Maybe just unlucky timing...
I am in the middle of a timeshare purchase of a well known Florida resort off of e-bay. The price was excellent and I was told only a $325 fee to close. I checked out both the seller (in Mexico) and the closing company (in Florida) through exhaustive searches on time share sites and google etc and could find nothing averse on either. Now I have been told the resort transfer fee is now $295 but the seller thought it was $0, but that it just changed due to a change of ownership with the resort. We agreed to same, then the closing company contacted to say the estoppel fee that we paid $25 for (service fee) that we had been told was free, was actually then it was $50 and now she says it is $100. I had independently contacted the resort management company and they have stated their transfer fee used to be $0 but has gone up to $250, but they don't charge for an estoppel. Am i being scammed somehow? My money is in escrow we have only sent the original amounts. The price was, as I said, excellent and it was for a resort that we have been to several times and it is our favorite place to stay in Florida.
Estoppel letter fee is generally established and imposed
by the closing company, not by the resort
or its' management company (unlike a transfer fee, which is indeed resort-identified and imposed).
I see some unfortunate timing here, but no significant signs of "scam" (..although I would question the $45 "mismatch" between the resort vs. closing company cites of the transfer fee amount). I also wonder if the closing company is one with an actual
track record of performance and successful closings. "No negative info from a few searches" would
not be good enough for me --- this could be their
very first (attempted) closing!
It is common for eBay resellers to have incorrect and /or obsolete info in their listings, about which they often know
very little actual or current details. If you are comfortable that the specific week / unit i.d. / unit size have
all been precisely and accurately identified and the "new" total cost is still palatable for something you really want (as seems to be the case from your post), then I'd be inclined to just swallow hard, pay the extra money and proceed. You can just back out of this non-binding auction (with inaccurate content) entirely, but pursuing that route obviously won't achieve the objective of acquiring a week you want.
P.S.
I'd be concerned about the unidentified "travel club membership" being thrown in with the deal.
This "club membership" may well have hidden (and / or future) costs. It may also be something which essentially only provides overpriced access to excess "junk" inventory you would never want to use anyhow. In short, this "travel club membership" may very well be something you really want
nothing to do with, now or in the future. Do you even have an
option to
decline the "mystery membership" component of the deal?
There is
no "free lunch"; there may be a devil in the details of this "mystery travel club" membership.
