Debbie Drastrup" and her 'assistant' Andrea Dangerfield from the The Hilton Grand Vacations Club in Carlsbad California are the worlds best scammers. We were staying at the Grand Palisades Resort in Carlsbad and we were approached to do a time share presentation. I had a young child and my husband was not with me, so my parents agreed to take the tour.
The resort is, of course, beautiful and right down the road they were building another one, pre-construction, wow what a deal... As my sister lives in Carlsbad we decided to purchase a 2 bedroom, it seemed like the thing to do. We already owned 2 other timeshares and had great experiences. We thought that if we had a timeshare right next to my sister, Lego Land and Sea World, etc we would be practically guaranteed a nice, convenient place to stay.
We discussed what were looking for in a time share, flexibility and availability were on the top of the list (we own 3 family businesses and we're pretty busy). We were assured that becoming Platinum owners would assure us the kind of kit-glove treatment that we had at our other 2 timeshares.
Debbie told us that my sister could come over and use the gym and since I was the one who booked vacations that we all needed access to the timeshare we could add the ownership to our family trust. She would make sure that all the paperwork was in order to make that possible.
In a nut shell, it took us almost 2 years to get the deed correct and initially they wanted to charge us a re-deeding fee. Needless to say we have no flexibility or availability and have yet to be able to use our time share from our Hilton account, we have however gotten in via our other time share company! $30,000 we spent for the convenience of being close to family and activities and we can't even get a room! I am not talking about booking for a vacation tomorrow, we tried just today for this summer and were told that there isn't a room a available in Carlsbad From April to October!
I have tried to reach someone to help me resolve my concerns and have gotten the run around. I guess what we have is a premium week that we need to book at least 9 months ahead of time because if we don't all members get to book and then all the resorts in the Carlsbad area get booked up!
I do not want anyone to have to go through what we are still going through. We have wasted a lot of time, money and heart muscle on this! Please be warned about the Hilton Grand Vacations Club and their sales staff. They are dishonest and fraudulent people; and even when you think you have it in writing, they are much slicker than you...
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