Timeshare - Help Required

malinian

Hi all,

Just looking for some advice in relation to timeshare.

A member of my family has held a timeshare agreement with Diamond Resorts for a significant period of time, > 20 years, and has been looking for a way to discharge this agreement. The agreement includes an 'in perpetuity' clause.

This has been an ongoing process for a number of years, which has raised our awareness of the vast number of unscrupulous companies in the marketplace offering assistance, but essentially just trying to make a quick buck.

The annual management fees have gone unpaid for the last couple of years, on the advice of one of these companies. Would be great if anyone could advise on the best course of action. My thoughts, in terms of the options, are:

Continue to ignore communication and hope to get the debt statute barred.
Speak directly to Diamond again, to try to agree an exit plan.
Speak to a solicitor to determine legal recourse (finding a credible and reliable one, in the field of timeshare, appears to be a minefield)

Many thanks,
Mark

Alan_Bowen

You are right to be very sceptical, 99% of those who offer to help only make things worse and somehow people have been persuaded to pay even more to get out of one contract to find themselves caught up in another one. If the property is in Spain then there is some hope as the Spanish Supreme Court held that in perpetuity clauses were illegal. In the case against the Gran Canaria-based Anfi Group, the judge ruled that “in perpetuity” clauses broke a Spanish law which states that no timeshare agreement signed after January 15 1999 can last more than 50 years. This rendered the whole contract invalid, and the court ordered Anfi to refund all payments as well as interest and legal fees.

You query suggests the contract may have been signed before 1999 in which case you need good advice. I would suggest you contact the Timeshare Consumer Council ( and not any organisation that sounds similar as some try to hide their commercial business by pretending to offer advice) and seek help. I can see timeshare hypermarket is selling 5000 points with Diamond Resorts for £995 and that will be before their charges are taken into account but I am not sure what demand if any there is for points as they appear to have a huge number of points with Diamond Resorts.

Just by posting here there will be some dodgy companies trying to contact with a solution, so long as you visit their offices, ignore all of them and good luck

Paul_Devall

It would be nice to know which is a genuine advocate and which are the scammers. Simply googling Timeshare Consumer Council throws up loads and loads......

Keep_pedalling

I think the you are already taking the right course by refusing any more payments. They may threaten to take her to court, but it is highly unlikely they will do so based on their extremely dodgy contracts.

Do not pay any 3rd parties who claim they can sort this out for up front fees, as these are being run by the same spivs who happily sold TS in the past.

https://www.justanswer.co.uk/law/88czt-does-person-timeshare-perpetuity.html

TELLIT01

Where is Diamond Resorts based? If they are not based in the UK you may get away with simply ceasing payment as it may be more trouble than it's worth to pursue your family member for payment.
If they are UK based I would not recommend that course of action. I used to own, in the UK, through MacDonald Resorts (formerly Barratts) and paid 4 x the annual fee to escape their clutches. MacDonald actively pursued people who defaulted on their annual fees.