John Oliver dug into the $8.1bn predatory industry of timeshares and the equally troublesome industry of helping people escape them on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight. Though long lampooned as a scam on various television shows, Oliver noted that timeshare ownership, in which “rights to use” are divided among multiple parties with lifetime contracts but no ownership of the property, has risen in recent years. Nearly 10m households in the US own one of more type of timeshare, often rebranded as “vacation clubs” or “vacation ownership plans”.
It’s not just traditional timeshares, where “you would buy a timeshare that consisted of one week every year at, say, a condo in Florida”, he explained. Some companies now tout “floating weeks” that could theoretically be used any time throughout the year, or timeshare points to be redeemed at various timeshares.
