We own 2 weeks at the Westin St. John(1bed and 2beds up on the hill). Have owned it for 17yrs and are now retired with young grandkids. Would prefer to visit the grandkids than go on vacation without them. How do I get out of my timeshare? Anyone had any luck just not paying their maintenance fees with Vistana? What are the repercussions? Is it better to sell it on eBay? Just starting down the road to get rid of these. Would be open to trading them to Florida as our home location if doable. HELP! Any info would be much appreciated!!
There's a good discussion on giving away a Timeshare on TUG at:
Before you pay an upfront fee to someone to "take your timeshare off your hands," please consider giving your timeshare away to a private individual who would like to own it. Why? -You can give it away yourself for nearly no cost. -You can control the transfer process to make sure it is truly...
tugbbs.com
WRT deeding back, my understanding is that Vistana will not take back weeks that are not in the U.S., which would be Harborside and WSJ.
One other option would be posting it on the VGV Posting Board, though that is only open to VGV owners (WSJ Hillside). You can get to that from the Vistana website dashboard by selecting "Governing Documents" in the Owners Association portion, then selecting "Association Information" and "VGV Owner Posting Board".
In any case, you would need to provide details on what weeks/units you own and how many StarOptions they get, which would be a major consideration for folks interested in picking up a week there. I'm presuming that these are VGV weeks as you said they were "up on the hill" - if this is the case, they are in the mandatory portion of WSJ and would come with StarOptions and the ability to book in other Vistana resorts, which is a benefit that doesn't come with the other portions of WSJ and worth noting.
Finally, there are the options to list them for sale, either in the TUG marketplace or elsewhere, or the option to list them for a permanent direct exchange in the TUG marketplace. You should avoid paying one of the sales firms an upfront fee to dispose of the weeks as that is often unsuccessful and you can do the same things yourself for thousands less.