Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Real Cost of Timeshare

My parents-in-law recently bought some time-share in Vegas. They were under strict instructions to not go to any time-share presentations and if they ignored that instruction they were not to buy any. My wife and I arrived in Vegas the following day and took them to the time-share office and returned the time-share under the 5-day cooling off period.

On the face of it, time-share often looks cost effective and appealing but there are a whole bunch of hidden costs that you don't take into account.

In the worst case scenario, I would be paying $55/day on top of my timeshare for staying there. That's $10/day for the safe, $10/day for the Internet connection, and $35/day for cleaning service. Can you believe that there's a safe in each room but they charge you to use it? All of these costs are included when you stay at a hotel apart from maybe the Internet which is included 90% of the time.

There are other annual fees that the timeshare company will charge you that will also add up. There's the annual maintenance and then they nickel and dime you with other taxes and fees. They often state that the annual maintenance fee is "only" $790 and then further down the contract there's an annual $89 charge for something and then another $59 charge for another item.

In the case of my parents-in-law, when we added up the annual and daily costs (excluding the purchase price) they can stay in a great hotel in Vegas for that period of time without buying the timeshare.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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