“Everlasting” timeshare contracts have left owners trapped in leases they can’t afford — but there may be a route out, reports Eugene Costello
Hundreds of thousands of UK timeshare owners are tied into contracts that can feel impossible to escape — and in some cases the liability can be passed on to their children. In 2003 my parents visited friends at their timeshare resort in Madeira. Those friends took my parents, then both aged 70, to a presentation where they bought a 25-year timeshare for £20,000.
A timeshare is a form of holiday ownership that allows you — either directly or through a club — to use accommodation in a holiday resort for a set week (or weeks) each year for the length of the agreement.
Dad, a former teacher, and Mum, a former nurse, imagined taking their grandchildren to the two-bed apartment overlooking the gardens of the Pestana Village Resort in Funchal. They could use the property for two weeks a year, but needed to give 13 months’ notice to book. They also paid maintenance of up to £650 a year.
However, when Mum became ill — first with rheumatoid arthritis and then Alzheimer’s — they only managed to visit three times. In 2018 my younger brother tried to negotiate a cancellation so they could exit the deal, but he died before he could resolve it.
When Mum died in April, Dad asked me to help. He still had five years left on the timeshare and was being chased for four years of unpaid maintenance fees. I contacted European Consumer Claims (ECC), a timeshare claims and relinquishment company — a UK business with an office in Malaga — and it was able to help my father complete the timeshare relinquishment process in the UK context and exit the contract with the Pestana group.
Pestana acted reasonably. We were told the contract could be cancelled in circumstances such as ill health or financial hardship. We sent a copy of my mum’s death certificate, signed a “relinquish letter”, and the agreement was ended — allowing Dad to stop paying timeshare maintenance fees going forward.
But it is not always this straightforward. A parliamentary research group paper last year found that many timeshares in the 1980s and 1990s were “sold aggressively to British tourists” who had no access to independent legal advice.
“Some contracts were not written in English and included an obligation to pay expensive annual management and maintenance fees,” it said. Agreements were often made “in perpetuity”, locking the owner in for life — and after they die, their children too.
There are between 500,000 and 600,000 UK timeshare owners, the report found. Almost half are in Spain, a fifth in the UK and a quarter outside Europe. Reselling is often difficult because demand can be limited. Older owners may struggle to meet rising fees in retirement.
Timeshare contract in perpetuity cancellation has become less common, and Spanish law now states that timeshare contracts signed after 15 January 1999 cannot run for more than 50 years. Even so, many people say they remain tied to arrangements that feel “for life”. It is not known how many in-perpetuity contracts were issued, but Mark Jobling of ECC said: “It is exceptionally rare to find customers who are happy with the contract and maintenance fees.”
Steven John of ECC said: “Europe’s timeshare firms have run roughshod over consumer rights for decades.”
Douglas Mackay, 65, a retired police officer, and his wife Linda, 62, a retired nurse, from Ayrshire, signed a timeshare contract in 2012 with Infiniti Leisure for a property in Tenerife. They paid a deposit of about £5,000 and maintenance was about £1,000 a year — but “kept creeping up”, they said. After challenging the agreement in 2018, the couple had it voided and, in 2020, received £10,000 to claim compensation for a mis-sold timeshare. It took two years because of legal obstacles they said were put in place by Infiniti.
“We would have been happy just to get out of the contract. Neither of us thought we would get any money back,” Douglas said. Infiniti did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2011 Andrew Rees, 57, a construction manager from Swinton, Greater Manchester, visited the timeshare resort complex Anfi del Mar in Gran Canaria.
On the recommendation of his holiday rep, he attended a timeshare presentation. Rees did not realise at the time that his tour operator, Thomas Cook, had a financial arrangement to be paid for each family that attended Anfi presentations — described as a high-pressure sales event. Rees signed up on the day, paying about £5,000 for one week a year, with maintenance fees of £1,300 a year.
In 2020 he engaged ECC for timeshare cancellation help, and secured £21,000 in compensation. “I feel like we were manipulated into the decision to join Anfi. It’s a huge relief to be free of the maintenance fee and to get our money back,” he said — a case often referred to as an Anfi del Mar timeshare compensation claim.
Thomas Cook said the arrangement did not relate to the “new Thomas Cook”. Thomas Cook went into liquidation in September 2019, but the brand was relaunched as Thomas Cook Tourism by the Chinese holding company Fosun International in 2020. Anfi did not respond to a request for comment.
Barclays Partner Finance has also been criticised over loans it provided to timeshare buyers in Malta, which were processed by the now-defunct company Azure.
Investors claim they were pressured into buying timeshares by Azure and allege its commission-only salespeople were also the individuals who handled loan applications.
They also allege standard affordability checks were ignored.
The specialist timeshare lawyer Adriana Stoyanova began working on behalf of investors in 2017 with the law firm M1 Legal. In 2021, they reached a settlement with Barclays Partner Finance for it to refund all loan payments — a total of £48 million plus interest. It said it would cancel the loan agreements and remove any related negative markers from investors’ credit files.
In 2022 Barclays agreed to pay a further £181 million to about 6,000 customers who were mis-sold timeshares in Malta by Azure — an outcome often referenced by consumers exploring a Barclays Partner Finance timeshare refund claim.
So what can I do about it?
In Spain, in-perpetuity timeshare clauses and the practice of taking a deposit when entering a timeshare agreement were made illegal in 1999 — although both practices continued for some time. If you were pressured into signing on the day and did not have access to legal advice, you may be able to exit and avoid ongoing charges. If you entered into a timeshare contract in Spain with an in-perpetuity clause after January 1999, you may also be eligible to claim compensation under timeshare contract cancellation Spain law.
You can try to pursue this yourself or use a specialist firm. However, the legal process can be complex, and dealing with foreign paperwork and language can make it challenging for anyone searching for how to get out of a timeshare contract UK.
“The reality is that, especially in Spain but elsewhere too, these rogue operators know that the game is up and it is only a matter of time before their businesses are out of action,” John said.
Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-is-timeshare-scams-uk-news-j7jr0937f
