TUG email question of the day #4 - Maintenance Fee Increase

This question is in regards to a rather sudden MF increase:

I just signed the contract 35 days ago with the Berkshire Timeshare. My maintenance fee stipulated at $479. I specifically asked about maintenance fees at the time of purchasing. One month later, today, 1/15/08 I received a mainteance fee invoice of $640.00. Is this not unethical for such an increase 35 days later?

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January is the time most timeshare resorts bill for the next year's maintenance fees (MF). They likely told you that the MFs for last year were $479 and failed to tell you what 2008's MFs were going to be. (they do seem to always go up.)

Yes, it was unethical for them to not tell you what the 2008 fees were going to be, since they likely knew. But if you didn't ask them straight out "What are 2008 MFs going to be?" they likely didn't do anything illegal.

One last thing, Did you buy from the developer? If you did, you likely paid the developer for 4-10 times what it would have cost you on the resale market. They likely didn't tell you about that either. That omission likely cost you many thousands of dollars, not the $160 in the increased MFs.

It's a technicality issue.

Maybe they told you the m/f but failed to include the reserves and the r.e. taxes.

Those are often left off on quoting but are still an annual obligation. If this is what they did, you got 'technicalled'.

Teresa