Timeshares: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in threads about hard-to-cancel subscriptions and timeshare scams as an informative overview of the sketchy exit industry.
What it is
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on timeshares covers how people get sold into them, why they are so hard to leave, and the exit-company scams that target owners trying to get out.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2023 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends cableshaft · 2023-03 · on “The FTC wants to ban those tough-to-cancel gym and cable subscriptions”
Yeah, John Oliver just did a Last Week Tonight on Timeshares. He goes over that in the video. Also there are scam companies that exist that promise to take your money to help you exit your timeshare agreement, then disappear. So you get double-scammed. And somehow this is technically legal? Link to the Last Week Tonight video: [this video]
Recommends dixie_land · 2023-05 · on “Roblox: Ten-year-old spent £2,500 of mum's money without her knowing”
John Oliver had an interesting segment on timeshares and argues timeshare exit companies are even bigger scams: [this video]
Recommends VTimofeenko · 2024-09 · on “Timeshare owner? The Mexican drug cartels want you”
I am very sorry to hear that and I hope they can properly escape this situation. Maybe my opinion is biased (the media generally does not publish "everythibg is a-OK" articles), but my perception of the timeshare escape industry is that they are sketchy too. I think this Last Week Tonight episode is very informative on the topic: [this video]
Cites jmyeet · 2024-01 · on “Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel”
Whenever this subject comes up I'm disheartened to see how many are willing to blame the victim: the consumer. We have allowed businesses to exist whose only really business model is duping customers into a subscription and then making it difficult or impossible to cancel. Just go look at timeshares [1]. I would dearly love to give money to some quality news publications to support their work but I don't. Why? Because I absolutely don't ever want to deal with their subscriptions department should I ever want to cancel. Ever tried to cancel an Equinox gym membership? I've seen half a dozen sign up constulants standing around at the entrance, someone call up to cancel and being told there's no