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Maintenance Fee went to collections

[Q=lauraw440] My Timeshare in Las Vegas, Westgate Flamingo Bay, is now in collections. It’s fully paid for, no blackout dates, we have the even years, and you can transfer to other Westgates or if you don’t use your weeks in the even year you can transfer to the following year. Never were we warned that our maintenance fee would go from $400 to $2000, more than my home mortgage payment! So we haven’t paid and it’s now in collections. Any suggestions on what we can do to get rid of it?[/Q] Westgate now has a "deedback" program, [b]but[/b] the maintenance fees must first be fully paid up to date and Westgate will also charge a fee of $900 for "deedback" once the owner's account becomes fully paid up to date. This is surely not what you want to hear, but this is the only way (except for simply awaiting foreclosure) that you are going to unload a Westage timeshare ownership. Westgate imposes such restrictive constraints and limitations on resale owner reservations that Westage has effectively (and probably very deliberately) rendered Westgate resales essentially worthless in the secondary (resale) market. It's your personal choice and decision whether to pony up the $2,000+ to get your account current and then also pay Westgate an additional $900 for a "deedback", or to choose to pay Westgate not another penny and just wait for inevitable foreclosure. If the account is already in collections, then movement in the the direction of foreclosure has basically already begun. You indicate that the ownership is paid off, so there would be no negative credit report consequences after foreclosure. If there was an unpaid loan balance involved, that would be another matter entirely --- defaulting on a [b]loan[/b] would almost definitely result in a negative credit report.