Joyce Orecchia's experience, reported by NBC Bay Area, illustrates the difficulty some timeshare owners face when they try to leave. She paid $12,000 for a Las Vegas timeshare expecting a vacation benefit, but remained responsible for annual maintenance fees whether she used the property or not.
Orecchia's timeshare was originally sold through Diamond Resorts, a company now part of Hilton Grand Vacations after the hospitality company completed its roughly $1.4 billion acquisition of Diamond in August 2021, according to Hilton Grand Vacations. The deal brought 154 luxury properties and more than 380,000 legacy Diamond owners into one combined operator. Orecchia was paying more than $1,000 a year in maintenance fees, according to NBC Bay Area.
In 2024, Orecchia asked Hilton to accept the return of the timeshare, NBC Bay Area reported. The company required her to buy an additional $15,000 timeshare interest to exit the existing one, according to the report.
Turning to a Paid Exit Company, and Waiting
Instead, NBC Bay Area reported, Orecchia paid $6,700 upfront in 2024 to Consumer Edge Travel Solutions, based in Carlsbad, and Liberty Consultations, based in Tennessee. The companies gave her a certificate promising a transfer within 365 days, but roughly 730 days later she still had the timeshare and its annual-fee obligation.
The exit companies told NBC Bay Area that Hilton delayed the transfer, including by requiring paperwork to be resent three times. Hilton said a third-party company had submitted incomplete paperwork and caused significant delays. The competing accounts were not resolved in the station's report.
After NBC Bay Area asked about the case, the transfer company sent another packet of paperwork, and Hilton later confirmed that Orecchia's transfer was complete, according to the report. Hilton said it tries to help members find solutions when circumstances change; the exit companies said they remained committed to completing her case. Orecchia did not recover the $12,000 she originally paid for the timeshare.
What the National Industry Data Shows
The Federal Trade Commission has warned that the timeshare market is overcrowded and that selling a timeshare might be hard or outright impossible — a warning that lines up with what Orecchia experienced trying to simply give hers back. Legal guides for consumers note that deeded timeshares hold almost no secondary market resale value, with many listings priced at just $1, because whoever buys them also inherits the perpetual annual maintenance fee obligation, according to O'Grady Law Group.
Those fees aren't standing still, either. Industry data from the American Resort Development Association shows an average billed maintenance fee of $1,550 per weekly interval equivalent in 2025, while the Timeshare Consumer Association says fees rose from $1,120 in 2020 to $1,480 in 2024 — a 33% increase that outpaced general inflation. The U.S. timeshare industry as a whole still generates roughly $10.7 billion in annual sales across 1,434 resorts and 188,700 units, serving nearly 10 million owner households, per metrics cited by HVS.
What National Industry Data Shows—and Doesn't
National figures show a large but changing industry, not necessarily an easier exit for individual owners. According to the American Resort Development Association's 2026 industry report, U.S. timeshare sales volume reached $10.7 billion in 2025, and average occupancy was 79.9%. The report also says the number of U.S. timeshare resorts and units declined by approximately 5% since 2020, partly as older or underperforming resorts were sunset. Those figures do not, by themselves, quantify how maintenance fees or delinquency and foreclosure pressures changed nationally over the past five years. They do show that industry sales and occupancy remain substantial even as the overall resort and unit base contracts, a distinction consumers should keep in mind when evaluating a purchase or trying to leave one.
Consumer Advocates Say Complaints Are Nothing New
Consumers' Checkbook has issued its own warnings about timeshare exit companies, and Kevin Brasler of that organization said consumer groups have urged the timeshare industry for decades to improve its practices. Brasler said several victims remained tied to timeshare exit companies for years despite promises to get them out — a pattern that mirrors Orecchia's two-year ordeal.
The Coalition for Responsible Exit, which includes Hilton as a member, has advised that timeshare owners do not need to pay a company to take steps toward exiting a timeshare. Coalition members are supposed to provide a comprehensive overview of exit options directly to owners, raising the question of why Orecchia's own attempt to go straight to Hilton in 2024 led instead to a demand that she buy in deeper before she could get out.
Where to Turn Instead of Paying Upfront Fees
The FTC has warned that selling a timeshare might be hard or outright impossible. Owners considering a resale should review any fees before agreeing to them. In April 2026, a federal judge ordered Christopher Carroll of Consumer Law Protection to pay $140 million in consumer redress and civil penalties following an FTC and Justice Department lawsuit alleging he defrauded older adults out of more than $90 million through upfront-fee exit schemes, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
For Nevada buyers, state law offers a narrow safety valve: timeshare purchasers have five calendar days to cancel a contract. California buyers get a slightly longer window — seven calendar days from signing or from receiving the public report — under the state's Vacation Ownership and Time-Share Act of 2004, according to Wesley Financial Group. Both windows apply only in the days immediately after signing, offering no help to owners like Orecchia trying to exit years into a contract.
Hilton has since moved to open other exit pathways for some legacy Diamond owners. In June 2026 the company agreed to transfer developer rights and management of eight legacy Diamond Resorts properties in California, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee to Lemonjuice Solutions, according to American Consumer Claims.
Regulators emphasize that timeshare owners have more than one door to knock on depending on the problem. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforces federal lending laws over timeshare financing, including mortgages and loan collection practices under the Truth in Lending Act, while the FTC handles deceptive resale and exit fraud, according to the Aaronson Law Firm. Consumer advocates say the basic advice for anyone shopping a timeshare hasn't changed: research whether secondhand timeshares in that resort actually have buyers, and ask upfront about purchase, usage, annual maintenance and exit fees before signing anything.
