Bluegreen Vacation Club Timeshare

Bluegreen Vacation Club

Do not—I repeat—do not buy a Bluegreen timeshare under any conditions.

No matter how sweet it may sound, it is a rip-off. My wife and I bought

one, and we are in a continual state of regret about it. It is virtually

impossible to sell (the same amount of points we bought for $10,000 are

selling for about $3,000 online), plus we have yearly fees of about $600

that must be paid for us to even be able to keep using it.

Here are some of the things you may not hear while you're in a Bluegreen

presentation... we didn't:

-each year you will have to pay both "maintenance fees" and "club dues,"

which for us amount to over $600. If you don't pay, you can't use any of

your points at all until you do pay.

-many of the resorts they tell you about can only be booked in 7-day

increments, which means you'll take that trip and no others for two

years because you'll use up all your points on that single trip.

-we just found this one out... if you don't have the points, you can't

book a trip... for example, we get 12,000 new points in July, so I

called to book something in August. Well, I can't do that until I "have

the points." Of course, by the time the points actually show up, all the

places will be booked for the summer. We're all paid up on maintenance

fees and club dues, so we will definitely get the points, but too bad...

we have to wait. The person on the phone even sympathized with me and

said he understood what I was saying, but too bad.

-they say they will help you rent your timeshare, but this is a joke.

Your timeshare will never rent for anything near what you need to

maintain the fees on it, much less pay it off.

-take a look at this web site to see what points are actually worth if

you buy them on eBay:

http://popular.ebay.com/ns/Real-Estate/Bluegreen.html If you really

desperately want Bluegreen points, don't buy them from Bluegreen.

-they tell you that you can book things just a day or two in advance,

but this is almost never possible in real life. Things are booked up

months in advance.

Owning a Bluegreen timeshare is like a weight that you have to drag

around with you for the rest of your life. There are many places that

will rent timeshares if you like that kind of thing, and you can usually

get them fairly cheap and without any obligation for the future. When I

imagine paying $600 a year for the rest of my life, it feels amazingly

scary. Don't do it. You're locking yourself into something that will

never end when there is absolutely no need to do so.

They give you the free trip, then take advantage of how little you've

researched timeshares when you're in the presentation. They tell you

this price can only be offered this one time, and that you can't take

another trip. It's all cheap sales techniques, and they wouldn't be

necessary if it weren't something people don't really want.

We even looked on the internet during our sales presentation... if only

I had come across a letter like this, we probably wouldn't have bought,

and we'd be much better off. At least take a few days to think about it.

If they can't give you that long to think, they're tricking you anyway.