Firstly, we will take a retrospective view of our 2020 maintenance survey but before that we would like to express our thanks to all who took part. With a response of slightly over 1,800 owners the overriding fact that came to the fore was a general feeling that resorts and developers did very little to assist owners especially the largest timeshare groups, in all cases neither full or partial refunds were offered. We did establish that a number of smaller privately owned resorts, mostly in the UK did offer some discounts or refunds of the 2020 fees, however, these amounted to very little.
Most of the larger groups simply offered a variety of solutions such as free cancellation, banking weeks or points for future use or in one case, trading in points as a discount for the maintenance fee, all of which did not appease the majority of our surveyed owners.
In November BBC Radio 4 You and Yours consumer programme entered the fray and featured the problems of maintenance fees, naturally TCA were contacted for their comment. The Resort Development Organisation (RDO) were also asked to comment and their spokesperson suggested that “it was too early” to comment. Given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was felt globally by early March, one would have thought that by November the RDO and member resorts and developers would have had a game plan in place, obviously not.
Our new survey
Apart from the issues of maintenance fees TCA established that there was an under swell of dissatisfaction amongst owners in general. When our survey team followed up completed surveys they established other problems of ownership coming to the fore. The major grievances surrounded general availability, exchange problems, levels of customer service, inability to exit and of course a feeling that what was promised at the point of sale never came to fruition. With this in mind, we have decided to explore the overall satisfaction of timeshare ownership.
Time moves on, but not timeshare it seems
Apart from the above, many respondents, especially those who purchased some time ago were disappointed that the once members only resorts are no longer enjoying that status. With the advent of so many online booking platforms, most resorts are in the public domain, so not only do you not have to be a member, those booking online also benefit from not paying substantial funds to join, they simply work on pay as you go basis at the expense of members/owners.
Apart from this, the other major complaint was inflexibility. As life and circumstances change the inability to simply walk away causes great frustration. With many resorts there is simply no way out, for others the payment of a multiple of annual maintenance fees is a bitter pill to swallow.
From respondents comments we can easily gather that the once loved timeshare ownership is now more of a liability than a pleasure. As the title of this section states, time has moved on but timeshare is firmly living in the past.
We need you
To understand your feelings as an owner we would like, and value your opinion. We have produced a short survey which will allow us to gather an understanding of the current consumer views as to the overall satisfaction or otherwise of timeshare ownership.
Over the years the timeshare industry has evolved and in many cases not to the advantage of owners, completing our survey will give us a greater understanding of the good points and of course the bad points that you, as an owner, currently and in the past have experienced.
Please take a couple of minutes to complete our survey; we honestly value your comments and opinions and once we have sufficient data we will publish the results.
Access to our 2021 survey may be found by clicking the button below:
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk