I don't have anything for timeshares. However, I can share a few fucked-up stories I've dealt with personally.
Conn's was finally
sued by the Texas AG for being staffed by huge scum-fucks. It can all be summed up with this line: "Abbott said Conn’s had a financial incentive to make repeat visits for repairs rather than exchange products or fix them. That’s because Conn’s bills manufacturers, with a mark-up, for the parts and service work the retailer performs on products covered by manufacturer warranties, the state said."
It was a huge deal that hit me because I bought a Mitsubishi DLP and the warranty. It took 3 service calls to finally get a guy out to replace the Light Engine. They came up with all kinds of bullshit excuses like "I came by but you weren't there." It's more likely they just never sent the guy and billed Mitsubishi.
On another note: if local/county contracts could be summed up in a phrase, it would be "low bid." We did work for years at a library system to maintain their computers and cataloging system. As part of the grant system, they were eligible for money to get them off their old 386s and thinnet, so we gave them a very competitive bid because it wasn't going to be a hard install. However, some local guy came in and cut our bid by half. The head librarian was nice enough to contact me and let me know, but wouldn't listen to me when I told her no one could legitimately cut our bid by anywhere near that without it being criminal. It didn't matter anyways because the city liked that dollar amount more than ours.
So, I let it go, but got a phone-call from her a few weeks later that was something along the lines of "oh my god, please get down here, we need your help. Our system is down and the guy just left." So, I packed my bag and headed down there. What I found would have been hilarious if it wasn't so fucking terrible it happened to a public library.
Computer parts that were so cheap, I can't even recall manufacturer names. Even more so, the "tech" had cannibalized 15 year old computers for parts (like the old 10mb RJ45/thinnet NICs and the HDDs). He was running Cat3 cable back when Cat5e was the standard for data. All operating systems (including the server OS) were being installed off burned CDs with (of course) boot-legged CD-keys.
He hadn't touched their old server yet and I was able to piece an old machine back together and use the RJ45 port on a NIC to connect them because he ripped out all the thinnet already (and just knocked triangle holes in the walls and punched the wire down on plugs, rather than jacks). It at least got them going, till I could get them another bid. It's just really lucky for them he hadn't tried the Follet upgrade, because if you fuck that up, you have to send the corrupted files off to get fixed. I would have had to do that once, except I made backups and could recover locally. You always backup.... everything... all the time.
The guy's last comment to the librarian was "My wife has cancer, I have to go." Turns out the guy was a huge fraud (and wasn't even married). They finally caught up with him a few years ago and I only know that because I work (different job) about a mile from that same library.
