Trading Your Timeshare

So here’s how it works. (Finer points coming up). You purchase your week of timeshare. You may use your own resort each year, or you may use a different resort in a different location each year. Your choice, each year. Go to Disney World this summer, take off skiing in Colorado next winter, see Paris the following spring, and watch the leaves turn in New England in the fall. Whoaaaa…..wait a minute! You thought you had to use the same week each and every year? That’s one of the biggest misconceptions about timeshares. Unless you are one of the roughly 2% of timeshare owners who wish to return to the same location each year, at the exact same time each year, you’ll find yourself making

your own plans each year according to your own schedule.

So you’ve got your week of timeshare in say, the islands. You own a week in March and decide you want to go someplace closer to home this year, let’s say a week down at the beach in the summer.

All you do is call your exchange company (more on that in a minute) and tell them what you’d like to do! But what are your chances of getting that vacation you’re asking for? Probably everyone else gets it but you, right? Well, not actually. For the past eight or nine years, the exchange companies have been able to fulfill properly processed requests 97 to 98 percent of the time!

Aha! What’s that “properly processed” stuff? Well, it’s really nothing special, just some common sense. (You’re going to get the feeling in just a second that all this stuff is really pretty simple, no rocket science here). There are two major exchange companies, Resort Condominiums International (RCI); and Interval International (II). Both companies link timeshare resorts together world-wide. When you want to make an exchange, you do not have to find someone who owns that beach resort and ask them if they want to use your ski resort. You simply call your exchange company, RCI or II, and make a request. Think of them as a bank, you’re going to make a deposit (give them your timeshare for someone else’s use this year) and make a withdrawal (take out a different timeshare for your own use this year). If someone takes out your timeshare later, so be it. If not, you are under no obligation. You still go on your vacation and yours just goes unused that year. This process occurs millions of times each year, so you can see how the rates of confirmation stay so high.

So that means I can take my off-season week at my beach resort and move it to Christmas in Maui? No. Here’s where that common sense comes in. There are certain parameters involved to ensure that the system is fair. If you own an off-season week somewhere, expect to exchange it for other off-season weeks, not the most prime time of year at any location you choose. To help you make smart decisions, the exchange systems publish full-color catalogs showing the various timeshare resorts world-wide. They then color code the various weeks of the year for each resort. RCI uses red, white and blue (very patriotic). II uses red, yellow and green. Same designations, just different colors of the rainbow. A red week with either RCI or II designates a week that is highly demanded. This might be winter at a ski resort or summer at a beach resort. A blue, or green, time is the off-season. This would be the opposite of the above example: summer at the ski resort and winter at the beach resort. White or yellow weeks are in between; not really prime season and not really the dead season. Obviously off-season weeks cost less to purchase. Prime season more.

Now here’s that common sense. The exchange system works on what’s known as a value for value system. Want the best weeks at the nicest resorts in the most sought after locations? Own something similar to exchange. Think this way: off-season gets off-season, prime season (red weeks) get you the best.

Choosing your timeshare.