On July 29, my husband and I attended a sales presentation at Tahiti Village. Our appointment was for 10:00am and we arrived at about 9:50 am.
When we began the presentation, explained to the agent that we are not willing to bring our children to Las Vegas and therefore, if we made a purchase, it was important to us to be able to have the ability to trade it. We also stated that it would be possible that my husband and I would use a timeshare at Tahiti Village as a weekend getaway just the two of us.
However, it was extremely important that we didn't have to spend an entire week at a time there. That we could only get away for a few nights at time because it would not be convenient.
The agent and her manager promised that we would have high trading power with Interval International because of the location in Las Vegas. Further, that we could break up our week into 3 and 4 nights. We still were not sold at that point and so they offered us 6 free bonus vacations for two on top of our week so that we could go anywhere in the world we wanted with airfaire included. We were told that we could use the vacations to bring our kids along. Thus, we would be using 3 of our vacations to take the whole family to one destination and it would cover airfare and hotel accomodations.
We asked what the catch was. We were told that we would need to rent a vehicle if we chose, and pay for food and other tourist attractions. Also, that if we chose to purchase our plane tickets through a different travel agent that our accomodations package would change. Of course, we had no intention of purchasing our own airfaire when it was supposed to be included as part of the free bonus. That really was the deciding factor for us.
We told them we would like to purchase one week and how long the process was going to take because we were, of course, on vacation and we had lunch plans and tickets to a show. They told us it would take about an hour and they took my credit card to charge the down payment. The time at that point was just about noon and they moved us to another office to wait for the paperwork.
At about 1pm, my husband and I were starving. We told them repeatedly that the process was taking too long and that we had other engagements and needed to leave. We told them that this was our vacation time and we had slotted 90 minutes for the presentation. Our receipt states that our credit card was charged at 1:49 pm, almost two hours after it was taken. After nearly 6 hours we were still in the office being told that we would be done any minute.
The agent and manager kept stalling, telling us we were almost done. We told them we had lunch plans and tickets to a show which we had to cancel. We told them we were starving and that we wanted to leave and get our lunch so please give us our credit card back, but they gave us sandwiches and soda instead of our credit card.
In order to get through the paperwork faster, they had one spouse sign one set of papers and the other spouse sign the other set. They said this was because we were the ones in a hurry and they had a lot of paperwork to go through. We finally got our credit card when we signed the paperwork and at about 4pm we were allowed to leave.
At that point we felt very frustrated with Tahiti Village but we really wanted to make this arrangement work. The day after we got home we were supposed to get a welcome call.in the paperwork I had been very specific that I should be the one to receive the call and my number is the one that appears in the paperwork. For whatever reason, the welcome call was made to my exhausted husband who had driven all night.in my hands, I have a copy of the paper that specifically states that I should have been called.
My husband remembers parts of the conversation, but not all of it. I cannot understand why Tahiti Village would have disregarded our request.
Then, we tried to book our week at which point we were asked to pay a specific amount of money in fees. We paid it. Then a month later or so, Tahiti Village calls us saying there is a balance of those fees. My husband stated that we paid them and thus we were told that the first person gave us the wrong balance and that we still owe more money.
We were also told we couldnt split up our week, that we had to use it all at once. So we decided to cancel our week and trade for a vacation in Hawaii through Interval International.
I.I. Told us that we couldnt "just trade" our week. That we were on a 1 for 1 exchange and that we needed to have someone in Hawaii want to trade their specific week for our specific week and that it would be difficult to find that since Tahiti Village is two miles from the strip and most people want to trade for a place on the strip.
We have also reviewed the information we received in the mail for the 6 free trips for two and found that they are completely useless. They do not include airfaire, the accomodations that are included are basic hotel rooms, not resort rooms like we were promised, and we cannot go anywhere in the world that we want to go. But have to choose from their specific destinations. On top of that we have to pay $117 dollar per person per day processing fees for each trip. Therefore, the 6 free trips including airfaire amount to over $1000 per trip, because they cannot be used in the manner stipulated during our presentation.
The vouchers are for some hole-in-the-wall travel agency that we've never heard of I wouldnt trust with a dime of my money and would not be able to travel comfortably believing that at any point I could be left somewhere stranded.
As far as customer service at Tahiti Village, nobody ever seems to know what is going on. Every time I have called with a question, I am transferred a minimum of four times.
For example, I invited my sister to go on a tour using SunShares. She was a perfect candidate to own a timeshare. She was treated so rudely by her agent she was sorry she ever went. However, when I called to see if her visit had been posted in our SunShares account, nobody had any idea. One person said we did not have a SunShares account (which I had opened myself).
Then I was transferred to someone who said we had an account with a zero amount. Which makes no sense because when you open a SunShares account you get $50. Then after speaking to two more people who had no clue, we gave up.
As you can clearly see, we have not been able to use our purchase in any of the ways that we specified were paramount. We feel that the agent and the manager acted on seller's best interest and neglected ours as the buyers.
Our agent had a fiduciary duty to either sell us a product that met our needs or to tell us the product she was selling did not meet our needs.instead, she acted for her own benefit by saying anything to earn a comission. We deserved good faith, honesty, and loyalty.
Because the agent was representing the seller as well as us, the buyers, she had a conflict of interest which led to unethical behavior. The agent would only make commission if she sold us that particular timeshare. She may have been under the pressure for income, since we were told by her that she had to be retrained to improve her sales technique. I think is possible she may have been reprimanded for misrepresenting her product to others.
Both the agent and manager grossly misrepresented the positive features of timeshare. We were told we would get 6 bonus trips for two with airfare to anywhere in the world we wanted. We believed they would be reasonable accomodations - the type we said we wanted of during our sales presentation. They turned out to be free accomodations in substandard hotel rooms which we can upgrade for more money per guest. We have to pay airfaire through their travel agent and not interval international. We have to pay $5 per voucher for a processing fee on top of the $117 fees.
She did not look out for our best interest and did not warn us that we could be wasting our money in an investment that we could not use.
The agent as well as the manager made false promises with no intention of performing them. This is an intentional breach of fiduciary duty that constitues fraud. We paid for services that were misrepresented and now we cannot use them in the intention that we had specified was the exact motive for the purchase.
Important material facts went undisclosed and were blatant lies. We were told that we could split the week into a 3 and 4 nights' acommodations at the presentation, but when we tried to book it, the Tahiti Village reservations agent told us that this information was incorrect.
We had specified that the welcome call should be made to Ruth P*, put it in writing and gave her phone number. The call was made to William P* who was at work at the time and could not ask the questions that Ruth had prepared.
Also, we were told that all we would have to pay is the cost of the timeshare as well as yearly HOA dues. We made sure to ask if these were all of the costs and we were told that there would be no further costs. Then in order to reserve a week we had to pay special assessments, which we paid.
Then months later we are told we still have an outstanding balance and as of yet, nobody at Tahiti Village can clarify why.
The oral statements made during the sales presentation were not consistent with what we were told we could do with our purchase. We have called Consolidated Resorts various times trying to get answers and resolutions to our problems. Nothing was ever done. A meeting was finally scheduled for December 10 by Consolidated Resorts to answer our questions, clarify all of our concerns, but the meeting never took place. Nobody ever called us.
I even took time off work in order to be present for the call which never came.
The above is the letter we sent to Consolidated Resorts. Since then, they have assigned us a lawyer, that ignored everything that was in the letter and chose to send us copies of our signatures, letting us know that we signed for it, and we have to live with it. What he failed to address is we have WRITTEN PROOF of the lies that they told.
I am now looking to pull anyone involved with Consolidated resorts together so that we can find a lawyer that will listen to a group of us for a class action lawsuit. This madness must end now.
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