Promises, promises

When Rick Johnson of Sandy stayed two nights at Marriott's MountainSide resort in Park City to hear a timeshare sales pitch, he was truly impressed with the room quality. He bought there expecting luxury vacations every year.

But when he returned, the rooms he was given "were a real step down. They were just worn looking and kind of beat up. I was expecting something like a Marriott hotel and instead had something like an older Best Western. The furniture had nicks. There was a little smell. It had been wet. It wasn't what they gave to prospective buyers."

Many timeshare owners often find they own something different from what had been promised by high-pressure salesmen. Many belatedly discover fine print that drains money from their wallet in surprising ways as they try to use timeshares.

This series looks at different traps that timeshare buyers may face as they buy, own and sell. Major findings in today's focus on potential traps during ownership include:

• Promises made by salesmen are not always included in written contracts, leaving buyers with lesser products, unable to use units when they intended, with unexpected fees or unable to cover their costs through renting as promised.

• Annual maintenance fees often increase more than buyers were led to believe was likely. Owners are often at the mercy of developers, who in some circumstances may impose whatever fee hikes they like that buyers by contract must pay.

• Promises that timeshares can be easily exchanged for travel elsewhere in exotic places are often misleading. Many owners complain some companies make it nearly impossible to make such exchanges — unless trips are planned years in advance.

Broken promises

Paul Larsen of Salt Lake City, a timeshare owner at the Westgate Park City Resort and Spa, has several examples of broken or misleading promises. "The conditions keep changing — and not in our favor," he said recently.

For example, the first year he stayed as an owner was during Thanksgiving week. But when he attempted to use the same week the next year, he found that "week was removed from our season." He says by complaining every year about that change, his family can usually manage to obtain that week anyway.

Another problem, he says, is "they have tried to get us to pay fees for banking a room (for use in another year), but we have so far been able to work around those."

Despite those and other problems, Larsen said he enjoys the Westgate so much that his family just bought a bigger unit there. Because of previous experiences, he insisted on promises in writing as he bought that bigger unit.