ICM Group Warns Timeshare Owners of Misleading Solicitations For Timeshare Resale
The International Commerce Marketing Group (ICM Group, ICMG, ICM Marketing Group), the leader in the timeshare resale industry warns timeshare owners to be on the lookout for scams and other misleading solicitations when attempting to resell your timeshare.
If you’re a timeshare owner then you’re no stranger to the onslaught of telemarketing attempts to get you to sell your timeshare. Even if you are in the market to sell, it’s important that you know exactly who and what you are about to do business with. Below is a list of timeshare scams that ICMG suggests you lookout for.
Timeshare Resale Scam #1- “We Have A Buyer Ready For Your Timeshare.”
This is one of the most frequently used tactics in the timeshare resale scam toolkit. The company attempting to solicit you will first ask you if you would like to sell your timeshare. Then they will proceed to tell you that they already have a buyer waiting. The clincher for this timeshare resale scam is when they quote the timeshare owner with an offer that far exceeds the actual value of the property. For a fee of a few hundred dollars, the company deceives the timeshare owner into believing that their property will be sold at this inflated sale price.
This timeshare resale scam relies heavily on baiting the timeshare owner into believing that they are trading dimes for dollars, by making the fees seem small when compared to the promise of making a killing on the sale and a buyer waiting in the wings.
The best way to avoid this timeshare resale scam is to first ask them questions about your timeshare. If they have a buyer waiting, then they should clearly know everything there is to know about your timeshare. If they don’t know the details down to the last point and penny then I can assure you there is no buyer. Make sense? Nobody is standing by, checkbook in hand, waiting to buy a mystery… ever!
Timeshare Resale Scam #2- “We Guarantee To Sell Your Timeshare In X Amount of Days”
What’s better to get someone to part with their hard-earned cash than to give them a good, old fashioned, time-sensitive guarantee? This timeshare resale scam tactic again starts with the telephone solicitation to get you to sell your timeshare. You see, some timeshare owners want to sell their timeshare. Other timeshare owners need to sell theirs. Putting a date and deadline on the sale is usually just enough to knock even the toughest skeptic right off of the fence and into paying the fees the company requires to get your timeshare sold.
Avoiding this timeshare resale scam is as simple as making one clear distinction:
Unless the company is a real estate broker then they are not selling your timeshare… you are! Also unless they are a real estate broker they cannot guarantee that your timeshare will sell or how long it will take. At best the company can only bring you offers from interested buyers because by law they cannot accept them for you.
Besides, as a matter of principal, a real estate broker won’t guarantee when your timeshare will sell by even if they are the best in the biz, so non-brokers should clearly be suspect to make such claims.
Timeshare Resale Scam #3- Fees To “List” Your Timeshare For Sale By Owner.
This timeshare resale scam starts with the same phone call asking you to sell as well as some of the tactics we have just discussed. During the pitch they will tell you that they have a website that gets a ton of traffic from people who are eager to buy timeshare every day. For a fee of a few hundred dollars and sometimes more, they will list your timeshare on their site.
Now this type of service is not completely illegitimate. These companies will list your timeshare for you, but here are some interesting facts you ought to consider before doing business with these listing agencies:
- You could list your own timeshare for sale by owner free.
- What’s more is that you can list your timeshare for sale by owner for free every day, until it sells, on http://www.Craigslist.org
- Your chances of success will be just as good, if not better because ultimately Craigslist.org gets more website visitors per day than all of these timeshare listing websites combined. (compare a few sites to Craigslist at http://www.Alexa.com )
However there is just one problem with this strategy…
Timeshare is usually an impulse buy that occurs under intense sales pressure at the resort. While people do wake up in the morning wanting to take a vacation they do not wake up in the morning to look on the internet and buy a timeshare to take that vacation.
Did you buy your timeshare online? Not likely.
Also, because timeshare is a luxury item, it differs from real estate quite significantly. It is not a necessity item like a house or a car and therefore should be treated differently. You can list houses and cars on the web and expect to receive offers quickly, but this is not true with timeshare.
Successfully selling your timeshare in the timeshare resale market requires aggressive marketing to a highly qualified and targeted group of people. Nothing less will get the job done in an acceptable time frame at an acceptable offer.
Always be wary of any solicitations to get you to sell your timeshare or you may very well fall victim to one of these timeshare resale scams. Simple logic should tell you that someone who solicits you to sell is probably more interested in getting a quick fee than they are in finding you a buyer!
A company who solicits you to buy timeshare probably has a seller’s best interest in mind.
3 things to look for in a legit timeshare resale company are:
- Whether or not they are licensed and bonded in the state from which they operate,
- Do they have an A rating with the Better Business Bureau and quickly resolve complaints?
- Does their contract include the required state statute for contractual agreements conducted over the telephone?
If the company does not meet all of the above requirements, do not do business with the company.
ICMG sincerely hopes this list will be helpful to you in avoiding timeshare resale scams and that you will be successful in the resale of your timeshare on the For Sale By Owner market.
