Wishing you a warm and joyful Christmas, from the team at ECC

The worldwide ECC family would like to wish you and your family a wonderful yuletide

The value of time

It's everyone's favourite annual holiday season again, and this year Christmas Day falls mid-week instead of adding onto a weekend. The sherry-glass-is-half-full way of looking at this might be to think we are missing out on a traditional long weekend.

BUT with Christmas optimism and judicious use of one annual leave day, most of us can actually find a way to stretch our two celebration days to an extra long, five day weekend with our loved ones.

Memories shared with our families are precious. Whether it is the eager smiles on the faces of our children as they open gifts, or the treasured moments spent with elderly relatives or friends who we secretly acknowledge won't be around forever.

For this short, magical island in time, nothing exists except the company in our home, the warmth of exchanges and the joy taken and given from one another's existence.

The gifts of freedom

Freedom is a gift given in many ways. A child's first bicycle opens up the world to travel beyond the limits of walking for little legs, and by doing so reveals new universes of adventure.

These days a child's first phone gives different but just as exciting freedoms of communication and interaction. For this writer (in a more nostalgic time) gifts like my first watch, or first camera granted hitherto unavailable opportunities to roam, plan, and document. They were my first steps into the world of adults...

A first car? Well, to a 17 year old that is freedom made manifest for dates, travel, and hanging out with friends.

But what about when we are fully grown and can buy these things for ourselves? What freedoms do we seek then?

Adult life is a vast web of obligations and there are too many desired freedoms to fully list. We yearn to be unburdened from financial pressure, we look forward to being free from our mortgages for example or finishing car payments. Many of us look forward to our retirements and having the choice of how to spend our days.

There is one glorious freedom that European Consumer Claims (ECC) can help with: The freedom to holiday how you choose.

Vacation captivity

When most people buy a timeshare, the day of the sale feels like a key has been purchased to a world of luxury travel. Over the following years however (according to an academic study by the University of Central Florida) up to 85% of timeshare owners become disillusioned with what they own.

The vacation system is rigid and complex. The availability often does not provide the location or time of year needed. Resorts sometimes need to be booked up to two years in advance, and doing so still does not guarantee the holiday required.

The 4000 resorts available via associated exchange systems sound a vast amount on that heady induction day. "Do you think you will visit anything like 4000 resorts in your holiday career, John and Mary?" But then you realise that the popular resorts are rarely available because everyone else is trying to book them too. The resorts are generally not even exclusive. They can generally be booked by non-members for less than you pay for your annual maintenance fees.

Speaking of maintenance: The fact that these annual fees have to be paid whether you holiday or not, and can be increased at the discretion of the resort is a major complaint from veteran timeshare owners.

When you reach the point of being unhappy with your membership, you can choose to keep spending more money on the product (complaining to the resort will land you annual 'in-house' sales presentations where a succession of representatives try to sell you endless expensive upgrades), or you can look for ways out.

Modern day self-booked holidays are the very definition of freedom. You go where you want, when you want, for how long you want. You set your own budget, and you only pay for holidays you actually take. All of the attributes which timeshare resorts lack.

Taking vacations back

So how do we give ourselves back that most precious of gifts: holiday freedom? How do we escape the seemingly binding timeshare contracts we signed which may have many years left to run, sometimes even in perpetuity through generations of our families?

It is not easy, and deliberately so. But here at ECC we are experts at finding your path to freedom. In fact, in many cases, we can even sue the resorts for financial compensation if you have been mis-sold or otherwise treated unfairly.

For a free, no-obligation consultation on your options...

...get in touch with our team today. (Unless today is Christmas Day of course.)