searching for a legit postcard company - what would convince you?

[BocaBum99]

I'm not sure what possessed me to make this comment my first post. But since I have been a timeshare owner for years (mostly happy I might add) I have begun to consider our families exit strategy. While I am no where near gullible enough to pay for a rental or resale company money to "sell" my timeshare, I have been monitoring the PCC options....
Here are my thoughts on this......
-I wonder when the resorts will actually step in and start blocking some of these "viking ship" companies. I can only imagine that part of my maintenance fees have increased due to these companies pushing timeshares back to the resort after years of collections.
-Cant the resorts just refuse the transfer? I would imagine not because once its recorded at the courthouse - they have to "recognize it"
-Couldnt the resorts just change the bylaws and make it so you cant deed a week into an LLC name?
==
Just my .02

-
Suzy

The crooks are way smarter than the honest guys. So, for every counter measure an HOA or resort developer comes up with, the scammers will have 2 or 3 new measures that will defeat them.

The smartest thing an HOA can do is hire one of the best scammers and help them develop a program for their resort. It's like hiring the worlds best hacker to create their security system.

 

[BocaBum99]

A major fly in your ointment (salve, if you will) is the fact that RCI (et al) has already swiped this rental market from the owners either individually or as the HOA. How do you get it back from RCI?

It is so much simpler to let RCI worry about filling that seat, I''l exchange instead of rent it out - thank you very much

LOL. RCI is not the enemy. The HOA is. The reason why RCI rapes resorts is because the HOA lets them. All the resort needs to do to get control is to do their job and hire someone to maximize the value of their resort. They do it by finding the highest and best use of the assets available by instituting rules, affiliation agreements and partnerships that do it. If RCI is an effective method for filling units and getting MF paid, then use them. If not, use someone else. The HOA needs to take control of their future rather than letting it happen to them like they do now passively.

The bottom line is that in the absense of a tremendous marketing budget such as those of the large resort developers, HOAs need to demostrate strict financial reward for owning their resort over renting it. If a desirable resort has MF that is 50% of what it can rent for, people will seek out that resort and buy it. That's all they need to do. Well, they do need to come up with a resale and rental plan and/or agent. The hardest part will be for owners to agree on the reduced amenities required to get the MF low enough to make it attractive. It must happen or they will whither away dying a slow death.

 

[Carolinian]

The crooks are way smarter than the honest guys. So, for every counter measure an HOA or resort developer comes up with, the scammers will have 2 or 3 new measures that will defeat them.

The smartest thing an HOA can do is hire one of the best scammers and help them develop a program for their resort. It's like hiring the worlds best hacker to create their security system.

Actually, the pushback that has been announced by some timeshare management companies is quite smart, and it hits a different point. Take some scalps of PCC's and their clients with lawsuits for fraudulent conveyance, then publicize the results as a deterent to others. Most people don't want to volunteer to potentially have ''defendant'' after their names. This is in the notice and warning stages right now. I will have the popcorn ready for when the lawsuits themselves come.

 

[Carolinian]

Have you been smoking some of the same stuff as Ride???? If I was into recreational substances, I would say I want some of it!

The HOA has no real control over what RCI does with the weeks their members deposit for exchange, or whether they rent them, or for how much. The only real defense they have is to promote their members using different exchange companies, and that is something they should, indeed, be doing big time for multiple reasons. In the old days, RCI used to be almost a partner for HOA's and their interests were largely alligned. That is not the case anymore, and RCI is more often a rival than a partner. The Cendant/Wyndham business plan is far different from the deHaan business plan at RCI and too many HOA's have been slow to recognize the threats to them inherent in that.

LOL. RCI is not the enemy. The HOA is. The reason why RCI rapes resorts is because the HOA lets them. All the resort needs to do to get control is to do their job and hire someone to maximize the value of their resort. They do it by finding the highest and best use of the assets available by instituting rules, affiliation agreements and partnerships that do it. If RCI is an effective method for filling units and getting MF paid, then use them. If not, use someone else. The HOA needs to take control of their future rather than letting it happen to them like they do now passively.

The bottom line is that in the absense of a tremendous marketing budget such as those of the large resort developers, HOAs need to demostrate strict financial reward for owning their resort over renting it. If a desirable resort has MF that is 50% of what it can rent for, people will seek out that resort and buy it. That's all they need to do. Well, they do need to come up with a resale and rental plan and/or agent. The hardest part will be for owners to agree on the reduced amenities required to get the MF low enough to make it attractive. It must happen or they will whither away dying a slow death.

 

[Carolinian]

There is a lot of speculation about the state of the timeshare market on these boards, very little of it based on any facts. I have posted several comparisions of OBX timeshare resales comparing the period prior to the 2008 economic meltdown with more recent data. My last one found sales volume down only about 20% and prices largely holding the same as before. Of course, all real estate markets, including timeshare, are local, and some areas may be doing worse or better. It would be useful for others to do some factual analysis in other areas for comparision.

Most of those who are in a tizzy over a bad resale market point only to eBay prices. eBay is a small niche market, that has been manipulated by the PCC's by dumping, and so is not terribly representative of anything. Indeed the one time in one of my analyses of local data, I tried to determine how much of the market in my area was eBay sales. I looked at who prepared the deeds, and based on that, the eBay share was under 5% of the total.

One analysis I have not done is to compare my last set of current numbers with the same months ten years before, back when the resale market was functioning fine, and see what differences exist in pricing and volume. I look at all timeshares in Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head, as all of them are member-controlled with the developer long gone. Developer activity skews the results in Kitty Hawk and Duck, so I exclude them, and Hatteras has only one t/s with 4 units so the volume there is not worth the time. Dare County has a local land transfer tax, where they are much more insistent on a real sales prices than counties which have only the state tax stamps, and the land transfer tax data base is much easier to pull timeshare results out of than the Register of Deeds database would be.

I will post the results when I have them.

 

[TUGBrian]

my only issue with PCCs is the lies and propaganda that goes on in their presentations.

if they truly were on the up and up...and so many people were "desperate" to use their services...they would have no need for the doom and gloom and bogus tax advice.

 

[Carolinian]

my only issue with PCCs is the lies and propaganda that goes on in their presentations.

if they truly were on the up and up...and so many people were "desperate" to use their services...they would have no need for the doom and gloom and bogus tax advice.

You don't have a problem with them stiffing HOA's, which really means stiffing the rest of the owners of that timeshare?

I agree that they are absolute slimeballs on the issues you are talking about. I have seen examples of them charging a victim to take their timeshare off their hands at a resort that accepts deedbacks and then doing the deedback themselves. That is nothing but a fraud, and they ought to be in prison for things like that. I have seen examples of them charging elderly victims large sums to take valuable summer weeks (that even sell on the eBay bargain basement at $2K+) off their hands contending they have no value. PCC's are sharks and need to be put out of business for good.

 

[TUGBrian]

pretty sure you were well aware of what I meant.

 

[Carolinian]

As to the supposedly awful timeshare resale market, here is some real data at least as to one area, and in reality it is not so awful after all:

http://tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1300087#post1300087

I would like to see some others present some real data from other timeshare market areas for comparision, rather than shoot from the hip speculation, especially speculation based solely on PCC-dominated eBay. eBay is a tiny fraction of the overall timeshare resale market and is skewed by the PCC's deliberately suppressing prices there.

 

[csxjohn]

....Most of those who are in a tizzy over a bad resale market point only to eBay prices. eBay is a small niche market, that has been manipulated by the PCC's by dumping, and so is not terribly representative of anything. Indeed the one time in one of my analyses of local data, I tried to determine how much of the market in my area was eBay sales. I looked at who prepared the deeds, and based on that, the eBay share was under 5% of the total....

Two problems with this statement.

You keep singing the same song that the PCCs are manipulating prices so I'll ask you again since you ignored it the first time.


"You make it sound like the holders of these TSs are putting them on eBay in an attempt to artificially keep the prices down.

I don't think you get it. As you know, if you hold on to a TS it costs money in additional MFs.

These units are put on eBay through necessity, not some grand conspiracy to suppress prices.

If they can't even get $1 on ebay where do you propose they try to sell to get more than that?"

Secondly, if as you say, eBay accounts for only 5% of resales, how can anything anyone does there affect the entire TS resale market?

You don't have a problem with them stiffing HOA's, which really means stiffing the rest of the owners of that timeshare?

I have seen examples of them charging a victim to take their timeshare off their hands at a resort that accepts deed backs and then doing the deed back themselves. That is nothing but a fraud, and they ought to be in prison for things like that.

If the HOA won't work with someone who can no longer afford their MFs or who have aged to the point of not being able to travel, why should that person care one bit about the HOA?

And how is this fraud?? If I charge someone $50 to tow a car out of their yard and can fix it and sell it for $1000 did I commit fraud? Of course not!

When you approach your HOA with your situation and they say they can't help you, what are you supposed to do? You can talk all about your "viable means" to rid yourself of your timeshare but many timeshares today can not be given away.

If your HOA won't find a way to help you, people find other help and the HOA reaps what it sows.

 

[timeos2]

LOL. RCI is not the enemy. The HOA is. The reason why RCI rapes resorts is because the HOA lets them. All the resort needs to do to get control is to do their job and hire someone to maximize the value of their resort. They do it by finding the highest and best use of the assets available by instituting rules, affiliation agreements and partnerships that do it. If RCI is an effective method for filling units and getting MF paid, then use them. If not, use someone else. The HOA needs to take control of their future rather than letting it happen to them like they do now passively.

The bottom line is that in the absense of a tremendous marketing budget such as those of the large resort developers, HOAs need to demostrate strict financial reward for owning their resort over renting it. If a desirable resort has MF that is 50% of what it can rent for, people will seek out that resort and buy it. That's all they need to do. Well, they do need to come up with a resale and rental plan and/or agent. The hardest part will be for owners to agree on the reduced amenities required to get the MF low enough to make it attractive. It must happen or they will whither away dying a slow death.

Your apparent hatred for HOA's for unknown reasons is blinding you to the facts. Very few, of any, resorts not in early sales or developer controled give exchange companies any inventory. Why would they? They get nothing from it! It would just give RCI/II free time to rent for pure profit for them that could go to the resort instead!

It is the owners that are uninformed enough to pay the fees & a membership fee on the remote chance of getting the right to pay an exchange fee for a trade that probably doesn't meet exactly what they desired to get and is a downgrade from what they own.

Once a resort is part of II/RCI - a decision usually made by the developer- it can never drop out (but the exchange co's can drop the resort if it fails to maintain minimal standards ). The resort HOA cannot control owner deposits so once again you are basing sweeping statements of proported facts based on faulty assumptions. You need to find out how Associations actually function and what they can & can't do.

 

[ronparise]

Your apparent hatred for HOA's for unknown reasons is blinding you to the facts. Very few, of any, resorts not in early sales or developer controled give exchange companies any inventory. Why would they? They get nothing from it! It would just give RCI/II free time to rent for pure profit for them that could go to the resort instead!

It is the owners that are uninformed enough to pay the fees & a membership fee on the remote chance of getting the right to pay an exchange fee for a trade that probably doesn't meet exactly what they desired to get and is a downgrade from what they own.

Once a resort is part of II/RCI - a decision usually made by the developer- it can never drop out (but the exchange co's can drop the resort if it fails to maintain minimal standards ). The resort HOA cannot control owner deposits so once again you are basing sweeping statements of proported facts based on faulty assumptions. You need to find out how Associations actually function and what they can & can't do.

I dont see where Boca has said he hates the HOAs, Only that they are their own worst enemy. And if an HOA is going to do their job in todays market place they had better try to do some things they have never done...ie learn what they can do and what they cant do and actually do some of the can dos

When I look at a task laid in front of me and say "I cant do that"
I remember what my mother used to say ......."cant" means "wont" and I take another look...Id like to ask the HOAs to listen to my mother and take another look at what they can and cant do

 

[Carolinian]

Two problems with this statement.

You keep singing the same song that the PCCs are manipulating prices so I'll ask you again since you ignored it the first time.


"You make it sound like the holders of these TSs are putting them on eBay in an attempt to artificially keep the prices down.

I don't think you get it. As you know, if you hold on to a TS it costs money in additional MFs.

These units are put on eBay through necessity, not some grand conspiracy to suppress prices.

If they can't even get $1 on ebay where do you propose they try to sell to get more than that?"

Secondly, if as you say, eBay accounts for only 5% of resales, how can anything anyone does there affect the entire TS resale market?




If the HOA won't work with someone who can no longer afford their MFs or who have aged to the point of not being able to travel, why should that person care one bit about the HOA?

And how is this fraud?? If I charge someone $50 to tow a car out of their yard and can fix it and sell it for $1000 did I commit fraud? Of course not!

When you approach your HOA with your situation and they say they can't help you, what are you supposed to do? You can talk all about your "viable means" to rid yourself of your timeshare but many timeshares today can not be given away.

If your HOA won't find a way to help you, people find other help and the HOA reaps what it sows.

The HOA is really the sum total of the timeshare owners at a resort. When you stiff the HOA, you are really stiffing all the other owners. The HOA is a non-profit organization made up of those owners, and does not have the business capital or sales organization to be a developer. Nontheless, the member run HOA's in my area generally did take deedbacks when I was active, and I think most still do. My resort always did but never advertised that fact so as not to encourage it. We had an aggressive resale program that worked.

The OBX also has had an effective local brick and mortar timeshare resale and rental business since the late Marvin Beard got into that business back about the dawn of timesharing. I rent my own summer week through that agency and it works like a charm. They have also been an effective way to resale timeshare, but many members have used other means. Most resorts have one or more places for members to post resales, either physically on a board in the resort office or online. I remember one of our members who had five blue and one white week that he used to exchange in the RCI 45 day window until he saw that going to crap and then sold his weeks, each one to a different buyer. All of his buyers were in New York where he lived, so I suspect he used some local means up there to find his buyers.

The very first thing an HOA should do to help a member is to direct them to places they can sell their week, not volunteer to take it themselves. That should be a last resort.

On your car example, if you tell someone that their slightly ragged Jaguar XKE is worthless and the best thing for them to do is to pay you to take it, and you in fact know that even as a parts car it is worth thousands of dollars, contention that it is worthless is a material misrepresentation of fact and combined with your other acts adds up to fraud.

As far as where someone should look besides eBay to sell their timeshare, each local market varies, so there is no one answer to do that. The key is to find out about the local market. HOA's should be proactive with their members on this, and most that I know of are. The ones most likely to be unhelpful are the developer controlled resorts.

Part of every PCC spiel I have ever heard of involves holding up eBay to show that ''timeshare is worthless''. These people have a vested interest in making that so. Before PCC's showed up in force on eBay, one could sell a timeshare for a decent price on eBay. Indeed when it was active, Yahoo auctions worked well, too. If a PCC were not interested in using eBay as one of their props, they would put at least their better inventory up at places where they could get a better price. Most of these PCC's use Viking ships because they are more interested in making money off of the timesharers who are conned into paying them to take their weeks instead of on the end of selling the weeks. Yet they put enough of the weeks on eBay to make sure they keep the prices down.

 

[timeos2]

Trust me the good ones look for any new ideas or options every day. Far too many fabulous brainstorms regularly proclaimed as being saviors for resorts eithet aren't legally possible, aren't in the control of HOA's or don't work when scaled to hundreds or thousands vs 5 or 10 among other issues. If there were an absolute, applies to all perfect answer it would be implemented in a nanosecond. There isn't but the resorts keep looking.

 

[ace2000]

The problem with the HOAs... what is the incentive for them to cut costs and run a tight ship? For years they could get away with raising expenditures and in turn by raising maintenance fees to cover them. Now, it appears that people are starting to balk, and it's catching up. If a resort cannot rent it's unit for more than it's required MFs, it is time to close the doors.

The whole tone of this discussion has definitely changed within the last couple of years.

 

[rickandcindy23]

The problem with the HOAs... what is the incentive for them to cut costs and run a tight ship?

What is worse:
1) cheap fees and a board who doesn't care to change the resort because they are running a very tight ship (Twin Rivers)
2) higher fees but a Gold Crown resort with high occupancy and happy owners

Resorts run by an HOA BOD with no one on the payroll for the management company is ideal:
1) fees directly affect their own pocketbooks
2) the resort controls who manages the resort and fires the management that isn't working for the owners
3) owners decide how they will take deeds back without hurting themselves and their fellow owners
4) the board gets from the management company the financials, which should clearly indicate what issues the board needs to address

Problems these owner-controlled resorts face:
1) bad debt (people aren't paying fees)
2) death of owners, LLC's, attorney costs, foreclosure costs, which vary by state
3) what is the effect of taking deeds back?
4) is there a viable rental market for weeks and how to implement
5) how to sell weeks with no sales force

 

[Carolinian]

In a member run HOA, the directors are also owners of timeshare weeks and pay those fees themselves. They are also volunteers, so they get nothing in return for their service. Since they pay the fees themselves, that is a pretty good incentive to run a tight ship. The problem comes in with those who rely too heavily on management without looking over management's shoulder, and that does happen sometimes.

At two resorts I have owned at the resort budget, including the m/f and any special assessment had to be adopted by vote (including proxies) of the entire membership. That is an excellent check on the board. Only one of them has had a special assessment and that passed the members uanimously because it was a limited amount and well explained. At the other resort, the only motion from the membership on a board recommended budget was actually to increase the m/f, which passed. A member attending had been hit with a special assessment somewhere else and wanted to be sure about reserves so, in spite of the treasurer's assurances that they were fine, he moved to increase the line item for reserves, which increased the m/f from what the board recommended.

Rentals are not really a good test, as rental prices have been depressed ever since RCI started dumping timeshare rentals on the market. That hasn't impacted high season most places (although I have rented in an overbuilt area in high season from RCI for less than m/f) but it has impacted shoulder and off season.

The problem with the HOAs... what is the incentive for them to cut costs and run a tight ship? For years they could get away with raising expenditures and in turn by raising maintenance fees to cover them. Now, it appears that people are starting to balk, and it's catching up. If a resort cannot rent it's unit for more than it's required MFs, it is time to close the doors.

The whole tone of this discussion has definitely changed within the last couple of years.

 

[ace2000]

What is worse:
1) cheap fees and a board who doesn't care to change the resort because they are running a very tight ship (Twin Rivers)
2) higher fees but a Gold Crown resort with high occupancy and happy owners

For me, it's all relative to the rental market. If the HOAs can't manage and sustain a product that won't produce a higher rental return than the fees, it is time to close it down.

 

[ace2000]

Rentals are not really a good test, as rental prices have been depressed ever since RCI started dumping timeshare rentals on the market.

It's a good test for the owners. Do you think people would be bailing at this rate if they could rent their weeks out? RCI didn't cause the MFs to go up at a rate of 12% to 15% per year, during a time when inflation was flat.

 

[ronparise]

On your car example, if you tell someone that their slightly ragged Jaguar XKE is worthless and the best thing for them to do is to pay you to take it, and you in fact know that even as a parts car it is worth thousands of dollars, contention that it is worthless is a material misrepresentation of fact and combined with your other acts adds up to fraud.

My old car was rotting in the driveway, and my neighborhood association was ready to fine me for the eyesore that my place had become...I dont know which end of a screwdriver to hold, so my repairing it was out of the question...So I paid someone to come and take it....They had a place to store it, they were expert mechanics, they had a market for used parts. That they were able to make money off my problem did not constitute fraud. As far as Im concerned they provided a service that I was eager to pay for

Johns example holds up well

I see PCCs much the same way. They come into town, make their pitch and haul away the junk. The sellers are happy and as a buyer, I can say Im happy too...They are doing the job many HOAs would rather not, or just cant get involved in. ie Moving timeshares from those that cant or wont pay mf to those that will.

 

[rickandcindy23]

For me, it's all relative to the rental market. If the HOAs can't manage and sustain a product that won't produce a higher rental return than the fees, it is time to close it down.

Join a BOD and learn what the real problems are, and I am sure they are all different.

I already explained the efforts of two TUG members who tried to close down Twin Rivers one unit at a time. The remaining owners per unit, probably less than 40 of them, especially the prime week owners, were stubborn and insisted the resort had value by the week, when in fact no such value actually exists.

Even when given the evidence of prime weeks deeded back and not taken by owners, and the eBay market, those owners still could not accept the truth that the resort was better as a wholly owned condo association.

BTW, the two TUG members were PA- (Philip) and Hatrack (Steve). Neither will probably come back to TUG because they abandoned hundreds of weeks into an LLC registered in Colorado, and I don't know if the resorts (yes there were a few resorts) are going after them or not. They very well could.

 

[Carolinian]

It's a good test for the owners. Do you think people would be bailing at this rate if they could rent their weeks out? RCI didn't cause the MFs to go up at a rate of 12% to 15% per year, during a time when inflation was flat.

The resorts I own at have certainly not had that level of m/f increase, nor have any others that I follow. Those that have, expecially if it is consistent, would be a red flag that some mismanagement is occuring.

RCI did, at least for shoulder and off season weeks, cause rental rates to go down, and that is as much of the equation as the m/f for owners. RCI has also made a series of changes in its exchange program which has changed the game for many owners who primarily exchanged, and this is now a big problem for HOA's as many of those owners now feel that owning to exchange is no longer worthwhile. This is where many HOA's are falling down on the job. RCI has changed its business plan in a way that negatively impacts resorts, and the HOA's need to respond with changes to compensate. If they do not, the bail outs from the dissatisfied exchangers will be a real financial challenge.

 

[ace2000]

The resorts I own at have certainly not had that level of m/f increase, nor have any others that I follow. Those that have, expecially if it is consistent, would be a red flag that some mismanagement is occuring.

That 12% figure has been quoted by ARDA over a recent five year period, across all timeshares. Like it or not, that's the reality of what's been happening. Everyone can bury their head in the sand if they'd like.

HOAs running timeshares are like socialized government, where is the incentive to run a tight ship?

 

[am1]

There is no solution! People can keep talking about it on here. Some people will find a way to make money off of it. With fraud or not.

Like I have said earlier timeshares are a very efficient market.

How many times will people be paying the same mf for a dog week as a super prime week? Does anyone really expect them to be able to rent those weeks? Is that not scamming the people that are renting the unit?

How many owners do not even know what they are buying? When they find out they overpaid they just want out any way possible and be done with it.

There will always be turnover of ownership.

People will always default. Even those with prime weeks.
There is no real consequence of default.

People believe it is easy to sell a week but it is not. How many times do owners sell weeks on ebay? Have you looked at their listings?

A lot of people are in denial about what they week is actually worth.

How about some of the locations of resorts? The age of the resort. The number of timeshares in an area. There are always going to be some that fail.


The closest solution is a points based timeshare system.

 

[Carolinian]

If your car was a clapped out Toyota, that probably made sense. If it was a slightly ragged Jaguar XKE, as in my example, it would be stupidity. If you made a decision yourself and called someone, then any representation that they made did not influence you, so that would not be a fraud. If they contacted you and told you that your Jaguar XKE was worthless and conned you to pay them to tow it away, then it would indeed be fraud.

When I see where a PCC conned an elderly lady to pay them thousands of dollars to take three prime summer weeks on the OBX, that even on the bargain basement of eBay sell for $2K+ each with their spiel that all timeshare is worthless, then I am outraged at the fraud. Those scammers ought to be in prison.

As a classic car owner, I also bristle at some of the local stormtroopers that think a modern jelly bean car in a work of art but a restorable classic should be banished. I have been interested in one organization that fights against those local busy bodies, called CARZ (Citizens against restrictive zoning). I met one of their leaders at a classic car show and he was telling some of their success stories. One involved a retired teacher who had first driven a 1965 Mustang when she was young and bought one to restore now that she was retired. The local authorities came down on her to remove it and threatened her with court. She went to the library and read up on the laws, drafted her own complaint, sued the city and won. When the city continued to harass her in spite of her court victory, she read up on contempt of court motions, filed one of those and had the city held in contempt. They finally gave up. Another involved an attorney in the Washington, DC area who had a licensed and inspected Karmann Ghia that ran fine and he drove from time to time but needed a paint job and a few things he had not gotten around to yet. One day his wife notice a paper under the windshield wiper and called him at work. When he got home, the car was gone. He called around to try to find it, and got the run around for two weeks, before he was told it had been towed as a ''junk car'' and where he could go to get it. He immediately went but it had already been crushed. He found the official responsible for the towing and his only justification was ''I would not drive my mother to church in a car like that''. The attorney was a member of a big law firm and when he told some of the partners about it, they assigned one of their top litigators to the matter pro bono. Ultimately, they recovered a large judgment against the city including very substantial punitive damages. The city richly deserves that type of punishment for what they did.

My old car was rotting in the driveway, and my neighborhood association was ready to fine me for the eyesore that my place had become...I dont know which end of a screwdriver to hold, so my repairing it was out of the question...So I paid someone to come and take it....They had a place to store it, they were expert mechanics, they had a market for used parts. That they were able to make money off my problem did not constitute fraud. As far as Im concerned they provided a service that I was eager to pay for

Johns example holds up well

I see PCCs much the same way. They come into town, make their pitch and haul away the junk. The sellers are happy and as a buyer, I can say Im happy too...They are doing the job many HOAs would rather not, or just cant get involved in. ie Moving timeshares from those that cant or wont pay mf to those that will.