TimeSharing Today
By Glenn and Mary Zeiders,
Huntsville AL
We are finally writing the letter that
we’ve been pondering for the past year.
We joined Fairfield Resorts (now
Wyndham) nine years ago with high expectations, and, for the most part,
we’ve been pleased with their
properties and by the attentiveness
of the reservation, reception, and
maintenance staff. However, the
outrageous pressure and outright
lies by their sales agents, coupled with
our inability to realistically escape from
a costly situation that we have grown to
detest, has left us with a very dark view of
the timesharing industry in general – and
of Wyndham in particular. Our previous
experiences with Wyndham sales have
generally been bad – but 2009 was by far
the worst.
We spent three weeks at Sea Gardens
at Pompano Beach FL in January and
February 2009, and attended an “update”
at Royal Vista shortly after our arrival.
When asked the stock Wyndham question
about our ownership, “What would you
do differently?” we explained (1) that
our children have absolutely no interest
in being saddled with the high maintenance costs and (2) that there is no exit
strategy for owners. The salesman and
his supervisor, the Director of Member
Services, responded that the Presidential
Reserve program was a good way to exit
the system and, in fact, that a customer
had been released that very morning and
had received $135,000 for his ownership
share.
The supervisor commented that the
VP of Sales would not be happy to hear
what he was telling us, that it was our little
secret, and that we would benefit from a
Page 32
PR purchase as a result. He also stated
that there was no holding period before we
could offer the points back to Wyndham.
We did not want to pay for even more
points, but “we took the hook” solely as
a means of escape. On January 24, 2009,
we paid $53,495.52 to convert 750,000
Sep/Oct, 2012
which had not been mentioned at the time
of reservation or during check-in. We
found two nice robes and two chocolates
in the master bedroom of Unit 2537, the
towels were a bit thicker than the norm,
and the standard Wyndham cosmetics had
been replaced with more glamorous Italian ones, but there otherwise was
no discernable difference from a
regular Presidential unit. Further,
the room number was missing
from our door, the dining area was
quite dark due to the missing light
fixture above the table, the cushions under
the coffee table were badly stained, one
of the sink traps in the master bath was
broken and filthy, the coffee maker was
broken, the totally unfamiliar LG Steam
washer/dryer had no instructions for operation, and the wind whistled through the
massive gap under the front door.
On the plus side, maintenance did
promptly repair the sink (although leaving the nasty parts in our trash can) and
replaced the coffee maker. We provided
a detailed list of issues with PR Unit 2537
to Wyndham via the Guest Satisfaction
Survey, and the PCB Assistant Manager
sent us an email that same day with an
apology and said that the problems would
be addressed.
We at first chose not to attend an “update” with the sales group at Panama City,
but we realized that we had to make our
dissatisfaction with the unit known. We
met with a Member Services representative, and described our Presidential Reserve unit. When we questioned whether
we had made an error in purchasing PR,
we were told that PR is not the right thing
for many timeshare owners, and that quite
a few contracts had been written -- for
additional points and money of course
-- to return PR owners to regular status,
Disappointed
and Disillusioned
of our points to one million Presidential
Reserve at Panama City Beach. Our intent for doing this was to eventually keep
500,000 points for travel and to sell one
million points back to Wyndham.
Our first major disappointment with
the Presidential Reserve program came
when, even before leaving Florida, we
discovered that the Internet reservation
system that we had learned to depend on
was not available to PR owners, so we
could not search for availability without
going through a PR representative, a fact
that had not been disclosed to us at the
time of sale. We also began to realize
over the next few weeks that the “right of
first refusal” clause in the new Presidential
Reserve contract, the one upon which the
Royal Vista sales force had based their
resale arguments and upon which we had
totally based our purchase, really offered
us no protection whatsoever.
Becoming thoroughly disillusioned
about the PR program, we were curious
about the promised accommodations,
so we reserved a week in a Presidential
Reserve two-bedroom suite in Panama
City Beach. We found upon arrival on
Sunday May 17 that we had been assigned to a handicap unit, a situation that
we had learned to avoid in the past and
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TimeSharing Today
especially since, as the salesman pointed
out, maintenance costs for the eighteen or
so PR units at Panama Beach were likely
to rise dramatically when the developer
moved out of the picture. We then asked
several more PR-related questions, and
were introduced to a supervisor, “the
Presidential Reserve expert.” The “expert” said that repurchase might have been
possible earlier in the year, but that Wyndham was not buying back points because
so many had been returned and it wouldn’t
happen again in the future as new properties came online. We were told that the
correct course for us to take, this time for
$17,542.70, was to buy another 105,000
points to revert to standard ownership
status. Alluding to Wyndham’s current
financial problems, the salesmen inferred
that they were doing us a favor because
Wyndham would not have approved this
purchase of such a small amount of points
if we had not paid cash.
We detailed these complaints to
Wyndham’s Director of Owner Relations
in a letter dated 6 July 2009, and stated
that we strongly feel that the Presidential
Reserve program was misrepresented to
us and that we were purposefully victim-
Page 33
ized by the sales staff at both Royal Vista
and Panama City Beach. We asked that
Wyndham show good faith by returning
the money that we spent that year in purchases directly related to the PR program,
and that our point status revert to what it
had been on 23 January 2009. Wyndham
responded by appointing an internal
arbiter to address the problems, and, not
surprisingly, he reported that all of the
sales agents and their supervisors denied
our claims. Wyndham then dismissed the
matter completely, and we were left with
346,000 points that we had not wanted in
the first place and with $71,254 less in our
retirement account.
Our conclusions:
1. A timeshare can only be a good
value when acquired with the intent of
many years of personal use. It should
never be viewed as an investment – and
should never be purchased by any one
nearing or in retirement.
2. Direct purchase from a developer
makes sense only when offered with a
very attractive premium. Watch for “Too
good to believe.”
3. Never trust anything said by a
timeshare sales agent.
Sep/Oct, 2012
TRI WEST
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