The timeshare industry has two traps.
Understanding both is the only way out.

The presentation

It starts with a gift. Free breakfast, show tickets, a round of golf — anything to get you in the room. What's marketed as a "90-minute presentation" routinely stretches to four, five, even six hours. Sales teams work in rotation. When one closer can't get you to sign, another steps in. The room is designed so you can't easily leave. The tactics are scripted, tested, and refined over decades to override your judgment.

They show you a price per night that makes the math seem obvious. They compare it to hotel rates that are inflated. They tell you the property will appreciate. They tell you that you can rent out weeks you don't use. They tell you that if you change your mind, you can sell it on the resale market.

Almost none of this is true. And most of it — depending on your state's consumer protection statutes — may constitute material misrepresentation.

What's actually in the contract

The contract you signed — likely while exhausted, pressured, and surrounded by people telling you it was a great deal — contains provisions that most buyers don't fully understand until years later.

Perpetuity clauses. Many timeshare contracts are written "in perpetuity" — meaning the obligation doesn't expire when you die. It passes to your heirs. Your children can inherit your maintenance fee obligation whether they want to or not.

Escalation clauses. Your annual maintenance fee isn't fixed. It increases every year, typically 5—8%, with no contractual cap. A $1,200 fee becomes $2,400 in a decade and $4,800 in two decades. The resort's board of directors sets the rate increase unilaterally.

Transfer restrictions. Most contracts include right-of-first-refusal clauses and transfer fees designed to make resale functionally impossible. The resort doesn't want you to sell because a resale unit on the secondary market competes with new units they're selling at full price.

No resale market. Despite what the sales team told you, most timeshares have no meaningful resale value. Sites like eBay and Craigslist are full of timeshare interests listed for $1. Many owners can't give theirs away. This is not a real estate investment — it's a prepaid vacation contract with an escalating mandatory fee attached to it.

Where the legal violations occur

Not every timeshare sale is illegal. But a significant number involve practices that violate state and federal consumer protection laws. These violations are what give attorneys legitimate grounds to pursue contract cancellation. Common violations include:

Rescission period failures. Every state requires a "cooling off" period — typically 3 to 15 days — during which a buyer can cancel without penalty. Resorts are required to clearly disclose this right in writing. Many don't, or they bury it in ways designed to make exercising it difficult.

Material misrepresentation. When a salesperson tells you the timeshare will appreciate in value, that you can easily rent unused weeks for income, or that maintenance fees are "locked in," they are making claims that can be proven false. If these misrepresentations were material to your decision to purchase, they may constitute fraud under your state's deceptive trade practices act.

Securities violations. In some states, points-based timeshare programs — where you buy "points" instead of a deeded week — may qualify as securities. If the developer failed to register them as such, the entire transaction may be voidable.

These aren't technicalities. They're the specific legal mechanisms through which a licensed attorney can compel a developer to release an owner from a contract. Without identifying real violations, there is no legal basis for cancellation — no matter what anyone promises you.

A $700 million predatory industry

By the time you realize you're stuck in a timeshare you can't use and can't sell, you're desperate. You search "timeshare exit" online and find dozens of companies promising to get you out. They sound professional. They have polished websites. They might even show up at your local consumer event or seminar.

What you don't know is that most of these companies follow the same playbook — one the Federal Trade Commission has documented in multiple enforcement actions resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in identified consumer losses.

The playbook

Step one: Find desperate owners. Exit companies purchase lists of timeshare owners — often from the same data brokers that sell leads to the resorts themselves. They target people who've owned for years, who've complained to the resort, or who've already searched online for exit help. Some host "educational seminars" at hotels. Some send official-looking mailers.

Step two: Promise guaranteed results. You'll hear phrases like "100% guaranteed cancellation," "money-back guarantee," and "we've never lost a case." These claims have no legal basis. No one can guarantee a legal outcome. And the "money-back guarantee" typically has conditions that make it impossible to claim.

Step three: Collect upfront fees. This is the entire business model. Fees range from $5,000 to $13,000 or more — paid before any work begins. Once they have your money, the incentive to actually help you disappears. Most of these companies are not law firms. They do not have attorneys on staff. Some claim to work with attorneys but can't show you any actual legal work product when asked.

Step four: Tell you to stop paying. This is the most destructive part of the playbook. Many exit companies advise owners to stop paying their maintenance fees and mortgage, claiming this will "force" the resort to negotiate. It doesn't. It triggers collections, credit bureau reporting, and in many cases, foreclosure. The exit company faces no consequences for this advice. You do.

Step five: Disappear. After months of no progress, the company stops returning calls. Some close entirely and reopen under a different name. The average lifespan of a timeshare exit company, according to FTC data, is approximately 18 months — just long enough to collect fees and dissolve before regulatory action catches up.

Why the model is fundamentally broken

The upfront-fee exit model has an alignment problem that can't be fixed. When a company collects its entire fee before doing any work, its financial incentive is to do as little work as possible. There is no mechanism tying payment to results. There is no penalty for failure. There is no reason — economically — for the company to actually cancel your timeshare once they have your money.

This is why the same pattern repeats across hundreds of companies, across decades, in every state: upfront fee, vague progress updates, eventual silence. It's not a bug in the exit industry. It's the business model itself.

What the FTC has found

The Federal Trade Commission has brought multiple enforcement actions against timeshare exit companies. In case after case, the findings are the same: consumers paid thousands of dollars for services that were never provided. The companies collected fees, made promises they couldn't keep, and caused real financial harm.

According to FTC filings, identified consumer losses from timeshare exit scams exceed $700 million. That figure only accounts for cases the FTC has directly investigated — the true total is certainly higher.