, we're always happy to use an alternate closing company if the buyer prefers. We just want to make sure they're legit. It's not a profit center for us. We're happy to steer people to the lowest cost provider. I want us to look at our messaging and make sure we're clear that you can always suggest an alternate closing company.

I also agree with the idea of providing a sense of closing costs up-front on the posting itself. The only question is whether it will put full-service resale postings at a disadvantage to DIY postings. We have no requirement to list those details on DIY postings (and many owners probably have no idea anyway). So, for the less-educated buyer, would they tend to prefer a DIY posting over a full-service simply because the full-service one lists a bunch of additional fees that the DIY one doesn't?

The other thing that's been discussed is our failure to mention important details related to various programs (e.g., StarOptions or Bluegreen Trust). We need to develop our expertise on those programs. We have hired quite a few new people, so I'm sure it's a learning curve for them. That will be a priority though.

There's been the suggestion that we provide the estoppels, since that provides all the details anyway (when they're completed correctly . I'm a little ambivalent about that. I know some people prefer using the full-service option specifically because they want to maintain their privacy until an agreement is made.

We could redact the personal info on the estoppels but that's a bit error-prone and time consuming. I just tried redacting the info on one of the PDFs. Some of the personal info was still available in the meta data of the file, so it was more work than just blacking out fields. Maybe we could redact it and convert it to an image.

We'll continue working on this. Please feel free to PM me details of your interactions with RedWeek if you feel they're subpar.

Maurice

 

[magmue]

I also agree with the idea of providing a sense of closing costs up-front on the posting itself. The only question is whether it will put full-service resale postings at a disadvantage to DIY postings. We have no requirement to list those details on DIY postings (and many owners probably have no idea anyway). So, for the less-educated buyer, would they tend to prefer a DIY posting over a full-service simply because the full-service one lists a bunch of additional fees that the DIY one doesn't?

Perhaps add a generic blurb to all DIY listings that, unless specifically stated otherwise by seller, buyer should anticipate additional $ for closing costs, which can vary from __ to __?

Impressed by your progress so far!

 

[Mosescan]

Some thoughts.

First, it should be impossible for you to not receive a response. All inquiries go into our ticketing system and have to be resolved. So unless a team member is just closing tickets willy-nilly, you should get a response. If that's not happening, we need to figure out why. I haven't found a case where a ticket was closed without a response yet. If anyone can PM me their RedWeek username and posting ID or rough date that they made the inquiry, I'd like to find one. Maybe it's a spam filter issue or a problem with deliverability to or from our ticketing platform. I will protect your privacy on here, of course.

In terms for the response delays, I was thinking about it, and the 3-day lag doesn't surprise me. Because we now have three people communicating by email. Assume it takes us on average one day to forward a question to an owner. A day for the owner to reply back. And a day for us to forward it back to the requester. 3 days. Obviously if the stars align, it could be much quicker. But what if the owner takes > 24 hours (which is very likely since, after all, they delegated the job to us)?

I just read through one case. We asked the owner the status of 2018 maintenance fees by email. It was four days before they responded (and we had to end up calling them).

So it seems like the way to improve that is to 1) not have to contact the owner and 2) if we do, try to do it by phone or text message early on rather than as a last resort.

We can improve #1 by having as much of the info as possible up-front. This maintenance fee issue is clearly a common one, and maybe it isn't surprising that we're talking about it in early March. We have all of the late 2017 inventory up but without the 2018 maintenance fee updates. We do request updates, but I'm not sure how many responses we get.

One thing we're intending to do is list the year the maintenance fee was recorded. At least then, when you're looking through, you can see the fee is for the prior year.

Related to that is the question of inaccurate maintenance fees. In several cases, the reason why there was a discrepancy was due to various things being tacked on. e.g., the ARDA $5 voluntary contribution (which is on the estoppel), other fees that the owner wants reimbursed, etc. We're no longer doing that. From now on, the maintenance fee will just be the maintenance fee. Anything else will be listed in the description. We're going to go back and update existing postings to follow that rule but it will take some time.

In terms of closing costs, we're always happy to use an alternate closing company if the buyer prefers. We just want to make sure they're legit. It's not a profit center for us. We're happy to steer people to the lowest cost provider. I want us to look at our messaging and make sure we're clear that you can always suggest an alternate closing company.

I also agree with the idea of providing a sense of closing costs up-front on the posting itself. The only question is whether it will put full-service resale postings at a disadvantage to DIY postings. We have no requirement to list those details on DIY postings (and many owners probably have no idea anyway). So, for the less-educated buyer, would they tend to prefer a DIY posting over a full-service simply because the full-service one lists a bunch of additional fees that the DIY one doesn't?

The other thing that's been discussed is our failure to mention important details related to various programs (e.g., StarOptions or Bluegreen Trust). We need to develop our expertise on those programs. We have hired quite a few new people, so I'm sure it's a learning curve for them. That will be a priority though.

There's been the suggestion that we provide the estoppels, since that provides all the details anyway (when they're completed correctly . I'm a little ambivalent about that. I know some people prefer using the full-service option specifically because they want to maintain their privacy until an agreement is made.

We could redact the personal info on the estoppels but that's a bit error-prone and time consuming. I just tried redacting the info on one of the PDFs. Some of the personal info was still available in the meta data of the file, so it was more work than just blacking out fields. Maybe we could redact it and convert it to an image.

We'll continue working on this. Please feel free to PM me details of your interactions with RedWeek if you feel they're subpar.

Maurice

Maurice,

A couple of points for you to consider.

In the Canadian Military we use a term that you need to become familiar with, it's called "managing expectations" I think this will help curb a lot of the frustration on the part of people making inquiries. You say that when you get an inquiry that you forward it to the owner and once you get a response you then reply to the inquiry. As you have stated this can take several days or a week. In order to "manage expectations" then here his what I suggest. The same day you get the inquiry, you reply stating that you have forwarded question on to the owner for clarification and you will get back to them with an answer as soon as you receive it. This lets the person making the inquiry know that their question hasn't fallen on deaf ears and that a response will be forthcoming as soon as the info in available. The same could be done with respect to closing costs. Simply state that if you use our full service closing costs are $x.xx but if you wish to pursue you own closing then that is acceptable too.

My second point is about redacting your estoppels. You are too caught up in technology. KISS - Print out the estoppel, take a black magic marker and black out all the info you need to redact and then scan the result back into a pdf. No worries about electronic anything!

Just my $0.02

Cheers,

Vic

 

[dioxide45]

One big issue I find with just about any listing, not just full service, is things like not listing the specific week or unit number. I HATE listings that just shows week as floating and unit as floating, or varies. I want to know exactly what I am buying and it is listed on just about every estoppel. In my opinion I should never see a full service listing without the exact week and unit number that is on the deed.