Resale Agencies

Sooner or later timeshare users and members of Holiday Clubs or Travel discount Clubs etc may want to sell on their week's holiday entitlement or their membership. The secondary market for timeshare is non-existent, as opposed to what consumers are told when they buy the product and the consumer cannot expect to get out what he/she has once paid if a sale is possible to arrange at all.

When the consumer has actually expressed his wish to sell, several more or less disreputable operators will soon learn of this. The timeshare owner will be contacted by telephone by a sales agent who promises that the agency can sell the share in question. The agency representative states that he has a purchaser for this particular share. The purchaser is often named and a sales price that is quite a bit over the original purchase price is promised. For a consumer who has perhaps wanted to get rid of the share for a long time this offer is in many cases tempting. This often ends with the consumer paying between 5,000 to 15,000 SEK for the assignment to sell the share.

The resale agents often claim that the law in force in the country where the holiday home is (generally Spain) requires that a handling fee or tax has to be paid in advance, or charge the consumer for notarization of their property rights. After the consumer has paid, any attempt to contact the company generally fails and no resale contract is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Legal advisors

Lately there has been a proliferation on the Internet of websites through which lawyers offer to represent consumers in the Spanish courts if they wish to sue the company from which they bought their timeshare product or their membership. They often place on their website a list of the companies that, they claim, they are already suing. These legal advisors also sometimes cold-call consumers direct to offer their services.

We do not recommend hiring these lawyers, who often claim that they already represent a long list of claimants which new claimants can join, thus supposedly lowering the cost of going to court.