We purchased a timeshare at Westgate Town Center on 12/31/07. As soon as we arrived home a few days later the phone calls started coming repeatedly requesting referral contact names and numbers even though we had provided them a list already.
I paid down half of the balance in order to get a lower monthly payment and interest rate. This was done over the phone. They charged an extra $2000 on my Visa card and took 4 days to credit my account.
We signed and returned the Mortgage Modification Agreement but started receiving numerous phone calls saying that the account was past due even though the payments of the new dollar amount had been paid on time. I was told by different people during separate conversations: they hadn't received our paperwork, the paperwork was lost, they were still reviewing the paperwork.
Then a supervisor from the contract department called me and explained that the figures on the new mortgage were wrong, someone had deducted an additional $2000 from the balance by mistake. I explained that we would not sign another mortgage and were seeking legal counsel.
They sent the revised mortgage anyway. The automated phone calls continued on a daily basis. We also received a letter from their collections department. I spoke with a supervisor in collections who asked if they sent another copy of the mortgage that we had already signed, even though the numbers were wrong, would we be willing to sign it after an attorney reviewed it? I asked why this was necessary and she stated she had no way of communicating with the resort, or reviewing the paperwork, (even though she was an employee of Westgate). I told her she could send it but we were not agreeing to sign it.
A few days later another supervisor, (Brian Green) called, reviewed the whole case with me, and said that the collections supervisor should not have told me that they would honor the agreement we signed and he would speak to her about it, admitting that she was the one who turned our account over to him. I once again told him we would not sign another agreement, that Westgate needs to own up to their mistakes, we had been lied to repeatedly, and we were seeking legal counsel. He said we could take them to court but would spend a lot of money and not win.
Also, during some of my previous phone calls to customer service, they repeatedly asked for payment of maintainence fees and taxes. One employee stated they were due on 1/2/08 when were told at the time of sale that we needed to pay them sometime during the year or before using our timeshare. We only recently received a statement and the due date there is listed as 5/1/08.
Another issue concerned receiving airline ticket discounts through Interval International, a travel service we received as Westgate Owners. I spoke with Interval who said they never offer discounts on airline fares. I called Westgate back and the employee said that our sales person lied to us, that they have no control over what is said by the sales staff. Then I spoke with my sales person who he had indeed personally received many discounts on travel.
I have been researching Westgate Resorts on the internet and there are many consumers with various complaints included some filed with the Better Business Bureau.
The most recent issue concerns banking our timeshare week if we do not want to use it. We would like to do this for 2008. Now they tell us that this will cost us an additional $130. Why do we have to pay to NOT use our timeshare?
It seems that Westgate is working very hard to get their owners to help pay for owner David Siegel's $5.4 million sex lawsuit!
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