“Thanks TAC” Former British Airways executive freed from burdensome US timeshare

4 min readJun 26, 2023

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Grateful retired airline executive shares his experience dealing with Timeshare Advice Centre and European Consumer Claims.

Timeshare purchase

You don’t need to speak with retired BA executive Andrew Stern for very long to realise he is an extremely switched on guy. Plenty of people who bought timeshare are.

The Stern family spent a total of $25,000 joining and upgrading with Oasis Lakes/Bluegreen Vacations in Florida.

“We enjoyed holidays in the US,” says the 68 year old from Surrey. “We had a young family with 4 kids and this (membership) seemed like something we could hand down to them.”

Millstone

Andrew and wife Lesley soon fell out of love with the timeshare. “The management fees started to spiral out of control. It was becoming very expensive, like a millstone around our neck. The holidays didn’t suit us as our family got older and the timeshare wasn’t as flexible as we thought it was going to be.

“On top of that… COVID struck and the cost of living crisis meant we had to become more focussed. As I was retiring our income streams reduced so we had to look at reducing our costs.”

No help from Bluegreen

The Sterns initially asked to relinquish directly with their resort. “We tried but they were incredibly evasive,” says Andrew. “They weren’t encouraging at all so we pretty much gave up on that. They didn’t even reply to the emails we sent them.”

Exit firm disappointment

Andrew tried a few times to engage with exit companies, but to no avail. “We weren’t very impressed,” reports the well spoken pensioner. “Everything seemed very vague, and the results didn’t seem conclusive. And they were very expensive.”

TAC/ECC to the rescue

“ECC were different,” smiles Andrew. “They had a very refreshing approach and seemed very… geared up. They knew exactly what the processes were and also had knowledge of the US market.

“They’d had a lot of success in Europe. And when you saw some of the testimonials, some of the videos online, it actually looked like they knew what they were talking about.”

Freedom

How did Andrew feel when Timeshare Advice Centre and European Consumer Claims gave him the good news that his relinquishment was successful? “Elated,” he confirms. “It was really good news. We were finally out of that burdensome arrangement we had with Bluegreen and we did not have to deal with them any more, which was an extra bonus.”

Management fee savings

Andrew says that the money saved each year will give them: “plenty of flexibility because its a fair amount of money we are saving. So we will use (the money) for independent holidays and we can… do exactly what we want to do without being tied into the arduous rules of the timeshare business.”

Andrew’s message to anyone thinking of retaining TAC/ECC

“We definitely recommend ECC (TAC). They have a refreshing approach, a very flexible attitude towards the way the pricing structure works as well. They worked to very tight deadlines. They delivered on all of them and got us the right result.”

“There’s not really much more you can ask for.

“They did the job.”