My husband and I are still trying to find a way out of a contract with Trendwest that we feel was misrepresented. We went for the free vacation and had no money to pay thousands of dollars for a down payment, so we knew there was no risk of being sold. When our salesman learned that, he offered us a deal to make our down payment in 6 monthly payments. We said we could afford that, but we were unsure of the stability of my husband's current job and his hours may be cut back in the next few months.
Jeff (our salesman) told us that we weren't going to be full owners until the down payment was made and therefore not bound by the contracts until that point, so we had 6 months. Of course, if we passed up this deal we wouldn't have the chance to ever purchase it again, so we deliberated over it for three hours. Jeff (with the help of Pamela, the sales manager) continued to tell us that the paperwork wouldn't even be sent to Trendwest and we would deal only with the local office until the down payment was complete, so therefore there was no risk for us. If we needed to cancel within that 6 month period, we would forfeit any money already paid, but we would be released from our contract. We hesitated signing the paperwork and wanted to wait until the down payment was done, but he convinced us that we needed to sign it then as a pre-contract and that it wouldn't be valid until the money was paid for the down payment.
Finally, we decided the only risk was losing the money
we initially put in and signed on. Naturally, my
husband's hours WERE cut back and he moved on to
another job and we couldn't afford the payments. We
tried to back out and it's been nothing but
finger-pointing ever since. The local office can't
help us, we need to talk to the corporate office.
Then they tell us the reverse. We're told to ask
Pamela the sales manager, who's conveniently gone to
another office and no one can find her or give us her
last name (isn't it convenient that the salespeople
and the managers don't have their names on any
paperwork, cards, or anything, almost to be sure they
can't be traced?).
We tried to ask Jeff, but he's no longer working there. (He was the new guy, by the way.) We've received the letters and the obnoxious phone calls. We've explained our story a hundred times to all the reps who call us and they all say the same thing—they can't help us and we need to talk to the local office. Oh, and they'll make a note on the account. Finally I found Pamela and she told me that she knows she didn't give us the misinformation and it must have been Jeff since he was the new guy (I wonder why he left so quickly anyway?). She says there's nothing she can do. So, we are going legal with this.
We can't pay it, the money isn't there, and their
representative gave us wrong information. And the
paper Jeff wrote out for us explaining this important
detail, some how got lost in the paper
shuffle... Conveniently.
So, that's our story and we're still in the middle of it. We are going to seek legal help, and like Pamela said to me, what is Trendwest going do? They can't FORCE us to pay. But what can we do?
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