In Nassau, The Bahamas on September 22, we were approached by agents of Royal Holiday and offered a free breakfast if we would listen to a short presentation about their vacation club. We met with a salesman, Brandon Johnson, and then a closer, David Sweeting, who took several hours to explain the plan. We signed up under the condition that we had seven days to cancel the agreement.
On September 27, we met with David Sweeting and told him that we wanted to cancel the agreement. Our concern was the yearly maintenance fee of $570.00 stipulated in the contract, which could be increased by the directors of the club plan as they saw fit.
They always see fit. Although our contract called for a yearly maintenance fee of $570, they billed us for $600. While we argued with Royal Holiday about the deviation from contract, they sent the bill out to a collection agency. We ended up paying $660. The yearly fee is now $660.
David Sweeting made a last ditch effort to keep us signed up by offering us a $5,000.00 annuity certificate that would yield us 13.8 percent interest compounded monthly and guaranteed for the first five years, followed by the prevailing interest rate, around 8 percent he told us, for the remainder of our membership, another ten years because of our age. He showed us a copy of the certificate we would receive and demonstrated on his calculator how the interest, about $550.00 each year, could be withdrawn to pay for the yearly maintenance fee. This was a total lie. You can't withdraw the interest each year. He also pointed out that if we let the interest compound for the next fifteen years the final balance in our annuity account would be over $22,000.00, essentially making the initial payment for the plan cost us nothing over time. This was another lie. The term of the annuity certificate is 30 years, not 15.
One of the reasons the plan appeared of value was that there were a number of resorts that were "all inclusive". But only much later when we tried to make reservations at one of these resorts did we find out that they all charge a fee of about $60.00 per day per adult. So a 7-day stay for 2 adults would cost you $840.00. That's over and above the initial $20,000.00 cost of the plan and the $660.00 per year maintenance fee. Pure scam.
We agreed to keep the vacation plan ONLY under the false facts presented by Royal Holiday's agent, David Sweeting. He had an addendum made for the contract to reflect this annuity and brought it to us to sign that day. It promised that an annuity certificate would be issued to us upon full payment of the plan. Upon our return to New York, we paid off the balance of the plan in full with a check for $15,075.75.
It took almost a year's worth of phone calls, letters and E-MAILS to get the annuity certificate issued to us. Also during this time, we had to make another score of communications efforts with Royal Holiday to get them to correct their billing in which they neglected to credit our account for paying in full within 30 days. When the annuity certificate finally arrived, Royal Holiday wanted us to sign and return all of the originals which had information on the front and back. They provided us with a copy of only the front of the certificate. Nowhere on the certificate was the initial value stated, nor was there any provision to make a withdrawal of yearly interest to pay the maintenance fee. Furthermore, the term was not 15 years, but 30 years. We refused to sign it.
After almost 2 years of this, we wanted out and began a campaign of writing to Royal Holiday and every federal and state agency, the embassies of the Bahamas and the United States and so on. The responses from Royal Holiday have been pure garbage.
In the fall of I was contacted twice by a service person from Royal Holiday, wanting to resolve all issues. They offered me $1500.00 to cancel my claim on the "$5000.00" annuity certificate, which by then should have been worth about $7000.00. I refused. I did find out though that Royal Holiday's agent, David Sweeting, had been fired after Royal Holiday getting too many complaints on him.
The latest part to the scam is that Concord Servicing, who collects the yearly maintenance fees for Royal Holiday, accidently doesn't send out the yearly bills. Then, when you don't pay the bill you never got, they don't send out a past due notice, they just add late charges on. Eventually they refer the bill to a collection agency putting your credit in peril. Although I've sent e-mails to both [email protected] and [email protected], they refuse to send me a bill.
Royal Holiday is a scam, and Im going to keep broadcasting this until they pay me back every dime they've extorted and obtained by lies and false promises. I want out. Now.
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