Last Updated on February 5, 2020 by sltv
From time to time, we feel obliged to discuss why we won’t buy leads from certain sellers. We have previously talked about our refusal to deal with OTC precious metal dealers. Today we will look at the problems with the vacation timeshare industry that cause us to bar them from selling their timeshare leads to us.
Timeshares can be made to look attractive to potential buyers – x number of weeks at a vacation hot spot at a rate that compares favorably with hotel rates. After the deal is done, buyers come to realize that
- Travel costs are high and getting higher
- They are locked into annual maintenance fees
- They may not be able to reserve the rental for the desired period
- They are locked into the timeshare until they sell it, but there is no market for existing timeshares.
What usually happens is that timeshare owners finally figure out that they invested in a bad deal, and start seeking a buyer to take the timeshare off their hands. That’s when the fraudsters attack.
In Illinois earlier this year, 22 timeshare scammers were indicted for fraud, and seven have already pleaded guilty. If guilty, the prison sentence could go as high as 15 years. There crimes? They would tell a timeshare owner that they had a buyer lined up, and would need $2,000 up front to process and close the deal. Unfortunately for the timeshare owners, the “buyers” were fictitious – the scammers took the money and ran.
This was not an isolated incidence. If you do an Internet search on “timeshare fraud” you will not only get pages of results, you will even see ads for companies whose only purpose is to extract timeshare victims from their predicaments. In other words, timeshares, timeshare fraud, and timeshare fraud repair are all big businesses.
We say “no thanks!” Sell Leads .tv cannot possibly figure out who are the legitimate players in the timeshare leads industry versus who are the crooks. Just because a timeshare agent hasn’t been arrested yet is no guarantee he won’t be tomorrow. Unfortunately, there are timeshare lead bundlers out there who are happy to sell lists of timeshare owners to scammers. This can give a black eye to the whole list broker business. We choose to defend our industry by avoiding any involvement with timeshare leads, so if you are looking for a buyer of such leads, please look elsewhere.