There’s an old joke about how you can tell if a politician is lying to you by checking to see if their lips are moving. That old truism still works today, but applies even more to timeshare salespeople. The sales staff for developers and vacation clubs have one goal: to get you to sign a contract, and they say almost anything to get you there. The sheer number of timeshare sales lies can be overwhelming when you know what to look for.
For example, you might have told the timeshare salesperson that you were concerned about your annual maintenance fee going up, and they assured you that it wouldn’t. Or you might have worried about spending so much money on fractional ownership, only for them to assure you that you were making a good investment that you could sell for a hefty profit down the road.
This article will take a look at the practice of lying in timeshare presentations and what you can do about it. Specifically, we’ll talk about what sales staff are required to share, some common half-truths or even outright lies you might hear in a timeshare sales pitch, and what statements cross the line and allow a buyer to cancel a contract.
If any of these statements sound familiar to you, Centerstone Group urges you to contact its team of experts. As the top timeshare exit company, we are intimately familiar with both the lies they tell and the best ways to help you escape the resulting unfair contracts.
Are Timeshare Presentations Legally Required to Disclose All Contract Terms?
The short answer is no, but sales staff are required to disclose all material terms of the contract as well as any terms required by law.
If you don’t have much experience with these contracts, it can be hard to know what “material” means. A good rule of thumb is to ask whether the matter is an important one that affects your basic understanding of the deal.
For example, let’s say that you sign a contract to buy a fixed-week deeded timeshare property in Maui, Hawaii. The salesperson gives you the address of the resort as “101 Main Street.” When you get to the resort, however, you find that the address is actually “101 Maine Street,” and the address the salesperson gave you was just a misspelling. In this case, the error was not material and didn’t require a specific disclosure or correction.
Now, instead of there being a problem with the spelling of the address, let’s assume a different kind of problem. You sign the contract, take it home, and find that your contract is actually for 5,000 points of a vacation club membership, and you can only get to Hawaii if you are lucky enough to reserve a unit on the vacation club’s website.
In this second case, the representation by the salesperson that you were getting a deed property interest in Maui was untrue, and it went directly to the heart of what you were buying. Therefore, the timeshare salesperson made a material misrepresentation that resulted in an unenforceable contract.
What Are Common Omissions or Half-Truths in the Sales Process?
Listing all of the possible lies and half-truths that could be spoken in a sales presentation would be a near-endless task. However, there are a few things to watch out for when a salesperson is speaking to you. Anyone making these statements is likely stretching the truth, if they are not outright lying.
1. “Your Maintenance Fees Won’t Go Up.”
A common concern of timeshare owners is that they end up paying far too much in annual maintenance fees every year. According to the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the average timeshare maintenance fee in 2024 was about $1,480 per year, up about 17% from $1,260 in 2023.
That is already a significant chunk of change to be dropping just having a timeshare contract. Consider, though, that maintenance fees can and do rise every year. This means that, conservatively, if you’re paying $1,480 per year now, you’ll be paying over $2,500 a decade from now. Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue.
2. “A Timeshare Is a Great Investment.”
No, it isn’t. Timeshares are terrible investments. It’s not like traditional real estate that you can usually sell for a profit. Nobody wants to buy a used timeshare, which is why you will find people all over eBay and Craigslist trying to give them away for free.
This misrepresentation has led to further loss and economic injury to owners, who have then been scammed by companies that promise to sell their timeshares. One such owner was an elderly woman named Corrine Adams who lost thousands of dollars trying to sell her timeshare — and didn’t even manage to complete a sale after years of trying.
While some people who have deeded timeshares in Hawaii or other premium locations may possibly be able to find some luck on the timeshare resale market, the vast majority of timeshares and vacation club memberships simply do not have potential buyers. And even those you do find a legitimate buyer, it will never sell for a profit.
3. “You’ll Be Able to Use Any of Our Properties, Whenever You Want!”
Vacation clubs, in particular, love to showcase their portfolio of resorts and tell you that you can use any of them whenever you like. While this is technically true under the terms of the contract, the truth of these reservation systems is that they often fail to provide the results timeshare owners were promised by salespeople.
Online discussions of the Marriott Vacation Club, for example, note difficulties and “various intermittent issues” with the reservation system. Disney Vacation Club members also report having quite a bit of trouble making reservations outside of their “home resort.” The truth of these systems is that they are not easy to use at all and will likely require you to plan vacations six months to well over a year in advance.
Can Misleading Sales Tactics Invalidate a Contract?
Yes, in some cases, misleading sales practices can deem a contract invalid. If a salesperson makes a material misrepresentation (as discussed above) in order to get you to sign a contract, that is known as fraud in the inducement and can result in an unenforceable contract.
If you find yourself in this situation, it’s important not to sleep on your rights. Centerstone Group can help you understand your contract and rights as well as connect you with a trusted lawyer or law firm to help you get the legal advice you need. (Our legal partners also give our clients discounts on their fees, saving you more money in the long run.)
But legal remedies are not the only ways to get out of a timeshare agreement. Centerstone Group has helped thousands of owners get out of their contracts at a variety of stages of their ownership.
For example, if you have only recently signed a contract, you may be able to cancel within the rescission period set by your state’s laws. In this case, we can provide guidance on crafting an effective cancellation letter.
If you’ve had your contract for a while though and there weren’t any outright untruths, we can still help. Centerstone Group has a successful transfer program to get your timeshare to someone else who wants it, and we also have a proprietary pressure campaign that we can use to get developers to take back unwanted timeshares.
If You’ve Been Lied to, You Can Fight Back
Unfortunately, timeshare sales lies are not a trend that will go away. They have been here since the beginning of the timeshare industry, and they will exist until it ends. It’s important to understand what timeshare companies can and can’t do as well as your options. Centerstone Group’s team, fortunately, is an expert in both.
Centerstone Group is an accredited, A+-rated company with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), where it enjoys a 4.78–out-of-5-star rating from its satisfied clients. No matter what your situation, we can help you find the best solution for your timeshare problem.
There’s an old joke about how you can tell if a politician is lying to you by checking to see if their lips are moving. That old truism still works today, but applies even more to timeshare salespeople. The sales staff for developers and vacation clubs have one goal: to get you to sign a contract, and they say almost anything to get you there. The sheer number of timeshare sales lies can be overwhelming when you know what to look for.
For example, you might have told the timeshare salesperson that you were concerned about your annual maintenance fee going up, and they assured you that it wouldn’t. Or you might have worried about spending so much money on fractional ownership, only for them to assure you that you were making a good investment that you could sell for a hefty profit down the road.
This article will take a look at the practice of lying in timeshare presentations and what you can do about it. Specifically, we’ll talk about what sales staff are required to share, some common half-truths or even outright lies you might hear in a timeshare sales pitch, and what statements cross the line and allow a buyer to cancel a contract.
If any of these statements sound familiar to you, Centerstone Group urges you to contact its team of experts. As the top timeshare exit company, we are intimately familiar with both the lies they tell and the best ways to help you escape the resulting unfair contracts.
Are Timeshare Presentations Legally Required to Disclose All Contract Terms?
The short answer is no, but sales staff are required to disclose all material terms of the contract as well as any terms required by law.
If you don’t have much experience with these contracts, it can be hard to know what “material” means. A good rule of thumb is to ask whether the matter is an important one that affects your basic understanding of the deal.
For example, let’s say that you sign a contract to buy a fixed-week deeded timeshare property in Maui, Hawaii. The salesperson gives you the address of the resort as “101 Main Street.” When you get to the resort, however, you find that the address is actually “101 Maine Street,” and the address the salesperson gave you was just a misspelling. In this case, the error was not material and didn’t require a specific disclosure or correction.
Now, instead of there being a problem with the spelling of the address, let’s assume a different kind of problem. You sign the contract, take it home, and find that your contract is actually for 5,000 points of a vacation club membership, and you can only get to Hawaii if you are lucky enough to reserve a unit on the vacation club’s website.
In this second case, the representation by the salesperson that you were getting a deed property interest in Maui was untrue, and it went directly to the heart of what you were buying. Therefore, the timeshare salesperson made a material misrepresentation that resulted in an unenforceable contract.
What Are Common Omissions or Half-Truths in the Sales Process?
Listing all of the possible lies and half-truths that could be spoken in a sales presentation would be a near-endless task. However, there are a few things to watch out for when a salesperson is speaking to you. Anyone making these statements is likely stretching the truth, if they are not outright lying.
1. “Your Maintenance Fees Won’t Go Up.”
A common concern of timeshare owners is that they end up paying far too much in annual maintenance fees every year. According to the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the average timeshare maintenance fee in 2024 was about $1,480 per year, up about 17% from $1,260 in 2023.
That is already a significant chunk of change to be dropping just having a timeshare contract. Consider, though, that maintenance fees can and do rise every year. This means that, conservatively, if you’re paying $1,480 per year now, you’ll be paying over $2,500 a decade from now. Any suggestion otherwise is simply untrue.
2. “A Timeshare Is a Great Investment.”
No, it isn’t. Timeshares are terrible investments. It’s not like traditional real estate that you can usually sell for a profit. Nobody wants to buy a used timeshare, which is why you will find people all over eBay and Craigslist trying to give them away for free.
This misrepresentation has led to further loss and economic injury to owners, who have then been scammed by companies that promise to sell their timeshares. One such owner was an elderly woman named Corrine Adams who lost thousands of dollars trying to sell her timeshare — and didn’t even manage to complete a sale after years of trying.
While some people who have deeded timeshares in Hawaii or other premium locations may possibly be able to find some luck on the timeshare resale market, the vast majority of timeshares and vacation club memberships simply do not have potential buyers. And even those you do find a legitimate buyer, it will never sell for a profit.
3. “You’ll Be Able to Use Any of Our Properties, Whenever You Want!”
Vacation clubs, in particular, love to showcase their portfolio of resorts and tell you that you can use any of them whenever you like. While this is technically true under the terms of the contract, the truth of these reservation systems is that they often fail to provide the results timeshare owners were promised by salespeople.
Online discussions of the Marriott Vacation Club, for example, note difficulties and “various intermittent issues” with the reservation system. Disney Vacation Club members also report having quite a bit of trouble making reservations outside of their “home resort.” The truth of these systems is that they are not easy to use at all and will likely require you to plan vacations six months to well over a year in advance.
Can Misleading Sales Tactics Invalidate a Contract?
Yes, in some cases, misleading sales practices can deem a contract invalid. If a salesperson makes a material misrepresentation (as discussed above) in order to get you to sign a contract, that is known as fraud in the inducement and can result in an unenforceable contract.
If you find yourself in this situation, it’s important not to sleep on your rights. Centerstone Group can help you understand your contract and rights as well as connect you with a trusted lawyer or law firm to help you get the legal advice you need. (Our legal partners also give our clients discounts on their fees, saving you more money in the long run.)
But legal remedies are not the only ways to get out of a timeshare agreement. Centerstone Group has helped thousands of owners get out of their contracts at a variety of stages of their ownership.
For example, if you have only recently signed a contract, you may be able to cancel within the rescission period set by your state’s laws. In this case, we can provide guidance on crafting an effective cancellation letter.
If you’ve had your contract for a while though and there weren’t any outright untruths, we can still help. Centerstone Group has a successful transfer program to get your timeshare to someone else who wants it, and we also have a proprietary pressure campaign that we can use to get developers to take back unwanted timeshares.
If You’ve Been Lied to, You Can Fight Back
Unfortunately, timeshare sales lies are not a trend that will go away. They have been here since the beginning of the timeshare industry, and they will exist until it ends. It’s important to understand what timeshare companies can and can’t do as well as your options. Centerstone Group’s team, fortunately, is an expert in both.
Centerstone Group is an accredited, A+-rated company with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), where it enjoys a 4.78–out-of-5-star rating from its satisfied clients. No matter what your situation, we can help you find the best solution for your timeshare problem.
Contact us today for a free consultation and case evaluation.