Critics question realtor Wayne Stroman's timeshare resale business

"We receive at this office literally tens of thousands of e-mails every day, about 1,000 phone calls a day, and we talk to close to 200,000 to 300,000 people a year, both buyers and sellers," says Stevenson.

On an Internet chat board, someone claiming to have worked at Stroman for six months broke down operations at the Stroman sales office, producing numbers very similar to Stevenson's and other sources.

According to the chat-room post:

"Stroman Realty receives over 1000 incoming calls a day. The Calls are generated by a massive marketing program targeting the nearly five million existing Timeshare owners prompting them to sell. Around 70 to 100 $499.00 listing fees are collected every day from credit cards, by the Realtors in the boiler room, after reading a carefully crafted scripted sales pitch. This works out to,

Around....70 new listings per day, $34,930.00 per day

Around....420 new listings per week, $209,400.00 per week

Around....1,680 new listings per month, $837,600.00 per month

Around....20,160 new listings per year. $10,051,200.00 per year."

In 1994, the Houston BBB terminated Stroman's membership.

"Stroman's so far away from being eligible to be a member it's just ridiculous," says Parsons. "It's two things really, the complaints and his business model. Even if today he went back and refunded everybody, we wouldn't accept him because he is still doing a business practice that causes an underlying root problem."

In 1994, Stroman's attorney wrote a cease-and-desist letter to the BBB demanding the BBB stop publishing its "deleterious" reports about Stroman. In it, the attorney wrote that complaints against Stroman Realty constituted less than 1 percent of transactions for any given period of time.

"I swear that when Moses came down from the Mount there was like this 11th commandment that chipped off the tablets and companies, when they're in trouble, say, 'well, this only represents X percent of our business,'" says Parsons. "Number one, for every complaint we get, there are 20 we do not see. Beyond that, let's say it is just a fraction of their business. It's still a fraction of a very serious nature."

Parsons says the BBB ignored the demand letter.

It is not just the BBB in Houston that has noted complaints against Stroman. In its 2005 column "Scambusters," the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel reported that Stroman and two other timeshare companies had the Better Business Bureau of Northeastern Indiana's lowest rating. That same year, the Orlando Sentinel told the story of a retired couple who called Stroman requesting literature on selling a timeshare and were charged the $499 even though the couple never actually hired Stroman. The couple received a refund only after the Sentinel called Stroman demanding an explanation.

Within the industry itself, Stroman has a mixed reputation.

"Wayne used to go to great lengths to show the results he had and the work he was doing to get timeshares resold," says Carl G. Berry, former president of ARDA. "At the same time, he had a huge backlog because he had this big marketing program saying, 'List with me, list with me,' but he wasn't selling enough. He was the most high-profile guy in the business and said he was doing it right."

Tom Yeary founded The Timeshare Store in Florida, which specializes in the resale of Disney timeshares. He says that he personally knows of at least one former employee who felt "so bad about what he was telling the people that he actually started having trouble sleeping at night and had to quit his job at Stroman."

Fifteen years ago, many resale outfits were calling up-front fees "appraisals." But as time wore on and some fraudulent resellers got nailed, "companies dropped the appraisal crap and started up with advertising fees," says Yeary. "It's the same game."

The Timeshare Store does not charge its customers an up-front fee.

"Up-front fees are just terrible," Yeary says. "I have a problem with any company that will lie to people and tell them their property is worth more than it is just to get the up-front fee, or agree to list it at a price that's higher than they know it's really worth. (It's) the lying, scheming and taking money from people by omission that I care about, because I think it gives a bad name to the business. I don't know of any reason an ethical broker should charge an up-front fee."

Marc Thomas operates the Internet-based company WorldwideTimeshareResale.com out of Montgomery, Texas. He says he doesn't get many complaints and runs his business quite differently than Stroman. For one thing, he only charges sellers $9.95 up-front to advertise and list their timeshares on his Web site.

"When you charge an up-front fee," he says, "the customers are constantly calling wanting to know why it hasn't sold, and that's stressful, to say the least. I couldn't deal with that stress. (After all), it's not easy to sell timeshares. It takes longer than it takes to sell a house."

Thomas says he's been in the resale business for 14 years and gets between 2,000 and 4,000 visitors to his Web site each week. Another difference between Stroman and him is that Thomas does not believe in soliciting for business.

"I don't do mail," he says. "I don't like to violate people's mailboxes with a bunch of litter. It's not necessary to bug people by mail to buy or sell. When they're ready they'll look online."