Membership requirements for potential renters ($9.99 fee)

I believe the staff at Redweek has already addressed this matter in a post above (scroll up). I didn't get the drift that they were going to change the issue in their post. The fee is to protect their customers (people placing ads). How many times do they have to tell you what the fee is for and why they charge it? If you're a customer then they are protecting your privacy. You are entitled to list your ads on other sites, both free and not free. There are many, many listing sites on the internet where your email address will be plainly printed.

darcy54 wrote:

jayjay , Why do you find it so hard to believe that Redweek wouldn't change their "business model" as you put it for you me or any other paying customer? If a business isn't willing to listen to their customers concerns, well they risk losing those customers. I'm not saying they have to change but at least listen to the concerns of their customers and see if they might be able to come up with a solution, ie, a trial membership as I mentioned earlier or maybe some other member has some ideas. This topic seems to have the most comments on here so we have to assume it is an important issue and deserves Redweeks consideration.

The following is the post that I was referring to above from Randy Conrad, president of Redweek.com concerning this issue

I guess I can try to clear up a couple of misconceptions here. We actually have data that you don't have.

First, 40% of the people that are PAYING for membership on RedWeek.com do not own a timeshare. They are here to buy or rent from the owners. Those that own timeshares are also renters and buyers, of course.

Secondly, we measure the number of inquiries sent to our posting members. Our posting members receive more email inquiries than the most popular "free to contact" site... over three times as many. So, it's wrong to assume that our posting members aren't getting results.

Third... yes... "tire-kicking" and fraud are less likely on our site. Most crooks are pretty lazy. They'll go where they can make free contacts too. If they pay to access members on our site they must use a credit card or a check, giving RedWeek a traceable link back to them. We did once shut down one member that used a stolen credit card within a couple of days of the purchased membership. And we contacted those that he emailed to warn them of the potential trouble. Can we catch all scams? No. But our paying members make up a much better community to work with than the free-for-all approach. We are concerned with fraud and even invented the Vacation Escrow provided now by a top-rated escrow company, First American Title.

We have regular posting members who have used us for years. Some are professionals. Some are creating small businesses in a growing "cottage industry" of people buying resale timeshares and renting them out for a profit. They don't waste their money. They use RedWeek.com. In some cases, they use us exclusively after trying all other sites.

Having been in eCommerce for over a decade now I've heard from plenty of people who are convinced they know a better way for me to do business. Most often this better way means giving them something for free.

Finally, the last person that made an especially persistent complaint about our business model is one of the small businessmen. He recently left us in a huff because we wouldn't change to the BETTER model... the one everyone else uses. Last month he quietly returned and posted over a dozen properties on RedWeek.com. We're happy to have him back. We're happy to be of service to this community of owners and travelers.

The forums have been provided as a new service to you all. We have more coming... much more.

Randy Conrads President RedWeek.com

Okay Friends--- My main point of starting this topic was to pose the question and thought about how Redweeks site is set up and the frustration it presents to viewers. Why does Redweek allow a viewer who is not a member to view its contents of possible options for vacations and scan through the bank of options and only after spending hours searching on their site do they tell you that to make contact with an owner, you must pay a fee? It's all about precious time on the renters part being wasted. They need to inform the viewers on the front page LOUD and CLEAR that a fee must be paid if they want to contact an ower if they find a rental they are interested in. My time was wasted and that was what started this entrire topic - information is a powerful tool and Redweek needs to take a communication class!!!!!

I think that if we the owners are ALREADY PAYING TO POST, then yes, it seems ridiculous for you to have to pay to read. Or, heck, maybe the owners shouldn't have to pay.

One question: How did you post on Craigslist? I thought that if you lived outside of the area of the posting, then they would delete the listing?

Also, you aren't allowed to post Georgia properties in San Francisco's listings, so you'd technically have the nearly insurmountable task of renting timeshares in Georgia to people in Georgia.

I posted my Florida timeshare on the Florida craiglist site. I figured if people were looking for something in Florida even if they were from another country that is where they would go. So if you have a Georgia property you should list it on the Georgia site. You don't have to be from the area to search ads. I'm sure if somebody from SanFransisco wanted to go to Georgia or any other state they would search the ads from that state.

Darcy gave you very good advice. Most people who want to buy a timeshare in a resort will go to Craigslist in their resort area.

We gave our daughter a new car last year for graduation then listed her car on Craigslist and sold it in one week to very nice family from Nevada.

We live in N.California and listed in Nevada and listed in many areas in California too. Sold it off the Sacramento listings.

The family that bought the car found it listed in the Sacramento listing. After a few phone calls and seeing the pictures we had on Craigslist they came out here to pickup the car. We ran their check with our bank and it being from credit union went through that same day.

They have e-mailed us couple times telling us how much their daughter loves the car. So I can tell you Craigslist works!

Again one of the good points is its free and mail goes to Craigslist and they send it to you . You decide who you want to deal with and don't.

Also when you check your ad before excepting it make sure you mark the box that all mail goes to Craigslist! GOOD LUCK!

Great advice Phill-- We are always told never to pay money up front to list our timeshare but that is exactly what Redweek requires. Also, they require upfront fees for possible renters -enough said I think we all got the jiff on thier scam. By the way-- not only have I just rented a unit from an owner on myresortnetwork.com but also form floridavacations.com (both for FREE - no membership required) and one of which was at the same location of one I was looking at on Redweek! I sugguest more Redweek owner look at these sites and move their unit to those positings -- They may just have rented their unit alo quicker!!

Kathy, the fee Redweek charges for a membership and customers seeking rentals is NOT an upfront fee. It is a membership fee. Redweek is a listing service same as myresortnetwork (listers have to pay a fee there also) and many other listing sites on the internet.

Upfront fee brokers charge in the hundreds to thousands of dollars, take your week and your money and in 99% of cases they do not sell your timeshare. There ARE hundreds of upfront fee brokers on the internet and elsewhere. Try researching them to see how much you would pay upfront to list your timeshare for sale with them. You'd be shocked.

kathyd122 wrote:

Great advice Phill-- We are always told never to pay money up front to list our timeshare but that is exactly what Redweek requires. Also, they require upfront fees for possible renters -enough said I think we all got the jiff on thier scam. By the way-- not only have I just rented a unit from an owner on myresortnetwork.com but also form floridavacations.com (both for FREE - no membership required) and one of which was at the same location of one I was looking at on Redweek! I sugguest more Redweek owner look at these sites and move their unit to those positings -- They may just have rented their unit alo quicker!!

Redweek is not scamming anybody. They are an internet enterprise and it's up to them (as owners) to make their own rules and it's up to you whether or not you want to go along with those rules. As you have stated many times in your posts, you have found other sites that you prefer.

You can try to run Redweek's loyal customers off (re: your post pertaining to them as running a scam), but I don't believe you'll have very much success in doing so.

kathyd122 -enough said I think we all got the jiff on thier scam. /Q]

Kathy, I'm not comparing Redweek or any other sites like Redweek to a upfront company. They charge just like a newspaper would giving you a place to list your timeshare for sale or rent! Your paying a listing fee and writing your ad yourself and that is it for your fee with no promises except it will be listed. Also no guarantee of how many people will ever see your ad because of no counter.

What I do not understand are owners who check the resort on these sites and see maybe 25 other listings and still want to list thinking they will sell their unit!

If a owner list on a site then they better be lower in price than all others listed. Remember these other listings are not selling at those prices but just sitting there.

I also would never pay any of these sites more than six months at a time for my listings. If you have not sold or had hits in six months your wasting your money and its time to move on!

This is where the counter that has been asked for and passed over by Redweek could help owners.

It would be nice to know a six month ad at least is being read and how many or how few have seen it.

A counter would tell some Redweek doesn't work for them and tell others it does work no matter the results.

I doubt Redweek would do it because they would not want to stop this little cash flow they have going.

PHILL12

Phil, I am in complete agreement with your statement below. Most people ask far too much for their timeshare week when trying to sell it (both developer bought and resale bought).

When I look at other timeshare weeks at the same resort where I am selling (depending on season), I would always lower my price from what the others were asking. I have never had any trouble selling a timeshare week via this method. The one exception was the first developer week we bought (before timeshare education), which we lost money when selling it. We had to lower the price to 1/3 (which is the norm) of what we paid the developer, but we did sell it.

Many people could sell their weeks if they would lower their price in comparison to other weeks listed at the same resort. Yes, you may take a loss, but it's better than continually paying (rising) maintenance fees each year.

phill12 wrote:

What I do not understand is why some owner would check their resort and maybe see 25 other owners listed on here and think they will sell their unit when all these others are just sitting there. I would think most people run ad for only six months so this helps Redweek because it looks like units are getting sold/rented.

I decided to try to list my Virginia timeshare for rent on one of these "free" sites after reading this thread and I have been badgered with phone calls ever since. NOT phone calls from renters but calls from agencies wanting to list my rental for a fee. I was told upfront it cost nothing to list my property, yet I get call after call to list my rental for $149 for a year. Let's see Redweek charges $19.99 so for a year - $40. Apparently, that's a bargain!!! I have used Redweek for 4 years now both to rent and to list and I will continue because it has worked well for me and it IS inexpensive.

We are not arguing that Redweek is not valuable. However, for us renters to even ask simple questions to an owner, we must first pay a fee!!! If you choose to pay afee to list on redweek - okay - but I will NOT pay a fee just to talk to an owner and may not even work something out to rent. If Redweek works for you - great. I hope you get your unit rented. It is the cost to the people who are interested in renting that have us questioning this site.

palmtre2 wrote:

I decided to try to list my Virginia timeshare for rent on one of these "free" sites after reading this thread and I have been badgered with phone calls ever since. NOT phone calls from renters but calls from agencies wanting to list my rental for a fee. I was told upfront it cost nothing to list my property, yet I get call after call to list my rental for $149 for a year. Let's see Redweek charges $19.99 so for a year - $40. Apparently, that's a bargain!!! I have used Redweek for 4 years now both to rent and to list and I will continue because it has worked well for me and it IS inexpensive.

At least you can feel safer renting here knowing that owners have paid to join and to list. We are not scammers who wouldn't pay the fees to try and rip you off and leave you with no deposit or worse yet, no vacation.

Lets try and remember this topic isn't about the dollar amount to join! We all agree the fee is very fair!

This topic is about owners paying to run their ad for rent or sales then money hungry Redweek charges anyone wanting to see if they have listings of interest have to pay to become a member first!

It is about the fact Redweek makes money from members trying to rent or sell and then anyone just looking for something finds they have to become member just to check the ad's out. Yes they get refunded if they found nothing they want but what a hassle just to see what others have paid to showcase on here!

There has been many including myself that left the site and bought from another site just because of this waste of time fee! I came back later and became a member but it cost a seller my business and when I did join I wasn't forced to.

Just to update I stop being a member in Dec 2009 because of the nickel and dime operation of Redweek. Also two years of running rental ads and no clue if anyone even spotted my ad as Redweek refuses to have a counter. Because of this it was a waste of my time and money and last dollar Redweek gets from me! I rented our unit in one week for more than asking on Redweek ad and used the unit the next year for my family. Also many of our friendly members left this forum for some of the same reasons. Can read post on Tug all the time of old members that just became bored with the cost and always watching one person on here take Redweeks side against every person that disagreed with something on Redweek.People just have better things to do than argue with this person every posting and left this site. Talk to many on other forums all the time or in e-mails.

PHILL12

{palmtre2}

If your trying to say owners by paying the fee make it safe for renters then your half right.

There has been scams on here scamming honest families out of vacation money. There has been post on this subject with some being banned by Redweek

To be fair to Redweek we need to remember there are scams on all these sites and this is why we tell people to do your homework when renting.

No site is 100% safe and owners and renters need to use their head on deals.

The other point you seem to be missing on here is the topic is about the fee shoppers / tire kickers need to pay to look at your ad and contact owner to see if unit would work for them. Also shoppers/tire kickers are not people that should be labled with insults. They are people looking to spend THEIR money the best way possible.Owners are the ones trying to get these people's money.

Let people look around and if they find a timeshare ad of interest let them contact the owner through Redweek to see if this is what they want and is still available before charging them to become members. No personal information gets out this way and shopper can verify the unit is still available. This sounds strange but many ads are rented out and never deleted.

PHILL12

[palmtre2}

I decided to try to list my Virginia timeshare for rent on one of these"free" sites after reading this thread and have been badgered with phone calls ever since. NOT phone calls from renters but calls from agencies wanting to list my rental for a fee.

PHILL12

First thing most of us tell people is use the e-mail system and not your phone number!

You teach your kids not to talk to strangers or give out their phone number then for a chance for a few bucks you give your phone number out!

This again is a common sense move on the owners part!

Many of these free sites will let you have the mail go through their site like Craigslist. Then you decide who you want to deal with.

Again I will state "DO YOUR HOMEWORK".

PHILL12

By my math, at $9.99 per year, RedWeek membership costs a person **83 CENTS PER MONTH**.

All this storm and fury over having to pay a valuable and informative resource about 19 cents per week (which is less than 3 cents per day) for access? C'mon now....

ken1193 wrote:

By my math, at $9.99 per year, RedWeek membership costs a person **83 CENTS PER MONTH**.

All this storm and fury over having to pay a valuable and informative resource about 19 cents per week (which is less than 3 cents per day) for access? C'mon now....

Ditto what Ken said.

Having to be a member to get email addresses is also a safety net for Redweek's clients (renters/sellers) against scammers and spammers. SERIOUS buyers and renters will gladly pay the fee to get the information they seek (confidential contact information).

There are many other ad sites on the internet that plainly post email addresses and those ad owners are then besieged with scammers, spammers, trolls and phishers.