Timeshare Tragedy

Dear Scott,

My husband and I are in our sixties and on the pension. In 2007 we went to an Accor timeshare seminar and signed up to their deal. We paid $22,000 upfront, plus an annual maintenance fee. We’ve only used the hotel three times (it’s always booked out). Yet we’ve been paying these annual fees ever since. Our bill this year was $990, and it goes up every year. We’ve been told we can’t get out of these annual payments unless we declare bankruptcy, or die. We’ve had to sell a lot of our assets to live. Help!

Julie and David

Hi guys

This is outrageous.

You were robbed — with a pen — by a $12 billion-dollar publicly listed company!

At least with an old-fashioned hold-up it’s done and dusted in a few minutes. These robbers are holding a gun to your head till the day you die!

(Consumer group CHOICE found that timeshares can “lock you into contracts that run from 60 to 99 years, and can cost you as much as $450,000 over the long run”).

If I were in your shoes — pensioners on a low income — I wouldn’t pay them another cent.

After all, they’ve already made their money twenty-fold from you.

Fair cop!

However, if you do this they may play hardball and sic their debt collectors onto you, and even try and bankrupt you.

So it seems to me you have two choices:

You can keep paying them till the day you die.

Or you can call the (financial) cops on these robbers. Give me a call during the week (when I have my financial counsellor hat on) and I’ll help you lodge a complaint with AFCA, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

Scott.