My husband and I purchased a timeshare week at Ellington at Wachesaw Plantation East, owned by Festiva Resorts. Immediately upon our first day of our first visit, we were approached by a sales person for Festiva who asked us to attend a 90 minute presentation -- if we did we would get a free round of golf or something like that, I forget exactly. Anway, during the presentation, they scared us into believing that if we didn't convert our week into a points contract, we would lose our week, because "everyone was doing it and if we didn't do it we would lose out on our timeshare opportunities." That conversion to points contract cost us over $6000. When we agreed they said we could recoup much of those funds by renting out our week for 2010 to someone who wanted to use it at one of their high priority resorts. They said they could do that for us, but when I called the agent to request this service I could never get ahold of him. I called Festiva directly and the rep there acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. Clearly they never had any intention of helping us recoup our funds through rental. We ultimately lost our week for 2010, then when the statement came for annual maintenance fee for 2011, we were horrified to find that the fee had increased over 50% above what we had paid for the maintenance fee on our original contract, in 2008.
I think we were conned, duped, and lied to by Festiva, they are providing false advertising, and ripping people off. I'd like to know how to sell my points contract and get out of this timeshare.