I also had very good luck with skyauction. We stayed in a 3br villa at Embassy Resort Grand Beach for $222/wk. This was a standard auction, which maybe is wehere your questions of "hidden costs" come in. However, the skyauctions website was very straightforward. For my 7 nite vacation package there was a $195 handling charge and a $15 charge for overnight confimation delivery. I started bidding at $1 and won with a bid of $12, so my total for the week was $222 with no taxes. I think that the deal I got was thru someone putting up their timeshare for auction, as my actual confirmation was handled as an exchange confirmation thru RCI, which my BIL says is a timeshare company. No matter- we had a great vacation with wonderful accomodations, and nobody ever contacted us about taking a timeshare tour (which I wasn't thinking would happen, anyhow!). When you place a bid on skyauctions, you have to enter your credit card info, and the card is charged as soon as you win (like with priceline). We had no problems, and the accomodations were deluxe, IMHO (of course, we get excited about the Comfort Suites!). A woman at the pool told me that they were paying #309/nt for the same villa I won for $222/WEEK!!