Hello All, I am seeking some advice regarding a timeshare we stupidly bought into whilst on holiday in California in October. On the day, we were sold this amazing package, but since returning to the UK this amazing package has fallen apart - and simply isn't what was sold to us. I wont bore you with the details of why the package is different, but the package is significantly different to what we signed up to - and simply isn't what we want and doesn't work for us. We have tried to express all of our issues to the Timeshare company, even having it escalated up to Director level, but they seem to be reluctant to admit any wrongdoing and are completely unwilling to help us out. The timeshare is a points based system with our names on a title deed in California. We have paid our first two month mortgage payments on the deed, but we are now at a point that we want to walk away. We are debating what options we have and whether there is any risk to us being UK citizens, and stopping payments to a US based Timeshare/Mortgaged Deed? The major questions we have; 1) Will defaulting on a mortgage affect our finances in the UK? 2) Could a US Debt company chase us in the UK and could they force us to pay by UK law? 2) Will defaulting on a mortgage affect our ESTA/VISA allowance to visiting the US in future? When we signed up to the Timeshare, the company ONLY took our names and addresses and one credit card from us. They did not take any passport details. If we stopped the payments being taken from the Credit Card, would this affect our credit rating in the UK? Has anyone else been in this situation or have any ideas what we can do? Many Thanks for any advice!

Hi Two years ago on our honeymoon we were coned into a time share situation with a company called United Vacation Club. We paid a deposit of approx. 3000 USD when we arrived back home tried to cancel the agreement not knowing that the cooling off period was a very short 5 days I was made redundant on my return and have asked the company to terminate the agreement. This week I have received an email saying that they are going to place the debt in the hands of a collection agency in the USA. Any advice please.

Hubby bought a timeshare (before he met me, I would have stopped him!) which is fully paid for. We have used the resort a few times but I'm no longer allowed to fly so for the past 3 years we've had to exchange for somewhere we can drive to. The maintenance fees plus exchange fees come to way more than we would pay by booking direct. We can't give our week away to family/friends as the transfer fee and guest fee plus flights actually make a package deal cheaper. We've looked at selling it, but it seems unlikely we'd get anything for it. We're now at the point where we just don't want it anymore. We don't care about getting any money back, we'd be happy if it didn't cost us anything else and we could book our holidays when and where we want and not be constrained by what's available for exchange. I've googled, but all the advice on line seems to be for Americans. Is it possible to just give it back or even just stop paying? Or could we give it away? Maybe someone out there wouldn't mind paying the maintenance charge to get a week's holiday. All the original paperwork seems to have been 'misplaced' sometime in the last 15 years, so I can't just look up what we can do, but we're just totally sick of it so any sensible suggestions would be very much appreciated.

In 2008 we were co-erced into purchasing a timeshare in Cyprus. We had no intention of using the timeshare property and were more attracted by the 'massive discounts' on Expedia hotel bookings that we were verbally promised. We swopped our Timeshare for a couple of trips via Interval International and soon realised that the 'luxury' we were promised was not there and equally neither were the discounts on expedia - 1-2p in most cases. We tried to contact the seller but they never replied. We therefore contacted Barclays Partner Finance as they held the loan and were jointly liably under the Consumer Credit Act. They took a whole 2 weeks to decide that we had not been mis-sold anything. we contacted Sandy Grey as the Timeshare Consumer Association and we placed a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman. This was 2 years after original purchase, as it took us a while of use to realise what we got were not getting what we believed it should be. To this date we have provided an awful amount of information to the FOS however they are leading us to believe that because we have nothing definative to indicate that CALSC (who sold the TS) promised luxury and as we HAVE seen savings on hotel bookings be they only 1p - legally those are still savings. we find ourselves at square 1. I do not want to involve a solicitor if I cannot win this case. The TS Company were very careful not to leave us anything in writing which we were verbally told and as such its our word against theirs (I wish I had recorded the meeting) do I just stump up the £10k and put it down to a bad decision or do I fight this? and if I ignore it, hw fat will BPF take it? (we have already been threatened with bailiffs) I would also point out that the Timeshare Consumer Association TATOC state "Taking legal action against a credit company if the Financial Ombudsman has found in their favour is unlikely to be successful" Does no one have any advice on this issue? I was hoping for some experienced responses, or is it too difficult a situation? Any thoughts welcome Thanks