In the 90's, my wife and I were invited to visit Leisure Time Resorts. When we arrived, we were given a tour and all the normal sales garbage. We were looking for an investment at the time to help us save the money for a down payment on a house. And what we were being told seemed like it fit what we wanted.
We were assured (told under no uncertain terms) that this was the perfect investment for us because the value of our membership would be secure because they had legal restrictions that prevented them from "overselling". We could give or will it to our kids if we wanted to (as if there was ever any real property involved). That we would have no problem selling our membership if we ever wanted to sell and that if we couldn't find a buyer ourselves, they would sell our membership for us (for a fee of course) and that sales usually only took a week or so.
We knew that there was a risk involved (as with any investment) but based on what we were told, felt the risk was minimal. After all, we had a way out if we needed it, so we went ahead and bought a membership. We made a sizable down payment and before long started questioning if this was really something we wanted. We decided to stick with it and finish paying it off before selling.
We made payments for years until we finally paid off the membership purchase price (lets not forget those dues here too) overall, I'm sure we paid over $10,000.00. When it was finally paid off, we decided we wanted to sell is and use the money (as we originally planned) and finally buy ourselves a house. We tried to sell the membership on our own for about a year with no luck and in when we contacted the Thousand Trails (Leisure Time Resorts) to tell them we didn't want the membership anymore and that we wanted help selling it, we were told that no such assistance existed and to top it all off, that there were even restrictions on who we could sell to and that they had to approve the sale if we found a buyer.
Needless to say, this really made us mad, we tried for a while longer on our own with no luck and decided to hire a company to sell it for us. We paid the listing fees and had it listed it for the remainder of all of 2001 and 2002 altogether, the membership was listed for more than 2 years for as low as $1,500.00 (Surprise, no sale).in late my wife called them and told them that we felt we had been ripped off and that we wanted to cancel our membership.
In we moved and when Thousand Trails sent us the next bill for dues, my wife called and told them again that we were tired of being ripped off and that we wanted to cancel the membership. This time, they responded by telling her that we had to send them a letter to that effect. We went ahead and paid the dues in 2003 and sent a letter to them stating that we wanted the membership canceled as per their request.
In we started getting notices that we owed dues and my wife called and told them that we were not about to pay any more dues, and that we notified them that we wanted the membership canceled in writing a year earlier. The guy she spoke said he didn't have record of the previous letter and to asked her to send yet another letter stating that we wanted to cancel our membership. This time, we sent a certified letter stating that we had canceled our membership the previous year and we did not owe them anything and would not pay them anything more. They sent us a letter back stating that they had canceled our membership and believe it or not they are still calling 2 to 4 times every day, trying to collect dues
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