My family and I were naive. We thought that when someone said they were with the Better Business Bureau and had the symbol on their agreement form that they would be legitimate. We were very naive.
After having no luck with a different timeshare advertiser, and being contacted by a man named Rich for several months, we decided to try World Timeshares, Inc. We were sent a fax with information from the company and told by him that they were members of the BBB. We took him at his word and the information at face value.
After signing the owner's agreement in July and paying the partial payment of $199.00, we waited for contact from them about anyone interested in our property. We have as of yet to receive any interested party's information. We were able to reach the company sporadically for the first three months, but it became increasingly difficult to be on hold and leave messages that were not returned. We were able to notify them (actually speaking with a human) before our agreement's 90 day expiration date and, as per the agreement, they renewed our advertisement until the timeshare sells. Our timeshare is not listed on their website as of today (05/09) and we have not been able to determine why.
We have not been able to reach a human or a viable voice mail box in over 6 months and decided to look them up on the internet and try e-mailing them. The link to their e-mail will not connect. They say on one of their websites that they are members of an international independent regulatory group, but when you go to that website, you find that they have a UK phone number and a physical address in Gibralter. We have taken down their e-mail and will be contacting them.
We then did a google search on the several phone numbers we have for World Timeshares, Inc. And came up with some very interesting information. We have tracked down another possible business name for them, three different physical addresses in Florida, three web addresses, and eight phone numbers (only two are not disconnected). The two non-disconnected phone numbers automatically send us to a full voice mail box that does not in any way reference the company. The voice mail has been full for at least 4 months and they have not, as I said, answered the phone in over 6 months.
We finally found an e-mail site for one of the Better Business Bureau offices in southeast Florida. They have some of the same information on file that we had found previously on the internet, but nothing new to help us contact the company. We have chosen to file a complaint because we have exhausted all other avenues of contacting this company. We hope our problem can be resolved positively for both sides, but our experience has left us wary.
Even if we never see a penny of our money back, or track down the company to get them to honor the agreement, we felt that we should file a report to let other naive consumers make a more informed decision before signing up with this company.
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