Timeshare out the window

2009-01-12 13:01

Chris Moerdyk

One of my major achievements last year was to get rid of my timeshare.

I had it for about 20 years and I remember in the early days if we didn't want to use it I would make one simple phone call and hey-presto, for a minimal fee and very little fuss we could get ourselves another timeshare week somewhere else in the country for some other time.

Then it started getting more and more difficult to make this timeshare swop. We figured that it was because we still had a kid at school and were committed to taking our holidays when school was out. Just like millions of other parents.

Then the youngest left school and we had the freedom to go away for our week's holiday out of season.

Didn't help a damn.

It still became almost impossible to find someplace reasonable that wasn't booked up to the gills. So much so that frankly I gave up and flogged it. (And in 20 years the value of my deluxe, Umhlanga Rocks timeshare had grown by about 0,005% a year - why was I not surprised?)

Was it coincidence, I wondered at the time, that timeshare exchanges for ordinary mortals like me started becoming scarce at about the same time the system changed from weeks to points and all those holiday clubs started springing up?

I remember at one point when I battled to try and exchange my week's timeshare, I just for the heck of it tried to book a week directly at a timeshare resort. I found that they not only had a week available when the exchange people said they didn't, I also got it at the same price as the annual levy.

I did not have to pay an exchange fee so effectively I got a week of timeshare a lot cheaper than a timeshare owner could. Crazy.

I haven't given timeshare much of thought since then, until I got this e-mail late last year from a friend of mine in Johannesburg who is normally quite a calm, understanding, fellow.

Time's up

"As you know," he wrote, "I rarely get angry, especially in terms of some of the ludicrous claims made in advertising but, this one really has my blood boiling.

"I have about 5 000 timeshare points which expire on 31/12/08 which I cannot use nor give away.

"Just when I had resigned myself to losing them, I got the following e mail: "You can still enjoy a fabulous 2009 holiday at one of our INTERNATIONAL resorts, using your 2008 expiring points"

"So, I discuss it with my wife and we agreed that a week in Mozambique in February would be rather nice.

"I telephoned to book only to be told that Mozambique is not considered, by them, to be international. Neither is Zimbabwe, Botswana or Zambia.

"Their nearest international destination to qualify for this offer starts at Kenya and extends to Egypt. Now, I don't know about you but, my definition of international is somewhere when crossing a border requires a passport and/or visa."

There always seems to be some catch somewhere.

But, maybe I'm just lazy and can't be bothered to battle for an exchange or to really understand just how timeshare works these days.

It still seems to be popular, but then so is the SAA Voyager programme and I have a suspicion that like Voyager, timeshare still has a lot of hassle and frustration involved.

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