If you dont want my recommendation, then move right on down the thread and ignore my post, it was intended to answer the question of the OP anyway.
Its pretty rare that I will get involved in threads like this, as nothing I say will ever make everyone happy.
We had a joke awahile back that if I were to post a poll asking if the sun rises in the east or the west, I still wouldnt get 100% accuracy...and more importantly id get emails telling me that that the poll was invalid because north and south werent options.
Everyone is going to take things differently.
Fact is, its easy to make money by being unethical...and its not how I do business at all. I have zero problem making the above statement because I truly believe mario is a honest man and truly cares about the timeshare community. I got this belief from my father who believes the same thing, and personally after meeting mario and listening to him preach about the problems in the industry and his never-ending crusade to end them.
I sleep fine at night defending people who truly are "good people", and if that annoys others by doing so...so be it. Noone said doing the right thing was easy.
That said, are there alternatives to using legitimate resale companies like marios or others? absolutely...we at TUG exist to inform people of the ways to sell their timeshares THEMSELVES.
That said, there are still many MANY people who simply dont want to do that, dont have the time to do that, or simply dont want to learn to do that. In these cases, they choose to pay someone to do it for them.
We all know that paying someone and upfront fee is likely to end up in you losing your money and still owning your timeshare. Especially in this current economy. There are risks in everything.
However if someone has joined TUG, Im assumign they have read the how to sell article as its sent to them some 5 times during the join process =) so if they are asking about a resale company...its likely they are just looking for someone to "do it for them"
Had this poster asked a generic question about using a resale company, you wouldnt have heard a word out of me as I try to let the members handle things like that. However they asked specifically about a person my father knows and respects, and I know and respect, and someone who has supported and helped TUG for many years.
That makes things a bit different.