Welk Resort Group, Inc. Welk ResortsWelk Resorts Platinum Program Platinum Points program is a complete scam! Branson Missouri

 Welk Resort Review First of all, this is a review of the Timeshare involvement with this Resort. The resort itself is a well maintained, nice, but overpriced, place to stay. This review has to do with the timeshare involvement that will be pushed on you from your first contact. You have not experienced high pressure sales until you have attended one of the timeshare presentations! My advice is STAY AWAY from this presentation. As owners of a competitive timeshare, we became involved in a Welk presentation as a potential “upgrade”, and since we live near Branson were really interested in the ability to trade for like units at other resorts. If you sign up for the presentation, be aware…… The “One” hour presentation will last anywhere from 3 to 5 hours, if you have not purchased some involvement before that amount of time has elapsed. The presentation is centered around how Welk is different because of the “points” arrangement rather than a week equivalent at another resort for the week at the “home” resort. This was supposed to allow a Welk owner to potentially have multiple weeks for all of the points available for the Welk unit. We were sold on the fact that with the generous number of points in the Welk Platinum package, we would have sufficient trading power to at least have a couple of weeks per year at other resorts.

Here is how it really works…from experience. One week’s ownership of a one bedroom unit at a Welk Resort will get you 90,000 “Points” (90,000, sounds like a lot for a one bedroom unit). Those 90,000 points will get you one week at another Welk resort (of which there are only 5 or 6). So…..one week = one week. Only way to get more points….buy a bigger unit! The second point was that these “points” could be used at any Interval International resort, so one could virtually go anywhere in the world. Guess what, try to find one available, we tried last June to find one in Florida, for use in October. We weren’t too particular, first choice Marco Island….none available, second choice Key West……none available, Sanibel Island…..none available, Sarasota…..none available…..finally found one in Destin, northern Florida in October, not the idea part of Florida. Then the next surprise, our 90,000 Welk points would only get us a Studio (one room) unit in the Interval system. Didn’t find that out until we arrived in Destin. The Studio unit was equivalent to a Motel 6 room. Finally upgraded to a one bedroom unit for an additional cost of $175.00. Just a note, the one bedroom unit had two bathrooms, trouble was, to get to the bedroom from the living area, one had to go through both bathrooms. Called the “Quality Assurance Manager” at Welk Branson, he assured us that we should have been due a one bedroom originally so we asked him to help recover our upgrade cost, $ 175.00, still waiting for his call back!

Final note, if you do decide to attend the timeshare presentation, keep in mind, if you purchase a timeshare, and walk out of the front door, Welk will not by that timeshare back, not even for $1.00. Why, maintenance fees; our maintenance fee for a one week unit for 2014 was to be $819.00, of which property taxes were only $14.58 for our one week’s ownership, or $758.16 for the year. What is left amounts to $804.42 per week, or $41,830.00 per year above the actual property taxes to manage and maintain a one bedroom unit. Problem is, you are responsible for the entire maintenance fee as long as you “own” the timeshare. If you believe this is a reasonable fee…go for it. Our final cost of the week in Destin was approximately $ 250.00 original processing fee for the Interval reservation, $175.00 upgrade fee, and the previous maintenance fee for the year the points were issued,$ 700.00, or a total of $1,125.00. I’m sure I can find a pretty nice place to have a vacation for $1,125.00 per week! Final, final note. Recently Welk was “kind” enough to provide us with the name of a company who will buy our timeshare, price $1.00, we are accepting the “generous” offer.