VIP Travel Club is a well established vacation/timeshare selling operation. They have several companies under them such as Caribbean Resales LLC.
VIP sells "ownerships" of weeks in two Cancun resorts: Royal Sunset and Club Lagoon. You are supposed to be able to use your weeks at these resorts by simply scheduling your travel dates, paying the maintenance fee and then an "all inclusive fee" if applicable.
To sweeten the pot they go to great lenghts to tell you that you can rent your weeks out for $1000 per week which would allow you to recoup most, if not all, of your investment in a short amount of time. Upon your agreeing, as part of the contract they sign you up with a rental company who is supposed to advertise and facilitate the rentals of your weeks. As a final bonus, they often give you some "free" weeks. These are certificates that give you some weeks free of maintenance fees.
In a nutshell, VIP's selling of timeshares does not seem to be any different than any other timeshare seller. However, the problem is what happens after you have bought your weeks. There are several things that make this a ripoff:
1: The rental company (Resorts International Marketing or vacationweeks in my case) almost NEVER rents weeks. I have had mine listed for three years without a single inquiry.
2: The rental company charges an annual fee regardless of whether your weeks are rented or not.
3: Your "free weeks" are very limited. The Corporate Weeks" as they are called are only good for the resorts that have an all inclusive fee. Although you are getting around the maintenance fees, you will be paying an even higher all inclusive fee.
4: VIP does not expect you to ever really use your weeks. They make sure of this by making the maintenance and all-inclusive fees so expensive that you would have to be an idiot to waste your money in the two subpar resorts when you could spend the same for a five star resort. (i.E.in August it would cost me $1657 for two people at the Royal Sunset. This is more than the Oasis, RUI Cancun and several other higher rated all inclusive resorts during the exact same time period). Therefore it is obvious they do not expect to see you after they have sold you worthless weeks.
I fully intend to alert as many people as possible to steer clear of not only VIP Travel Club, but also their resorts in Cancun in particular. They are clearly selling people worthless pieces of paper and adding insult to injury by making it impractical to even use the weeks they bought.
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