dboeger1
newbie
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2021
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 11
- Points
- 3
- Resorts Owned
- DRI 15k Sampler
Hello, first time poster here. My wife and I had a free stay with sales presentation at Diamond's Lake Tahoe Vacation Resort about 2 months ago. It was more or less our first experience with timeshares (we had actually done the same sales presentation at the same property to get the free stay package in the first place, so it was kind of annoying that we had to do it again). We were tempted by the idea the first time around, but I had obviously heard all kinds of bad things about timeshares before and was not willing to commit to such a large purchase on the spot without doing more research. Unfortunately, I did not discover TUG until now.
Well, the 2nd time around, we again declined all the permanent ownership options, but we ended up buying their 2-year "Sampler" package. Essentially, we have 2 years to use up 15k sampler points, which appear to be similar to regular points in value but with more restrictions to try to sell us on full ownership, of course. We also got an extra one week vacation bonus offer through some partner organization. Overall, we paid $2,500 for the package, which in my mind seemed reasonable for everything included, as that could be a good 4+ weeks of vacation depending on how we use it. There are no additional maintenance fees, and if we do upgrade to full ownership after the 2 years, the $2,500 gets deducted from the sales price. The only package we would even remotely consider that they gave us was the cheapest 5k annual package at $10,000, so basically another $7,500 on top of what we already paid, but honestly, we're unlikely to do the upgrade.
I guess my first question is, does this sound like we got screwed? Has anybody else done one of these Sampler packages? Just based on the offers we received and some of the resale pages I've found on here, it seems to me that even just 2 years worth of maintenance fees for a package in the neighborhood of 8k points (7.5k per year plus a little adjustment for the one week thing which is hard to compare apples to apples) would be in the ballpark of $2,000-$2,500 anyway, so I feel like what we got can't be that bad.
My second question is, when it comes to DRI resales under the Marketplace section of TUG, I'm a bit confused because the listing titles all seem to indicate points packages similar to those we were offered at the sales presentations, but then they also have a specific resort, and when you click on the ads, they show information about a single resort. Is that just a quirk of the web site, or are those points actually limited to a single resort? We were actually quite intrigued by the whole points program, and would not be particularly interested in a single-location timeshare, as we prefer to vary up our destinations, so if I was looking at resales in the future, I would probably limit myself to points programs. Has anybody purchased a resale points program, or can anybody confirm whether or not they are available? If so, would we be crazy to even consider upgrading from our sampler package? It seems to me like similar packages to the one we would be upgrading to are more or less free, so we'd basically be saving the upgrade cost.
Well, the 2nd time around, we again declined all the permanent ownership options, but we ended up buying their 2-year "Sampler" package. Essentially, we have 2 years to use up 15k sampler points, which appear to be similar to regular points in value but with more restrictions to try to sell us on full ownership, of course. We also got an extra one week vacation bonus offer through some partner organization. Overall, we paid $2,500 for the package, which in my mind seemed reasonable for everything included, as that could be a good 4+ weeks of vacation depending on how we use it. There are no additional maintenance fees, and if we do upgrade to full ownership after the 2 years, the $2,500 gets deducted from the sales price. The only package we would even remotely consider that they gave us was the cheapest 5k annual package at $10,000, so basically another $7,500 on top of what we already paid, but honestly, we're unlikely to do the upgrade.
I guess my first question is, does this sound like we got screwed? Has anybody else done one of these Sampler packages? Just based on the offers we received and some of the resale pages I've found on here, it seems to me that even just 2 years worth of maintenance fees for a package in the neighborhood of 8k points (7.5k per year plus a little adjustment for the one week thing which is hard to compare apples to apples) would be in the ballpark of $2,000-$2,500 anyway, so I feel like what we got can't be that bad.
My second question is, when it comes to DRI resales under the Marketplace section of TUG, I'm a bit confused because the listing titles all seem to indicate points packages similar to those we were offered at the sales presentations, but then they also have a specific resort, and when you click on the ads, they show information about a single resort. Is that just a quirk of the web site, or are those points actually limited to a single resort? We were actually quite intrigued by the whole points program, and would not be particularly interested in a single-location timeshare, as we prefer to vary up our destinations, so if I was looking at resales in the future, I would probably limit myself to points programs. Has anybody purchased a resale points program, or can anybody confirm whether or not they are available? If so, would we be crazy to even consider upgrading from our sampler package? It seems to me like similar packages to the one we would be upgrading to are more or less free, so we'd basically be saving the upgrade cost.