Complaint Review: westgate orlando Florida - orlando Florida

We visited the westgate resort in Orlando over spring break, 2016.  We were given a week at the resort by a family member, and that was super nice of them. If we had only avoided going to the timeshare presentation, it would have been fine!

After a truly bad "free buffet breakfast" (eggbeaters and cold sausage, and they kept running out) they parked our kids in a small windoowless video room; we saw them about 7 hours later, by then the exhausted and starving "owners" of a timeshare. I had no idea the free breakfast was going to be a timeshare presentation. Duh!

We said many times we didnt want it but they finally broke us down. They really dont force you to do anything, it was entirely our fault. But we were eager for our vacation to start, worried about our kids, starving, excited to use our "discounted" passes to Universal, and finally thought maybe this makes sense financially, lets do it!

We paid $24000 for the unit. - every other year, 4 bedrooms, I think.  The financing rate was like 15%. Which is  ridiculously terrible but we thought we would pay it off pretty soon.  That night I began to read about westgate online and realized this was not for us. We have 3 small kids and really need flexibility around when we go and where we stay on vacation. You are not guaranteed the weeks you want, or the location, with this deal. It worked great for our elderly, retired family member with lots of time on their hands to plan.

The part that felt really sketchy was when we tried to find out how to cancel.  You CAN get out of it, but you have a very small window, it was somewhere like 7-14 days.  I had to do tons of research about Florida laws online, which was not how I wanted to spend my vacation. 

They gave us a paper contract and a disc. None of the cancellation clauses were on the papers. We went to the office and they "printed out the whole contract", but it wasnt there either. I had read online it might be hidden somewhere, so my husband scoured the documents on the disc and thanks to his patience we finally found it.

We wrote the letter, and filed the forms in triiplicate, certifying the one we sent to headquarters about 2 hours from the resort. We turned it in in person as well, at which point they offered us this unit for $8000!! actually, at that price, I might have kept it! Thank goodness my husband as in there instead of me. I'm glad he didn't fall for it. 

We were, in the end successful at getting out of our contract, and I share this story so others can hopefully cancel their contract if they too realize they made a mistake!

It was really stressful. Also, by the way, the contract says you are responsible for paying them back for all the "perks" - the discounted tickets, and the meals they provided.  The meals were honestly so bad I thought I would cry at the thought of having to pay for them. But they didnt actually make us pay for the food.