Highly Recommended Seller: Groupwise

After running into issues with Sumday, I was reminded of my positive experience with Groupwise last year and thought I would post the details here.

Let me throw out another timeshare deal where a company "did the right thing" even though they weren't contractually obligated to do so. I purchased a HICV Galveston fixed week in early 2014 from Groupwise. The Ebay listing stated that the unit could be traded through II - my intent was to convert at the new owner pricing into HICV, which didn't work out. I tried to deposit the unit into both II and RCI, which both failed. I contacted Groupwise and let them know that I wanted to return the unit because it could not be exchanged through either company. The timeshare contract didn't say anything about guaranteeing the unit could be exchanged, but Groupwise stepped up and took the unit back.

While it's great when companies meet their legal obligations, good customer service is going above and beyond doing the least they can do without getting sued. You learn a lot more about a company when things don't go right 1/10 times then you do the 9/10 times everything goes smoothly - my personal preference is to only do business with companies that stand behind their words and fix their mistakes.

-Scott

Groupwise - So far so good

I am in the process of buying a timeshare from Groupwise. They sell timeshares on eBay under the name Timesharetravel.

I was worried about bidding for a timeshare in eBay. I became too worried when I won the bid. However, my experience with Groupwise since then is pretty good. I still have a long way to go to complete the transaction. So far so good.

Groupwise has instituted a new Groupwise-specific requirement whereby they require the buyer to have a notarized "Grantee Acknowledgement" that attests the borrower "will be responsible for all future yearly assessments and real estate taxes in connection with said property..." that they send with the transfer paperwork to the subject resorts of their transactions.

I have purchased from them happily in the past, but I was not going to pay an extra $10 to get an extra form notarized, on general principle. It may serve some risk management purpose for Groupwise, but it has zero value to me, and I was already going to have to pay for a resort-required notarized transfer form anyway. So I just terminated the transaction when they wouldn't budge.

For various things as a household we probably need at least 40 documents notarized a year. Luckily my bank includes notary services as a part of my free direct deposit account.