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- Aug 11, 2020
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Would love to hear any timeshare stories.

This Hawaii trip we are on is a 6 Day 5 night stay at the Hilton Waikoloa Resort. $2400 airfare out of my pocket, and 20 hrs to get here. . I reserved it in 2019 when it was offered as a timeshare deal, listen to a 2 hr presentation and get the stay normally $900 per night for $900 total and includes a car rental. Since I had turned down the last presentation 7 years ago in Honolulu, I thought my wife and I were in the same page about timeshares, but then she joined in with the sales person.

Why are we on this vacation in 2022? COVID.
What they were offering was a 1 Bedroom package, with 7800 pts, every other year for about $22k up front, $1425 every other year maintenance fees, 20000 extra pts, and some other fees and a large RCI network of places included in the package, around the world. Plus I got a deed.
Of course I had concerns, among them was what happens if you have a life changing event and need to sell it. We are inundated back home with adds from people who offer to help you for a free, dump your time share because I’ll assume it is difficult to do.
The saleslady assured me that Hilton would buy it back, but no price was guaranteed. I still said no, because all these points seem like a good deal, except they expire, and burning them means going on more vacations than we want too per year, I’m not thrilled enough with the Big Island to have this as a home base, and everything in this resort is 2-4x as expensive than in the real world.

Yet despite this, I finally said ok because I was going to talk to legal during the sign up. During this portion, I asked about buy backs, and the only comment in the contract was that Hilton, has first right of refusal, nothing about we will buy back your timeshare. and one thing the saleslady said was that in Florida there were issues selling timeshares, but Hawaii was magic, even though the resort sits out on a lava plain, and there was an orange volcano alert today. At this point I dug my feet in, said no, and my wife would not talk to me for an hour.

Anyway, no regrets. I suggested we buy a piece of jewelry tomorrow for her and I’ll still come out ahead of the $2700 down payment.

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