Are Timeshare Owners Dummies? Part 4, The User Generated Content Con Game

Timeshare owners now find themselves barraged with schemes to devalue their property and exploit their trusting nature. Apparently some in the industry believe owners are dummies – at Help Timeshare, we
don’t agree. In this installment, we’ll address the issue of user generated content. This is information on the internet posted by a user rather than a webmaster; like reviews, comments, and forum posts.

User generated content has quickly overtaken the internet, but can you trust it? Last year,
TripAdvisor warned that reviews on their site “may be faked.” The truth is that no one knows which users are in fact “users,” and which are spammers. Today thousands of timeshare owners have been lured into participating in forums and bulletin boards to discuss their timeshares. Many likely feel like they’ve found a safe haven, to discuss the ups and downs of timeshare ownership, but what they’ve really discovered is just another way to get exploited. Don’t take me the wrong way; I’m a huge supporter of free speech (no secret to any regular readers of this blog!) What I, along with many others in the industry, object to is coercing owners into speaking
against their own interests:

Let’s say you have a grievance with your resort. You do a quick web search to see if anyone else shares your problem. You find a bulletin board where another owner is complaining about your resort, and start a discussion. Harmless enough, right? Not if you care about your timeshare investment. Your words will remain on the web in perpetuity, luring even more owners at your resort into posting their grievances. Before long, a cloud of negativity surrounds your deeded property. Decide to
sell your timeshare, and you will have unknowingly provided a potential buyer thousands of reasons to say “no.” – All the while, the first post that drew you in may
nothave even been written by an owner!

There are ways to discuss timeshare issues privately. All forum and bulletin board systems have the capability to appear “private” to the search engines, protecting your content from the outside world. Why aren’t most timeshare discussions set-up this way? Traffic. Practically no one is searching for “timeshare bulletin boards” or “timeshare discussion groups,” but literally thousands of people are searching the name of your resort. Traffic = Money.

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

A quick look at some of the user generated content on timeshare discussion websites will reveal a distinct theme: Your timeshare is worthless and resale companies are scams. While individually each of these statements might be
sometimes true, logic would dictate they are not
alwaystrue. Is it plausible to believe that, with nearly 10 billion in sales during 2008, at an average sale price of over $20,000,
timeshare developers are selling a worthless product? Would hundreds of timeshare resale companies exist with the intention of
not selling timeshare? Only in the world of the timeshare forum, where moderators and admins continually steer the conversation toward the negative.

The mantra of "worthless timeshare and scam resale companies" has been repeated so often online, it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in
two specific ways
: First, if perception is in fact reality, the more timeshare owners that believe this mantra, the more truthful it becomes. As each new convert adds their comments of agreement to the cacophony of existing user generated content, the message gets louder. Secondly, timeshare sales people commonly refer to the secondary market as “dangerous” or “a scam,” when the topic comes up on tour. When potential
timeshare resale buyers later search the internet for listings at that resort, negative user generated content only serves to
confirmwhat they heard from the salesperson.

Follow the Money

People work to get paid. Behind every scheme directed at timeshare owners, is someone’s paycheck. The type of forum and bulletin boards I’ve discussed are insidious, in that they appear to be neutral, not-for-profit, or emanating from someone like you. Once your defenses are down, it’s much easier to lead you into negative postings that
hurtyour pocketbook. Be assured, if something is on the internet, someone has found a way to monetize it. (Even YouTube is
about to make a profit!) Timeshare discussion boards are generally monetized in one of two ways:

**Never, Never, Never pay upfront to sell your timeshare (except us)*
– These sites target timeshare owners that have already paid another timeshare resale company. They usually have an admin or moderator begin a discussion about a resale company, posing as a client. This will alert the search engines to the keywords – specifically, the name of the resale company. Then, any clients or potential clients the resale company may have will also see the forum posting when they are looking for the company’s website. The more clients a particular timeshare resale company has, the more traffic ends up at the forum. Once inside the forum, the timeshare owner is told the resale company is a scam, and that they should never, never, ever pay upfront to sell a timeshare,
except the arbitrary fee the forum charges for their classifieds (usually $15-$50.) Since one forum can feed off of hundreds of resale companies, they quickly collect fees totaling in the millions – often more than the
timeshare resale companies they are cannibalizing. The catch for consumers? You end up paying to advertise your timeshare, on a site that was free to make, to other embittered timeshare owners, who no doubt agree with the forum that your timeshare is worthless.

**Post and Pay-Per-Click*
– These sites don’t appear to take in any revenue on the surface, but are actually quite profitable due to advertising revenue. Once you’ve been lured in by postings about your resort or resale company, and contributed to generally negative postings that will hurt your resale value, you’ll be served with carefully worded advertising designed to get you to click through to... either a resort or resale company. Yet another vicious cycle where you are sold to the highest bidder.
If you own timeshare and want to talk about it, you should. Other owners will add to your knowledge with their personal experiences… But, before you go posting away, take a minute to consider the consequences. Are you really helping
you? Are you really even conversing with someone that owns timeshare? The safest course of action would be limiting your online conversations to “private” forums and bulletin boards, where risk is minimal. Many resorts actually have private boards set-up specifically for their owners to talk – where you can know that you are talking to other owners.

This isn’t a post I’ve wanted to write. There’s no doubt this blog post will result in a backlash against this blog, or my company, from various timeshare boards and forums. Despite the risks, the damages currently being done
bytimeshare owners
to timeshare owners, due to user generated content manipulation, are so great that I would be insincere not to point them out. Please exercise caution with content that effects your timeshare investment – even if you are not concerned with resale values,
there are many other fellow owners at your resort who are
.