Timeshares: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

foreign [Music] season our main story tonight concerns vacations a wonderful time to realize that you're in love with someone or realize that you are absolutely not and be honest you knew in the TSA line before the flight keep the streaming passwords for as long as you can but do give back his grandmother's ring specifically we're going to talk about time shares and some of you might be thinking hold on are you going to tell me that they are a scam because surely everybody knows that and it is true that the sketchiness of timeshare vacations has been a punchline on TV for years these aren't free vacations these are time sharing deals they're total scams these timeshare people they don't stop until they sell you something they they prey on the weak and gullible I eat you perhaps you and your yellow friend would like to set up a timeshare plan don't do it Sandy bam yeah suspicions about timeshare programs are so ubiquitous they can get lost in children's programming and look obviously SpongeBob was never going to say yes to a timeshare otherwise they'd have had to change his theme song to this oh who lives in a pineapple under the sea except for one week a year when he's in a studio in Key West yeah it's still good but doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it but despite Decades of mockery on TV Time Shares are a much bigger business than you may think they're actually an 8.1 billion dollar industry with nearly 10 million households owning one or more types of timeshare and they can be sold by big hotel chains like Hyatt and Marriott as well as companies like Wyndham and Westgate Resorts but one of the things that may have obscured their continued growth is that they're not always called time shares now in recent years they've been rebranded as vacation clubs or Vacation Ownership plans and while traditionally you'd buy a Timeshare that consisted of one week every year at say a condo in Florida nowadays companies offer floating weeks that can theoretically be used anytime throughout the year or time share points where you buy points that you can redeem in a number of Resort properties owned by the same company but whatever you call time shares the people selling them maintain that they are not just excellent value they are actively good for you here is a vice president at Westgate firing up his sales team in the weirdest possible way why are we here the save lives those who SE occasions are most likely to have a heart attack you're just like a doctor nurse fireman policeman a lifeguard they all save lives and you all do it too you're right timeshare sales people say resources valley during the initial outbreak of the pandemic we New Yorkers would loudly cheer for all the time share salespeople as they came back from work we do that at 6 p.m and then if we still had some energy left we'd throw a few claps to hospital workers at seven for whatever they were doing but the fact is timeshares don't save lives in fact in many cases they can them up because they are incredibly easy to get into but as you will see incredibly hard to get out of so tonight let's talk about time shares let's start with the first thing that you probably already know about them that they tend to be sold in person aggressively and while you're already on vacation Often by suckering people into agonizingly long sales presentations with the promise of a free gift there are so many horror stories out there like the woman whose parents was objected to a seven hour sales pitch that ended with them spending more than ten thousand dollars on a timeshare or the person who signs an agreement following a five-hour presentation because quote I'm a diabetic after five hours I just gave in I needed something to eat and I do get that listen to a timeshare presentation is dead last on the list of things that I want to do for five straight hours right after watching avatar the way of water telling children that their pet hamster was eaten by their other pet hamster and that neither one ever knew the child in question existed and of course hearing other people talk about watching avatar the way of water the problem is though once you are in that room companies can go to extreme lengths to get you to commit on the spot just watch as that Westgate executive encourages his staff to stop at nothing to make a sale our number one person in Orlando owned several weeks of timeshare you know you should own at least one week yourselves and if you don't lie and say you do don't let these people leave here without buying something I don't know what is more alarming there that he knew a camera crew was filming and still instructed his sales team to lie or that he knew that and willingly wore that shirt because what the is that thing it looked like someone ate a Persian rug and then threw up on it he looks like the mascot for divorce lying is actually a key strategy for many timeshare sales people they will lie about everything from the ease of making reservations to the total cost of the timeshare according to a lawsuit against Wyndham salespeople even had an acronym Taft which stood for tell them any freaking thing and come on at this point just say because it's one thing to lie it's another to do that while talking like a middle schooler who's in the car with their mom but still trying to sound hard but the thing is lying is basically allowed in this industry many timeshare agreements contain a clause that absolves the developer from responsibility for anything sale reps say it's often referred to by attorneys as the salesman's license to lie clause and look I get that sales reps customers constantly it happens to me every time a hobby pocket employee tells me you look so cool but you wouldn't expect them to be able to lie about something as objective as how much a thing will cost now the good news is depending on where you made your purchase you can have between three and ten days to rescind your signature but remember a lot of people sign up for timeshares on vacation so that time time May expire before they get home or have a chance to have a lawyer look at the contract and this would be less of an issue if people generally loved their time shares but a study found that 85 percent of timeshare owners regret their purchase which is a rate of regret on par with people who bought teacup pigs only to realize that teacup pigs don't really exist what do exist are baby pigs that grow into a 90 pound piece of lifestyle that can suffocate your cat and at this point let's talk about why people might regret buying a timeshare and the first major reason unsurprisingly is cost because The Upfront cost for a one-week annual timeshare vacation can average around twenty four thousand dollars but that is just the beginning because on top of that come other expenses like maintenance fees which typically go up every year and at high value Resorts can run from twenty five hundred to thirty five hundred dollars per year and you are on the hook for those costs whether you use your timeshare or not which actually brings us to another major problem because if what you bought is points or a floating week plan you still need to book time at your Resort which can be unexpectedly hard just listen to this man explain his attempts to book a vacation at the Westgate timeshare that he bought in Branson Missouri six years earlier the first year I call a month in advance to say you're calling you're giving us a very short notice so year two they called six months in advance you are calling too early year three they called two months in advance but we're told they called too late yeah you can still go but uh we have to charge you like any other person so far the Nasir has spent more than fifteen thousand dollars for a timeshare they've never spent a single night in within a serious complaint to Westgate they were told they would have an easier time using their timeshare if they upgraded to a better plan for an additional fifteen thousand dollars yeah that's not great is it being asked to pay fifteen thousand dollars is something that you've only seen in pictures is not a timeshare that's an expensive and remarkably Niche only fans account but westgate's response is pretty common across the industry once you buy a Timeshare the pitch is you really need to upgrade to get the most or possibly any thing out of your purchase and these upgrades are a fundamental part of the business model at one investment conference Marriott stated that every thirty thousand dollars spent on the purchase of a new timeshare should generate an extra 20 000 from upgrades after just five years so it's hardly surprising the company's frequently pressure people to pay for upgrades sometimes with the exact same aggressive tactics that got them to buy the timeshare in the first place customers of Windham Resorts have said that whenever they go on vacation they'd be forced into so-called owner update meetings where they were then pressured to spend more like this woman the 76 year old Widow is deep in debt and when more than 175 thousand dollars after she claims she was repeatedly tricked and harassed into buying time sharepoints Ford's also claims in our lawsuit Windham sales reps told her things to convince her to buy more points that ended up not being true if I would just sign it then they could lower the interest rates is that in fact what happened no no she says Windham sales people also told her the company would buy back any extra points she didn't use and that too she later found wasn't exactly as it had been explained were you surprised to discover that very surprised not only surprised he may need to bleep this out I was mad as hell wow wow she is pissed there I know Matt as hell might not sound that extreme to us delinquents on HBO but coming from a 76 year old woman in Tennessee that's equivalent of a child screaming through a bullhorn at an elementary school it's that level of intensity so between fees and the constant pressure to pay for upgrades you can see how people might end up regretting their purchase even those who initially enjoyed their timeshare might end up wanting to get rid of it either because they're getting older and not wanting to travel as much or they're just getting tired of going to the same place but the problem is whatever your reason for wanting to leave a timeshare you will soon realize it is very hard to do that and that is because many agreements contain a so-called perpetuity Clause that means that the purchase as well as all those regular maintenance fees are a non-cancelable lifetime obligation which is ridiculous a contract for a vacation shouldn't be harder to get out of than Scientology where's Shelley by the way I'm sure she's fine but uh where is Shelley now some developers claim to have programs where they'll take a time share back but there is a lot of fine print there including the fact that they're often only available at the developers discretion and could involve paying a significant fee which sometimes can be equivalent to two years of Maintenance fees and if the company won't take it back good luck because it can be hard if not impossible to sell a timeshare in fact the resale site red week shows a number of them being sold for literally zero dollars and keep that in mind anytime anyone says that a timeshare is an investment Investments are supposed to gain value a time share is as sound and investment as opening a d-lane Maxwell themed restaurant dealies when you're here you're in danger and all this actually gets one step worse thanks to something that's often framed as a selling point for timeshares it's a great feeling to know that our grandchildren when we're not around yeah and we'll be enjoying it it will be our Legacy to them even as we pass on it's something that we can continue to give to our children it's a gift that will keep on giving Beyond us now that we have two children it's kind of exciting that we know that our credits will never go to waste it will still be in our family through our voice okay one of those boys seems happy about that but the other one does seem pissed and much more interested in the upside down construction truck that he's holding and he's honestly right because if there's one thing to take away from this episode it's that if you have a choice between a time share and an upside down truck take the truck every time at least you technically own that but given everything that you've seen so far you won't be surprised to hear that many people aren't super keen on inheriting a timeshare and what you can technically decline it that can be much much harder to do than you might think walking away does take work namely you must file a disclaimer of Interest with the court saying that you reject the time share you only have nine months after the death of your loved one to file it and even then it's not that simple you see when the first person in line rejects the time share it goes to the next in line and then the next and the next every single person has to file all of that paperwork it's true every single person and timeshare paperwork clearly isn't what grieving families need it is pretty upsetting to think that there might genuinely be a market for sympathy cards that say I'm sorry for your loss but also move fast if you don't want to get stuck with the fees on your dead mom's Hilton Head two bedroom and all of this brings us what might be the most surprising thing here timeshares are so difficult to get rid of a whole separate industry has now cropped up known as the timeshare exit industry you may have seen ads on TV for the more upbeat segments on local stations like these for a company called timeshare termination team where they can get a strong endorsement well timeshare termination team has a hundred percent success rate joining us trusted advisors Brian and Holly Wilbur with the first steps you need to take to legally get out of your timeshare I'll be honest I know I said this before too I didn't think this was possible but it actually is now that sounds pretty great doesn't it the basic pitch of exit companies is for an upfront fee they'll either resell your timeshare or get you out of your contract and given how critical they are of the timeshare industry you might assume that they are the good guys in this story unfortunately they are very much not which you probably already suspected after that woman claimed a 100 success right because that's one of those phrases that's just an automatic red flag like endorsed by Dr Oz or Forbes cover model it just immediately raises suspicions also you should know well that sure looks like the news crucially it and although shows you just saw are sponsored content programs we did a story on them a couple of years ago and it's where local stations will allow you to buy your way into fake segments that look like news but are in fact ads we actually bought our way onto that exact show on Denver 7 to sell a Nazi blanket and if you missed that story go back and watch the whole thing because that was one hell of a sentence that's missing about 21 minutes of context anyway as it turns out timeshare termination team was even sketchier than our Third Reich fleece because not not long after that Denver 7's actual news team had this story to report Debbie hired the company in June 2019 in all she paid more than fourteen thousand dollars signed a contract a two-year contract that ended this last June well under the terms of the con if they don't resolve my issue I can get a refund two years came and went that's when she went looking for answers so I came to came to see them and it's empty the signs are still up on this office in Greenwood Village but there's no employees the furniture is gone wow first I'm not sure it was totally necessary to force her to go back and knock on the glass of a clearly empty office but I'm very glad that they did but second that is a 19th century snake oil salesman level scam they just disappeared one moment they were there the next they were suddenly gone with no warning like a ghost or a TV show on HBO Max everything's fine at this company everything's fine and unfortunately that is by no means a one-off as one consumer Advocate puts it I don't like generalization so I'll say that 99 of them don't do what they say they will or Worse are out and out scams but you know what I do like generalization so I'm happy to say timeshare exit companies are total a lot of follow to say basic pattern that you just saw they'll charge an upfront fee and then either stall indefinitely Or fully disappear and they are taking advantage of people on a massive scale in Missouri one group of companies stands accused of deceiving consumers into paying more than 90 million dollars for exit services that were not delivered and while that case is still pending all of these other companies have gone under in recent years and I know that these exit companies might seem immediately suspicious to you now but they have slick marketing and have also been endorsed by some supposedly financially Savvy people in fact Dave Ramsey the popular personal finance Guru who to his credit has been a vocal critic of timeshares actually gave one exit company a ringing endorsement time sure exit team will get you out of their timeshare now you're going to pay them money to do that that's what they do and they charge you up front and they give your money back guarantee if they don't get you out but they'll get you out well that sounds trustworthy doesn't it and after all why wouldn't you take the word of a man whose look and general Vibe answers the question what if Billy Joel and Dr Phil had a kid and it sucked but but not long after that the Washington State AG sued timeshare exit team claiming among other things that the majority of his customers either did not receive their promised exit received one that caused them unanticipated negative Financial or other consequences or received an exit that the customer could have obtained for themselves the company eventually shut down but only after it was forced to pay 2.6 million dollars in restitution and if you're thinking any of that gave Dave Ramsey pause for reflection you should know it did not because after Inside Edition did a segment covering timeshare exit teams issues and questioning his endorsement of them he pushed back like this I don't know you could buy a story on Inside Edition I didn't I didn't think you are with that I know you were a tabloid but I didn't know you were that low or are you just so dumb that you didn't understand you were on the wrong side of this argument on the basis of the consumer so this is why timeshare is not on the air anymore timeshare exit team but guess who's still on the air me and I'm sitting in a 300 million dollar paid for building neck deep in cash you jerks yeah that is champion of the working people Dave Ramsey bragging about being neck deep in cash to his own viewers who got caught up in a scam that he actively promoted all while having his hands like this a pose used almost exclusively by cartoon Super Villains plotting ways to kill Batman but the thing is there is no right side to be on here timeshare companies and timeshare exit companies are both terrible one is a shitty business model that's somehow technically legal and the other is oftentimes an out and out scam but neither is good and it's very important not to lose sight of the fact that beneath all of this are people who can get victimized and in some cases twice if you watch a lot of stories about these companies it is heartbreaking just how often the people in them talk about how ashamed they feel about falling for this nobody in my family knows nobody makes you feel bad when you think you've done something that's stupid well we bought the timeshare which took us to the cleaners and it just made me feel stupid it doesn't make me too good you know it's like I I think I'm smarter than that yeah I get that but to be clear the shame here should not be on the people who were duped it should be on the industries that exploited them told them any freaking thing they wanted to and abused their understandable desire just to take a break so what can we do here well on the off chance that anyone watching right now is considering a time share don't do it if you know someone considering it send them this segment if you happen to inherit a timeshare get rid of it as fast as possible and if it's too late and you're stuck with it you can try and give it away for zero dollars online but the truth is you'll only be someone else over them unfortunately the best option might actually be to call the timeshare company and see if there is any any chance that they will take it back from you as for exit companies as you have seen there's been sporadic legal action against individual companies but by and large it is a whack-a-mole ecosystem when one goes down another one tends to pop right up so the truth is the best bet right now seems to be to make sure that we all warn each other about just how up this whole industry is or I suppose we could go another way with it and if you can't beat them join them so joining me now for a special sponsored segment that she may or may not have paid three thousand dollars for please welcome back to the show my lovely wife Wanda Joe Oliver thank you hello there Moana hello no wonder I understand you have a new timeshare product that you'd like to share with us that's right I'm here to introduce my new company timeshare exit squared yes the ever timeshare exit company exit company wow fascinating wonder what does timeshare exit squared do exactly well well let's say you're stuck in a timeshare and you go to an exit company to get you out of the contract but uh oh that company just took all your money and disappeared without doing a dang thing well timeshare exit Square can free you from your timeshare exit company and get all your money back wow that is amazing Wanda you are truly saving lives just like doctors nurses and firefighters I am way better than all them all those people are scum compared to me I Spit on them wow as you should my wander now tell me how exactly does timeshare exit squared work how does it work well 's here majon they pay us a quick and easy upfront fee of twenty thousand dollars business months your timeshare exit company will deposit a full refund to your bank count wow wonder is that guaranteed oh it's even better than a guarantee it's a pinky swear promise I like it I like that that's what squared has over 9.3 billion happy customers and a 200 satisfaction rate a 200 percent you said that's right for exit squared customer another random person is all left satisfied wow I wonder that is incredible I'll be honest I didn't think this was possible but it actually is there is depending on your definition of possible sure sure that's fair and if you run into any problems or delays just call our hotline at 1-800 Flowers oh nice nice yeah to the timeshare exit squared offices and you know what how would someone do that my wonder will all you have to do is drive up next to the timeshare exit squared van and scream you're a 27 digit case number thing you need until we cross the border into Nogales Mexico that sounds very reasonable but people should act fast shouldn't name a Wonder that's right but John this particular company is only going to exist for the next three days I haven't I haven't well I could sell you one week a year for just fifty thousand dollars oh I like it and nobody leaves here without buying something she's right thank you so much my Wanda that's our show thank you so much for watching we're off next week we'll be back after that good night thank you so much

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 5,652,697

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Id: Bd2bbHoVQSM

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023