One of the earliest scams (after swampland in Florida) were timeshare sales. But after years of complaints and convictions, timeshare purchases are pretty safe today.
Selling your timeshare, or escaping your annual maintenance fees are most certainly not.
Lets say you regret your purchase and want to sell it. So you post your timeshare on a timeshare sales website. At this point I’ll describe what two sisters experienced from the AARP article.
Initially all calls were from 800 numbers, but finally a call from a Florida area code. The young man told her the name of his company and said he had a Canadian couple who wanted to buy her unit. He provided their number and the woman validated everything the salesman said. The sisters received closing documents already signed by the buyer with a request for the company’s fee of $2,250 to be refunded at settlement.
There is a history to this scam. In the 2007 recession timeshasre sales declined very sharply putting a lot of timeshare salesmen out of work. In addition, many of the 9.2 million timeshare owners wanted to sell with no buyers. SHAZAM! Opportunity plus millions of victims called to scammer and they answered. A whole INDUSTRY was born so shutting down a few really doesn’t do anything to prevent this fraud from continuing.
But a question arises. If I put the charge on my credit card, can’t I get my money back? Normally you would be but scammers wouldn’t make any money if you could.So the scammers had another scheme for the Verification call.
To shorten the details, the salesman said you would receive a “Verification Call” which they said was legalese to complete the sale. They then coached the victims in how to answer. This usually worked because the buyers were desperate, but what the scammers needed was for them to say on the recorded line was that there was no buyer.Then the trick is to keep the sellers on the hook for 120 days so they can’t dispute the charge. Then they call and say the sale fell through. Even though the sellers are angry only 10% file a complaint. If they do, they are blocked by the recorded “Verification Call” recording that they made.
SUPPLY OF VICTIMS
There is a virtually free large supply of potential victims for the scammers. First, timeshare ownership records are public. Second, many victims will fall for the scam again.