This is no time to share

I attended a timeshare presentation on the Orange County coast recently [“Timeshare Market Is Booming, but They’re Not for Everyone,” Travel Insider, May 16].

As I told the saleswoman, I had come to buy steak and they were selling only sizzle. She refused to tell me anything about the resort itself.

Our parting of the ways came when she showed me an “exclusive” offer I could earn for a stay very near Monaco -- if I bought one of her timeshares. She implied that it was one of their own properties, but it happened to be the hotel where, 18 months before, we had had a large room with kitchen and a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and the Casino gardens. Walking in off the street, we had gotten it, like anyone else, for $94 per night.

She finally revealed the timeshare price: $27,000 and up, per week -- “and nobody ever buys just one week.” No thanks.

Merrill E. Sarty

Los Angeles

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Everything sounds so good and sweet about timeshares. It’s not. I, too, bought one more than 20 years and sold it on EBay last year for $76.

I traded my timeshare for other places but never got what I wanted.

The maintenance fees go up almost every year. It was on a beach, so there were plenty of other fees and assessments because of storm damage.

I finally decided that for the price of the maintenance fee and assessments and exchange fees, I could use that money to rent a hotel room when and where I wanted.

Lynne Lerner

Van Nuys