The pitfalls of buying timeshares
Timeshare, also called timeshare purchase, gives the owner of the accommodation the right to stay for one or more weeks per year, in a fully-equipped apartment or villa located in a leisure residence. In France or abroad, the occupant is associated with the construction company for 99 years. He never has the quality of owner of the property.
Difficult to resell a timeshar
But when you know the problems of resale, increase in charges, and the difficulties in exchanging your period, you no longer see it too much as an investment. At most like a vacation destination, provided you have managed to escape the pitfalls.
If you ever want to resell your period, you might not find a demand. Even if the company offering the buyback is honest (it has a contract signed stating the extent of its obligations), its intervention to sell the first period is most often ineffective because the second-hand market for timeshare residences is almost non-existent.
In three years, the charges have fallen from 228.67 euros to 381.12 euros per year and all attempts we have made with the company to obtain justifications for this increase have failed. In desperation, we finally stopped paying “.
Read the contract conditions carefully
Users are indeed very poorly informed of the evolution of charges when the contract is taken out. However, the European directive of October 26, 1994 on timeshare enjoyment provides that the seller must establish an assessment of future charges, but it is hardly respected abroad, in particular in Spain.
What to do against the excessive increase in charges?
It very often happens that managers refuse to communicate the decisions of the general assembly relating to expense management. The occupants are then stuck. Either they continue to pay disproportionate charges or they stop paying and society withdraws their right of residence. They can therefore no longer enjoy their vacation spot.
What recourse in the event of a dispute?
if the shares he holds in the timeshare have been transferred to him by succession for less than two years;
or when he can no longer enjoy his property due to the closure of the station or the inaccessibility of the residence.
A collective request made by all the occupants of the same residence has a better chance of success than a specific process. Membership in a user defense association often proves effective. Thus, the Association of French owners of timeshare vacations has obtained a readjustment of charges for all members occupying the Lanzarote Beach Club residence, in the Canaries.
The exchange of weeks of vacation almost impossible
The difficulties encountered by holidaymakers in exchanging the use of their apartment are due to several factors.
There is an imbalance between the demand of holidaymakers living in regions where there are a surplus of residences and the offer of stays actually available elsewhere in the world.
The exchanges are processed by the computer, which preferably selects the most attractive residences. Thus, a person holding a week’s stay in Méribel in November will have no chance of exchanging their period of occupation.
Certain residences benefit from a sign of distinction in the form of a “golden crown”. It is likely that their occupants will win the exchange first. Removing this quality mark takes away any chance of being selected
If an exchange has not been achieved, the holder of a period has little recourse against the seller. The only solution would be to prove that he did not give his informed consent, following incomplete or erroneous information from the seller. But this proof is very difficult to provide.
Little recourse to go back on his commitment
When the resale is accompanied by a promise of placement, the holidaymaker, if he has been canvassed in France, at his home, his place of work or in a public place, by a company having its registered office in France, can invoke the law of January 3, 1972 which prohibits canvassing with a view to financial investments.
