I am submitting this on behalf of my elderly parents. My father has Alzheimer's, and my mother has constant and severe pain. A few years ago, they purchased a "Vacation Property Interest" from Wyndham (they have resorts and a "club"). They no longer can take advantage of the resorts, and have also fallen on difficult times financially, so are attempting to sell the "interest." This "interest" is a points-bases system; my parents purchased 300,000 points per year (enough for about 3 weeks in a 2-bedroom condo).
Universal Timeshare Sales Associates contacted my mother, and she referred them to me since I have been attempting to help them. Universal Timeshare SA made the following false claims:
- Universal Timeshare is a member of a government website — netcheck.com (NetCheck is NOT a government organization)
- NetCheck awards a rating of 99 out of 100 to Universal Timeshare. As proof, go to www.netcheck.com and do a search for Universal Timeshare (what you get is a search engine response, listing an entry for Universal Timeshare, that the search engine indicates is a 99% match to your request).
- Universal Timeshare had a client who was looking for a property like the one my parents were selling and were willing to pay $50,000.
We modified their sales agreement (by hand, but before signing) and stated that if we were not put in touch with a buyer within 30 days, Universal would return any fees or we would consider the transaction to be fraudulent. Universal accepted the agreement and charged $1800 against a Bank of America Master Card.
In addition to the $1800 fee, there appeared a $54.00 "Foreign Transaction Fee" on the credit card. There had been no word of this fee in advance, and there had been no indication that Universal Timeshare was actually offshore in the Dominican Republic (they maintain an office in Beaverton, OR, that is on all of their documents).
Universal Timeshare immediately began stalling: the people were interested, but had to wait a month. They were interested, and had to clear a credit check. They were interested, but were having difficulty getting credit. Then silence.
We asked for the money back, and received an offer of a partial refund, which we refused. We disputed the credit card transaction with Bank of America, within 30 days of the original transaction. Bank of America says that they cannot recognize the modified contract, per their agreements with businesses.
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