CPO TIMESHARE - IS IT WORTH IT? -- CPO Owners

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Subject: CPO TIMESHARE - IS IT WORTH IT?

Author:
MIKE CARE

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Date Posted: 16:09:17 06/28/04 Mon

In common with many other holiday makers, we were offered a free holiday and sat through a lengthy presentation at CPO. I was a non interested party walking reluctantly behind the group as we did a tour of CPO.

The complex was definitely not the sort of destination we would want to visit on a regular basis, and my wife does not like going back to the same resort.

The concept of EXCHANGING was one of the ideas that grabbed my interest together with the pledge to maintain a standard of accommodation.

We forked out �5600 in autumn 1997 for a 2 bed, 1 week floating time in blue but have never used CPO having exchanged several times and had bonus weeks.

We have resisted every other invitation/threat about fixed time, points etc considering that the initial payment plus �406 maintenance is more than ample.

The investment is OK if you can afford it. Thereafter the maintenance fee at CPO is steep and other resorts do have far cheaper weeks on resale ( we recently went to Lanzarote and had a superb time at LAS CALAS where they had resales for fixed weeks for less than �3000 and with lower maintenance).

We used 2 of our weeks to go to Disney World Florida staying at Orange Lakes and had a really good holiday.

Although we object to the cost of maintenance we have determined that even with all the fees involved we are probably saving on equivalent holidays although at the time of purchase we were sceptical and basically told the rep that we hoped that all we were told did materialise i.e. we were definitely not convinced that what we were being told was the whole truth.

The cheap flight thing is a definite lie but apart from some difficulties in actually finding an available location that appealed to us at what RCI would consider to be short notice, we have used the system as we intended and think that when we are less confined by school holidays we will be able to take better advantage.

The complexes have all been well maintained and some do offer more than others - look out for GOLD CROWN because these offer the better standards in certain respects (Las Calas 2 had very good on site food and some good entertainment plus the maid service was above our expectations). CPO is not GOLD CROWN so you will not receive a brochure with these complexes listed. The RCI Directory web site will give the status of the complex.

I might consider offering our week to another resort in the future in part exchange for 2 weeks as a way of ditching CPO for a better and cheaper resort in red time - when I feel that it would benefit us and the extra expenditure is justified.

You definitely get the impression that CPO is a con but there were many satisfied people at Las Calas. One family group we met had several weeks and were trying to buy more while they were there.

Some people we have met felt they had been conned into buying points unnecessarily at an extortionate price.

It may not be to everyone's liking, but the concept is convincing- the initial cost is a sizeable expenditure but if you can start to use it and begin to visit other complexes then you get a feel for other people's experiences and the pitfalls.

There is currently no interest for us to enter into fixed time or points and I suggest others resist as well. We can see no material advantage to change and we like the floating time principle.

I wish I had not spent �5600 to buy into the system but do still think it can be made to work so would be prepared to enter again - buying somewhere at a much cheaper price, knowing what I now have learnt.

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