In August my wife and I bought a vacation plan from Consolidated Resorts / Tahiti Village in Las Vegas NV in Phase 2. It was a one bedroom unit 1 week yearly floating except for the New Year week. Since we new a little bit about how timeshare works, we were mainly interested in the price when we went to attend the presentation at the Tahiti Village Resort. However, it took more than three hours into the presentation until the prices were disclosed. An additional Sales Representative, a European immigrant like me, was brought into the sales talk to make me feel more comfortable. He immediately started to promise that vacation weeks could be split, that all the land along the Strip had already been sold out and thus the price of the time share would go up every month. As such, it would be a great investment for the future that could even be transferred to our children one day. They offered us 10% down with the remainder principal balance paid off over the next 10 years at an APR of around 17%. We told them that we didn't have the funds available for the down-payment and that the monthly payment would exceed our budget. The down payment was taken care of by offering me a credit card from Interval International with no interest for the next 6 months.in addition, I was asked what my mortgage rate for my current primary resident in California would be. I told them 6.25% and they assured me that there would be no problem at all in contacting my lender asking for refinancing my vacation plan at a similar rate, like most of the owners of Tahiti Village had done.in addition, my wife and I had excellent credit scores (that had already checked by them within less than 15 minutes). I pulled out my calculator and figured that with an APR of around 6% the monthly payment would me more affordable to us. After we had also been promised 6 weeks of free vacation anywhere in the world, 4 weeks more than all the other buyers, since they liked us so much, we finally signed the agreement about 5 hours after we had arrived at the resort. For the next couple of days of our stay in Las Vegas we received constantly calls from the European sales rep who offered us free tickets to shows on the strip and free vouchers for buffets. On arrival back in California I immediately did some research on the internet looking for refinancing options. I also contacted my lender and other banks and credit unions and found out that none of them was willing to refi a timeshare, as it was of no value for them, unlike a property. Hence, we decided to cancel the purchase agreement with Consolidated Resorts and sent a letter to them by certified mail reasoning out why we had made this decision. Like many other buyers, we received a response from them stating that our cancellation request had been declined, as it had been received after the 5-day cancellation period stated in the contract. Besides, their sales staff had denied making any statements regarding refinancing options we had alleged. Since then, we refused to make any further payments and have demanded full refund of the down-payment and the first monthly payment.in the meantime we also received a letter from Consolidated Resorts stating that they would proceed with foreclosure of the property should we fail to make payments within 5 days from the date of their letter. Meanwhile, our delinquencies on their accounts had already been reported to the credit bureaus and are now reflected in our credit reports. We are now looking for options to team up with other buyers who experienced similar rip-offs by Consolidated Resorts for filling a potential class action law suit. Please contact us if you're interested.
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