My problem follows similar patterns to many of the others. My wife & I purchased in Cozumel in Dec. 05. We decided to join based the incentives (vouchers) they offered and a signed contract addendum that said we could use our home resort for a fixed all-inclusive fee for 5 years as often as we wanted without using our credits.
We tried to make our first reservation in March '06 and started to have trouble. We have kept very careful records with dates & names of the numerous phone calls & the four times we faxed copies of the documents to them because they claimed no knowledge of the benefits we were trying to use.
A short version goes as such... We were told our vouchers for airfare, diving, etc can't be handled by them but yet they are unable to tell me who handles them and the vouchers have the main phone number (1-800-961-1810) printed on them as to who we are to call when we are ready to use them.
No resort availability at anywhere but our home resort.
Our "personal representative", Nicolas, charged our credit card for the all-inclusive fee when we made the reservation and then 1 week later we were told we owed an all-inclusive fee. Several phone calls later we are told that Nicolas has been fired and since he is the one who credited the money to wrong account (this is info we found out when we called Concord Services in Arizona to get a tracking #, something RHC said they couldn't do) we would just have to pay the fee again.
The new all-inclusive fee was much higher & we (after faxing the contract to 4 different people) were told that they had decided not to honor this contract because their costs had gone up since the hurricaine. We explained that we had purchased after the hurricaines when reconstruction was already underway and that (at least on my understanding of contracts) one party can't decide to not honor a contract because it's no longer a good deal, we were told by 2 different "supervisors" that they weren't honoring it and that just the way it is.
We contacted our credit card company and they started a dispute and we contacted Çoncord Services that no more payments were coming and explained why (they were suprisingly professional and even helpful on how to proceed). We received a call from Tony Hernandez in the legal department that our credit card company had contacted them and they were going to "allow" the dispute to go unchallenged and were cancelling our contract and reservations. We asked about the $900 in payments that they still had and he said they were going to keep it but if we wanted to reactivate the contract we could work it out.in this conversation we asked if our promised benefits were now going to be honored if we reactivated the contract and he said "absolutely".. He claimed that whoever told us they could not honor them must not have had the contracts and had been mistaken. I then told him that HE had been one of the four people we had faxed the info to and gave him the date and even his extension # he had us fax them to. He became defensive and first said there are two Tony Hernandezs at that extension. He had earlier said only 3 other people (only one Tony) use that extention. Then he said I could trust him, so go ahead & tell my credit card company to resend the $10,000.
I don't think I trust him. As of right now, I'm still out $900.
I like timeshares and own 4-5 weeks worth with Fairfield and have used them very successfully over the last 10 years and have travel with them (& RCI) through out the Carribean, Antilles, Mexico, Canada, & the USA. Normally I would have researched RHC better but the benefits they offered were very appealling. My fault for not doing so before getting involved with them. However this "bait & switch" and blatant refusal to honor their contractual obligations shows a pattern of fraud. The number of complaints on this web site and others (i.E. Rip Off Reports) is disturbing. As I said, my wife and I like timeshares and for us they serve the purpose we want them to but ROYAL HOLIDAY IS NOT OPERATING IN A ETHICAL MANNER. If you are interested in timeshares or vacation clubs, please research them & I'm sure you will find one to suit you. It won't be Royal Holiday.
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