[Johnny555]

They aren't all scams, but they are not an "investment". As long as you understand the program terms and restrictions and you buy your timeshare in a place you'd go anyway, you can get good value out of the money.

But few people do that much research and find out that they don't use it as much as they thought they would either because they don't like the place enough to keep going back, or they didn't account for blackout dates, floating weeks, etc and can't find a time when they can go.

But if you do buy a timeshare, by on the secondary market, don't buy a new one, they quickly drop in value on resale.

[vkou]

They are all scams, because they all lock you into a single-vendor maintenance contract that can charge you anything they want, that you can never get out of.

Theoretically you can run a non-scammy timeshare, but why would you, when running a scam is the same work but so much more lucrative? The lemons push out the good ones in this market.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> They are all scams, because they all lock you into a single-vendor maintenance contract that can charge you anything they want, that you can never get out of.

This is simply factually incorrect. While I myself would never own a timeshare because it just would never make sense for me, some timeshare contracts are for limited lengths (e.g. 20 years) and maintenance fees are capped.