Lifelong fling…

For years I visited Mexico and resisted the onslaught of timeshare madness, then back in 2002 I made the mistake of falling for the whole drill. Let me explain the process and the pain of timeshares.

On a vacation with the ex we gave in to a tour in exchange for some diving and a night in the “new” Westin Regina resort in Cabo San Lucas. The timeshare was affiliated with the Westin so we figured they must be respectable. During the tour we were told over and over that this was “fractional PROPERTY ownership”, that the property was highly valued for trades, that Club Regina had direct access to Whistler (only 2 hours away) and we could pick up discount rooms there as we were members. This sounded great for a family of 4, the ability to stay in our own condo once a year and visit a bunch of other locations owned by the same company making it easy to book in other areas, and if we didn’t want it we could resell it. This all sounds great… except. You don’t actually own any property, you own points in the system, and booking anything has to be done at least a YEAR in advance to get the dates you want, with kids and shared parenting that is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. If you don’t follow the rules you lose your week, and trading with RCI has to be done under strict rules.

So after the purchase we owned some points for $16,950 (high season membership) and $500 a year in maintenance, with no guaranteed reservations at our own home resort, or any other for that matter in the system, if you late pay the maintenance they tack on $250. We have never been able to book a “short” notice vacation, maybe during HURRICANE season!

Year 1 - we attempt to book for 2 different weeks with no success at our resort and give up to “store” the week

Year 2 - we are able to book in Cancun for a week, during the week we are harassed constantly to upgrade our membership! Including booking us for breakfast at CHECK IN. This year was the last one with the ex, and we had to also “deed over” the property to me (why did I take it?)
Year 3 - We attempt to book in the spring, and give up and book Zihuatenejo for a week in.. Hurricane season (October), great resort except, they want to put us in a Studio! After two days of living in a closet and constantly harrassing the staff we are upgraded to the 1 bedroom we BOOKED, and it seemed like there was NO ONE at the resort!

Year 4 - We tried to book Puerto Vallarta over a month long period (3 months prior), “everything is sold out i’m sorry”. We booked a trip on line at Paradise Village (another timeshare). We tried both through Club Regina and RCI, they must keep rooms open for the new “victims” to see.

Year 5 - again we try to book Puerto Vallarta, and our home resort to no avail, the monthly payments on the “loan” are getting old, and the annual maintenance is now pissing me off… So… I contact them about selling the “property”, this is a joke they NEVER resell the property it kills their long term contract and guaranteed maintenance fees, and they can oversell 100:1 so why would they “resell” it…?
Attack #1 by Club Regina and Aspen National Collections, Spring Hill Florida, after not paying our maintenance fees and complaining repeatedly about their lack of booking, we now receive a $1200 bill for our $500 maintenance. I contact the “collections” company about the bill to inform them we are in a dispute. This is not a collections company, this is an AGENT of the timeshare, he immediately attacks me saying i’m the one doing things wrong, and says over and over this will affect your credit. When I ask him how a collection agency knows so much about timeshare and if he is affiliated with them he hangs up on me.

Now i’m pissed, so I send notification off to the property manager and the loan manager to tell them I am done, feel free to proceed with foreclosure and take it away. Guess what.. They WON’T, the loan manager calls me to tell me I am breaking a contract and must follow through, when I ask about the reservations of course I get (you can’t book if your maintenance fee is behind of course it wasn’t when I was trying to BOOK), now I am told flat out “We do NOT guarantee you will receive a reservation” I say for $17,000 PLUS $500 a YEAR I am not guaranteed a BOOKING?????? AT ALL? Now the loan manager is referring me to… the collections agency as well, there is no recourse for getting rid of this P.O.S. and there are stories all over the Internet of people in the same boat. One I read was a son that received a timeshare as part of his parents estate! And he can’t get rid of IT!

So, don’t do it, i’m going to wait out the “credit” attack and hire an attorney.. unless any of you have some good ideas..

Well as usual spammers the lowest life form on the planet are at it again.  On top of all the bulk spam you receive in your inbox, they have created automated scripts to destroy just about every great medium.  Help the rest of the world and avoid any spam link, and if you ever catch one, i’ll help you hide the body!  Not much to say here but we are going to lock down the comments to prevent any more from happening.  Even with the antispam comment software there are regular attacks here that we just need to stop.  For now, the comments are being shut off..   Thanks…

Took the pregnancy test today and it was negative. The whole thing didn’t take this time at all, which is disappointing. I kind of had an inkling that was going to be the case, because a few days ago the symptoms I started getting went away again. Blah.

I’m going to look at the bright side of this, which is that I can enjoy a sailing summer without worrying about my every move. I can enjoy sushi and have sex again, and a good glass of wine. And I can look forward to trying again in the Fall.

I know it’ll happen, ’cause Elliott is just meant to be a daddy. And I do have at least a couple of good years left. :)

~Jane

My 15 year old is learning to drive. She’s actually taking driver’s ed in highschool, but she’s supposed to do 50 hours of driving outside of class before she can get her actual license once she’s sixteen. I’ve been letting Elliott take her, just because there are certain things I’m not that good at. Having steady nerves when driving with an inexperienced kid is one of them.

At any rate, she’s now been behind the wheel of an actual vehicle quite a few times, both in class with an instructor, and with Elliott. Once with me. So today we got home from school and found we were out of milk. She wanted me to drive to the store, so I figured hey, perfect time for a little more driving. She backed out of the driveway perfectly. She’s finally at the point where, when making a turn, she turns into ONLY her lane instead of the entire road. She’s no longer driving 2 inches from the ditch on the passenger side. It was all good.

When we got to the little convenience store out in the country, she was evening out the car a bit - and the front tire went up on the sidewalk. Still rolling forward, I say “ok, stop!” and in the tiny bit of panic she mistakes the gas pedal for the brake.

The good news is that we didn’t go THROUGH the storefront window.

We were blocked by the large wooden planter that we crushed.

hrm.

Nobody was hurt (well, unless you count her pride and my wallet) but my front bumper is caved in. When I called to tell Elliott, he was less than helpful: “Do you think we can find a body shop with a punchcard, 10 visits one free?” he says.

grrrrr…

For some reason I don’t feel like writing about this on JG, so I’m posting here even if nobody reads it anymore. Is there an RSS feed for this blog? I’m not even sure if Elliott set one up or not.

So I’m bed and couch bound for a couple of days, because yesterday morning we were at the doctor getting the most recent IVF round done. (IVF= in-vitro fertilization) Yesterday they put two frozen embryos in, and now I’m to lay around for the first 48 hours so they’ll have a better chance of implanting properly. See, when we did the initial cycle last summer, we got four good embryos out of it. The first two they put in back then, and you all read at least a bit of the story when I was initially pregnant, then had a miscarriage. So these are the two other ones that were frozen at the time.

This blog is a good outlet, because as I found out last time when I had a miscarriage after telling ALL of our real life friends we were expecting, perhaps in real life I should wait until the first trimester is over this time. I remember the whole thing very clearly, because we were in Portland for the weekend to look at a small race boat we were thinking of buying. We got a call from some old friends of Elliott’s who lived in Portland, and while we didn’t get a chance to visit them that weekend, we heard their bad news of miscarriage. We both got a sort of bad chilling feeling at the time, and two days later I had a miscarriage also. It was just this weird foreshadowing. Anyhow, that particular couple is now well on their way in the second trimester so I’m hoping the good luck comes our way too.

I truly hate lying around though. I’ve already read one book and made my way through the first half of another, watched an inane movie, flipped through all the home shopping channels for kicks, e-window shopped at all of my favorite places, sketched and watercolored a couple of mermaids and gone through every catalog that has come in the mail in the past week. I’ve read all of my favorite blogs, played Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends game for a couple of hours, and polished my nails.

I do have some other things to do, like finish an ad for an upcoming sailing regatta that has a deadline in a couple of days. I can do that via the laptop. Funny how I don’t feel like doing something that would actually be productive.

I’m sprung at noon tomorrow.