posted 12th October 2023
If you are looking for the safest way to get out of your timeshare contract and want to ensure you choose the right company, read the free advice and guidance below.
Cancelling a timeshare contract to avoid paying continuous maintenance fees and ensuring that your family does not inherit your debt is often easier than what you may have been led to believe. Reading this in-depth guide is essential if you want to legally terminate your timeshare without becoming the victim of a scam.
1. Avoid Unregulated Companies
Unregulated timeshare exit companies proliferate the internet. Some would say your spoilt for choice! However, not all is as it seems. Let's begin with the root cause of the problem. The timeshare industry was never regulated by an independent third party and, as such, was able to act with impunity for several decades. This is one of the main reasons you now find yourself stuck with a timeshare that you no longer want or need.
99% of all Timeshare Exit and Claim companies are also unregulated and usually operated by the very people who sold you the timeshare! As such, using an unregulated company to provide you with timeshare services would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire!
Whether or not the company is asking you for upfront fees, always take the safest and most protected route by using an SRA or FCA regulated company like ourselves.
2. Avoid The ' Bait and Switch' Marketing Companies
The vast majority of timeshare exit and claim victims we help have fallen for the 'bait and switch' scam. This common tactic is used by companies that were unable or unwilling to obtain regulation with the FCA or SRA.
These sales and marketing companies will align themselves with a regulated entity in order to try and legitimise their operation. The unregulated side of the company will be run and operated by salespeople that are employed to elicit the payment of upfront fees or illegally seek out claims for a third party.
The approach taken by these companies can often seem aggressive and pushy and feels very similar to a timeshare presentation. The advice is often wrong and doesn't align with a regulated claims company like ours.
The modus operandi of these companies leads you to believe that you are more or less guaranteed a vast compensation payment. And the only way to claim this is by paying upfront fees for legal and court costs.
Regardless of the promises, time limits or pressure put on you to proceed, avoid paying upfront fees. Paying upfront fees to a unregulated company that isn't willing to take on your claim on a No Win No Fee basis will not result in a happy ending.
3. Avoid Cold Callers
We have never encountered a genuine cold caller in our ten years of operation. Cold-calling gangs constantly recycle timeshare data purchased on the black market by criminal organisations to defraud timeshare owners of their money.
The initial cold call is made by someone pertaining to be associated with 'timeshare advice'. Once they have spiked your interest, they will endeavour to arrange a Zoom call or house visit from 'someone that can help'! This meeting will be held by a convincing storyteller who will do all they can to take your money off you for fake exit and claim services. At any one time, there are at least 100 different timeshare exit and claim scam companies calling people every week.
The best way to ensure your choosing the right company to exit your timeshare or make a regulated claim is by choosing an authorised SRA or FCA company like ourselves.