Beware of buying a timeshare: future maintenance fees

[TammyWright]

I have always been leery of timeshares. They seemed to good to be true. This is an interesting article about some owners that own timeshares with a very large company are being hit with surprise maintenance assessments. Some are as big as $5800. They have until january to pay this or they risk going to collections and damaging their credit. The sales people can be pretty slick and gloss over the fine print that puts you on the hook and them off the hook.

Check out the article, especially the comments because current timeshare owners chime in and most think that they are getting ripped off. http://blog.sfgate.com/hawaii/2011/12/21/timeshare-owners-fight-over-special-assessments-1-win-1-pending/

[starchild]

Crazy!  I've been to a few presentations and it always seemed shady to me, and if anything a waste of money because some years you can't get away and when you can you just pay for the trip and go. 

[boscobel]

We were tempted by a timeshare a few years ago when we went on vacatio to a friends timeshare, but we couldn't deal with the car-salesman-y sales pitch.  Always seemed shady, I'm glad we didn't give in!