My wife and I emailed the office to tell them that we are trying to get out of the contract. In the email, we told them that we belive that the way they got us to sign the contract was forceful and a coercion tactic.
The concierge department called us saying that we can't and they will help to make our timeshare experience great. They fwded our email to the legal department and they sent back a strongly worded email to say we can't get out and our experience was baseless.
Does anybody have any advice on next steps?
I'm assuming you bought recently, and are beyond your rescission-allowed time? If this is the case, your options are limited. When you went to the presentation, you knew it was a sales presentation. no? And you saw at least enough value to you to entice you to sign the contract, no? You and your wife are over 21, employed, and legally able to enter into contracts to buy stuff, no?
If the above is true, you have two choices. One is to pay it off and sell, use, or give it away. About half of us here on TUG have done exactly that. We bought our first timeshare from a developer, and for whatever reason did not rescind the sale. If you decide to take this route, do what you can to pay off the high interest loan as fast as possible. Get a second job for a time and earmark the income to paying it off. Or (and I don't recommend it) take some funds from savings and apply them to the payoff.
The other option is default. Stopping payment. There will be consequences, including possibly getting a bad credit report, being turned over to collection, perhaps a significant drop in your credit score, resulting in higher loan rates on mortgage, car, student, and insurance costs for a while. It can take several years to live through a foreclosure, but eventually it will be behind you.
There are no easy ways out if you don't want the timeshare, and the rescission date has passed. I'd stress that those TS exit companies are ALL scams engineered to get more of your money without any more ability to cancel a contract than you have. Don't be fooled by those with 'lawyer' in their name. There are NO MAGIC WORDS to make a legal contract go away.
Jim