Welcome to this week’s Friday’s Letter from America, this week we publish an article from one of the Advocates, as usual this has been edited by Irene Parker. First a word from Europe.
The Litigious Abogados family have taken their little scam to a new level, Inside Timeshare was horrified to receive yet another sorry story from a reader who found the articles too late.
In this story he has paid the initial procurator fees, then the “tax” to have the money released from the court. He then received an envelope with the cheque for his compensation, unfortunately it had yet again been opened and the cheque was missing. As usual he then received another letter from another company stating they had been assigned by the courts to investigate this and get his money back from the bank. This cheque had yet again been cashed by a gang of Romanians.
He then paid the 10% of the amount on the cheque to this company, then he receives notification that he has outstanding property tax for a property he owns in Spain, this needs to be paid before the money is released as it is embargoed. He is then informed that his NIE number is out of date and needs to be renewed, they will do it for him for a fee.
The next letter he receives is that he has outstanding fines for a traffic offence!
Very strange indeed, the full story will be published next week, but this does reinforce the fact that before you pay any money, check who they are.
So now on with this week’s article.
A Timeshare Advocacy Group™ Advocate
Offers a Timeshare Industry Analysis
By an Advocate
July 28, 2017
What I have started to think when it comes to timeshare ownership and the future of the industry…
Everyone knows this industry is not well regulated (but obviously needs to be). Some of the actions and activities of individuals and companies that get reported in the timeshare world would result in major fines and possibly prison sentences in other better regulated industries.
It appears the industry has long depended on “self-regulation”. It has not done a great job of that but there have always been just enough companies that seem to try and deliver a quality product and quality customer experience at the same time they balance trying to make a healthy profit.
I think of a brand like Disney first and foremost. Also while I know a company like Marriott has their critics, in all my years traveling and staying at their hotel and timeshare properties I always got the impression they were serious about fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities and providing top shelf customer service and a quality customer experience. I am sure there are other good examples.
In the past, the actions of the bad eggs of the industry (the industry’s worst examples), the negative impact was always minimal and able to be managed before it metastasized. But the potential problem as I see it is that in the last decade it appears what may be described as large predatory financial engineering companies almost “posing” as timeshare companies have risen and aggressively worked every loophole and non-regulation to their own advantage and now are probably guilty of gross violations of their fiduciary responsibility to their customers / owners. These companies have created vast fortunes for a very small network of individuals at the top of the pyramid.
Ironically though, and looking at historical examples from other industries, it is these very companies likely to bring the whole industry into the national spotlight and to its knees eventually. Some of these appear to have walked to the edge of doing that already.
As these quasi financial engineering / timesharing companies become increasingly more brazen in chasing profits by any means possible, raising fees rapidly at the same time they are reducing owner benefits, due to their increased sheer size the public outcry will likely increase and just the odds of random probability suggests there will be a “Gotcha” moment or event that will bring increased scrutiny and increased legislation.
If the good timeshare companies try to ignore what the bad ones are doing, they may find someday that their systems and profits and share prices are negatively impacted by the future regulations forced on the industry from the egregious actions of the bad actors in their industry.
Pharma for example is still dealing with the Turing Pharmaceuticals fallout even now 2 years later, and that fallout will likely not dissipate anytime soon.
This is just my still forming hypothesis. We’ll see.
Thank you to the author of this article and to Irene who did the editing, we also thank all those who read and made comments before it was published.
It just remains for Inside Timeshare to wish you all a very good weekend.
The post Friday’s Letter from America appeared first on Inside Timeshare.