You are making plans for a vacation!
Just how much are you willing pay per night for a nice place to sleep?
$150 … $300? … $500? …
$1000 a night?
Wow… that would have to be someplace pretty special, don’t you think?
Donald actually worked through the numbers when he was given the opportunity to buy a Bluegreen Vacations timeshare. His findings shine a pretty bright light on the problem.
In his complaint about Bluegreen to the Better Business Bureau, Donald literally wrote out the math on the real costs of a Bluegreen timeshare.
“They tell you that you will only have to attend a two-hour meeting, but mine lasted four hours.”
That might already be an indication that the math at Bluegreen doesn’t really add up.
“Their normal package is a timeshare of around $39,500.”
“They will finance this amount for you at 16.99%, resulting in a monthly payment of around $800 a month for seven years.”
“During the seven years, you would have paid about $28,000 in interest. The yearly maintenance fee is $1,750 and a small management fee so small that I forgot what it was.”
Okay, Donald, that’s a lot of numbers. But what do they all mean?
Fortunately for us, Donald added it all up.
“Bluegreen likes to brag about how often you go on vacation, but during the 7 years of financing, you will be paying approximately $5,790 a year on maintenance and interest.”
“The total for the package is approximately $67,000.”
$67,000 – or more than $9,500…A YEAR.
That comes out to more than $1,300 a night for a week’s vacation!
But as Donald points out the REAL cost is even higher than that.
“I told Bluegreen reps that I wanted to go home and think about the deal before signing because my payments would be coming from my IRA, which returns approximately 10% a year.”
“So I would pay $67,000 in 7 years and lose $67,000 x 10% or $6,700 in investments.”
So, Donald’s out of pocket costs plus his loss of retirement income to pay for the timeshare would actually total more than $73,000.
That’s nearly $1,500 a night!
No wonder Donald wanted to give things more thought. But Bluegreen wouldn’t let him.
“Bluegreen would not let me go home and decide, they wanted me to sign right then and there.”
“After a few verbal exchanges, I just left telling them that I wasn’t going to sign anything.”
Wise move all around, Donald. And thank you for doing the math for the rest of us.
Do you think that Bluegreen president and CEO Alan Levan even cares that Bluegreen’s math doesn’t make sense for most buyers? Email him at alan.levan@bluegreenvacations.com to find out.
We wonder whether Jason Gamel, the President and CEO of the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), which represents the timeshare industry in Washington, DC, has ever done the math on his industry. Let’s email him at jgamel@arda.org and ask what he thinks about Bluegreen’s $1,500 a night rate.
Have some real cost timeshare calculations you want to share with your company’s leaders? Use this list of timeshare VIPs published by ARDA to contact them.
What’s the cost per night of your timeshare been? Let us know at info@timesharefacts.com
PS: Follow us on social media. Twitter Facebook Instagram
