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Timeshare and Vacation Club Scams
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Timeshares - vacation clubs - fractional ownership are all terms for schemes which often sound good and may even be good in some cases. Unfortunately, a quick look on the internet will illustrate that many people feel that they have been ripped off in one way or another when they bought into one of these schemes.
The real problems for the time share consumer stem from the fact that there is not really very much in the way of protection under the law for people who have been victimized by any large company. In theory the consumer may be protected by the law, but in practice, any kind of civil action is very expensive and takes a long time. Criminal charges in these kinds of cases are very hard to prove and often the companies and locations of resorts and criminal acts are in more than one legal jurisdiction. Local law enforcement may be unable or uninterested in pursuing it, while the federal agencies are too busy with drug and terrorism to worry about real estate scams. Therefore the average consumer really can't afford to exercise their right to pursue a civil suit against a corporation that is prepared to deal with legal issues, and has attorneys on their staff or in regular employ.
Adding insult to injury is the unfortunate fact that you can be turned over to a collection agency by the vacation club or travel agency crooks that have ripped you off if you refuse to continue payments after signing a contract of any kind, even if you never received anything in return for your money. You may also be turned over to a collection agency for filing a "charge back" with your credit card company *IF they actually issue the charge back. If the scammers are competent in how they work the deal, then the credit card company probably won't do a charge back. The legality of all this may be questionable, but in the mean time your credit is in danger and you are now the defendant. It's a terrible role reversal, but it really does happen.
Timeshares and Vacation clubs are ripe opportunities to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers. People are lured into sales presentations by offers of cash (hundreds of dollars sometimes) or other attractive incentives. Once in the sales environment a great deal of pressure may be brought to bear to sign on the spot. The plans are extremely complex and obfuscated and are often presented by highly skilled high pressure sales people. Often, or even usually the consumer doesn't really understand what they are agreeing to when they sign on the dotted line. The scammers know without checking that in all probability the target has some degree of credit or other financial resources or they wouldn't be vacationing in a resort. Vacation resorts are what might be called a "target rich environment for scam artists".
Even if the timeshare agreements were always reviewed by a consumer's attorney there are some schemes that are difficult to detect on paper. For example, large blocks of vacation condos are often sold, leased or otherwise earmarked to be marketed by online travel agents such as priceline. Then when the vacation club customer tries to make a reservation for their self, no units are available through the vacation club. They can say that they are "sold out" when what they mean is that they have been sold twice, and the time share owner or vacation club memeber is just out of luck.