El Cid Dream Vacations Club
These greedy conmen will say anything to get you to sign BEWARE!

My husband and I were in Mazatlan in April and decided to go ahead and hear the El Cid timeshare presentation to get a couple of free excursions but had no intention to buy anything. We made it clear that we were not interested in any kind of long-term 10 to 30 year membership so by the time the 3rd guy, Ernesto (sp?), sat in front of us he offered a short-term 24 month membership into the Dream vacations club.

First I will go over what he said and what we thought we were agreeing to. We would be purchasing four 7-night Bonus vacation weeks, 2 of which would be at Any Mexican El Cid Resorts and the other 2 would be at ANY El Cid Vacations Club Resort, for $2695 and this is valid for 24 months.in addition, we would have 2 upgrade options that would make 2 of these weeks all-inclusive. He pulled up the website ourresortstore.com (you have to access through their vacation club link) and let us look at all the "5 star" resorts that we could pick from all over the world. We asked specifically if there would be any annual fees, booking fees, registration fees, etc. And he assured us that the $2695 was all that we would pay and we would not have to pay another dime for these vacations no matter which resort we picked.

The true clencher that sealed the deal for us was a credit certificate in the amount of $1895 that he said all we had to do was turn it back in at the end of our 24 month membership and that amount would be returned to us. We asked how it was possible that they could return that amount and he said that selling the vacation weeks in bulk allowed them to pool all that money up front in their account and the interest generated from that would more than return that amount so it was a win/win situation for everyone. He also threw in that a lot of people lose the certificate and therefore cannot reclaim their $1895 so to make sure we don't lose it.in a nutshell, this entire purchase would end up costing us $800... So we signed.

So 4 months later I called to book our first vacation and received a rude awakening that just about everything they told us was completely false. The ONLY true statement out of Ernesto's mouth was that 2 of our vacation weeks are good free of charge at the mexican El Cid resorts. The other 2 weeks we purchased would each require a $399 maintenance fee to book at these same mexican El Cids or 3 other El Cids in England/Spain and were limited to these 5 locations. I asked why he would show us the website if we can't even book them and was told that we could book them, we would just have to pay for them! The so-called all-inclusive upgrade option was really a Benefits Card that gives a discount on some things (like golf fees). The $1895 credit certificate is actually a discount off of the price of a full 20 year plan if we decided to buy one during our 24 month membership.

In addition to the fact that he told us anything we wanted to hear to convince us what a great deal this was, the customer service dealing with this has been horrifying. After talking to the reservation desk and discovering our fraudulent contract, the lady gave me the direct number back to Ernesto to discuss it with him. He first told me that our salesperson no longer worked there (I later confirmed that I was talking to him) and he continued to explain what I was actually told and just didn't know it. When I tried to tell him what I understood the contract to be, he hung up on me! I called right back, got him back on the phone, he told me there was a line interuption but he was busy and simply laid the phone on the desk. Another lady picked up the phone and asked if I was ready to make a reservation. I think these people are testing my sanity!

After a couple of days and completely changing our travel plans, I called back to reserve the El Cid Cozumel and asked the man, Gary, if there was any way to change certain parts of our agreement since we were mislead. Specifically, we opted out of cruise points for example because it was such a better deal to get a 7 nights stay anywhere in the world. He said that was not possible since we already signed this contract. I cannot believe these people do business like this and hope others just stay away! Their word means nothing!

Company: El Cid Dream Vacations Club
Country: Mexico
City: Mazatlan
Phone: 8008275291
Site: www.elcidvacationsclub.com

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