Friday, November 21, 2008

Bitching, Moaning and Complaints

Hi all, Been falling down on my blog a bit.
Guess when there isn’t much nice to say we shouldn’t say much at all.

Complaints…
Is the holiday season again, so many folks get geared up and all excited…Rob gets the blues. I think it is more seasonal affective stuff as in….less sun, no warm weather and a huge outlay of money from November thru January. We have same things others do…car tags, house taxes and they holidays, then comes the thing I am most steamed about this year. The dreaded (yes, we did it to ourselves) Timeshare maintenance fees.

When we purchased our timeshare 10 years ago it was pretty reasonable…as in under $500 for dues, fees and what ever else. During that time we have twice “upgraded” Ha!!
Now we still are paying off the timeshare and our fees have seriously almost tripled in the last 3 years. Doesn’t help that the TS company is now owned by a different company that wants to compete with the likes of Hilton but can only do that by hammering those who own currently.

My two cents worth…….what ever you do….DO NOT BUY TIMESHARE!!!!!!!!
Lesson learned, Don’t get me wrong we love the place we stay and enjoy going there and yes do use it each year but OUCH….am not a rocket scientist….the price of staying and yes we fly from KC to the Caribbean, is as much as two round trip tickets to the island of ST Maarten. What we pay to pay off our loan will more than pay for a nice hotel or maybe even a small villa on island….leaving me with the same out of pocket…BEFORE I have purchased the tickets now. Rob has learned an expensive lesson.

Ok now for the good…
We will be hanging out with some friends tonight that frequent the island as well. We will be talking about going back in most likely May of 09. This couple is fun and like us self sufficient while on island so we can all cut loose and have our own great time and hook up for a day or so and probably a couple of dinners. We are also working on seeing if another couple may be interested as well. More to come on this but it does look like we will be heading towards the tropics late this spring….