This is the classic timeshare ripoff with a twist. The biggest hassle is that it is in a different country, so 99% of what occurs is all slanted in their favor.in our story, as we were stumbling off the international flight late Saturday night, we were grabbed at the airport by a Government "Travel Representative" that wanted to help us enjoy our first stay in Mexico. Big mistake, should have just kept walking.
He explained some of the procedures on how to get around, how to get a cab, the bus, etc. Then went into his story about wanting us to visit a new hotel being built by the government. As part of the bonus for us to visit the hotel, we would get a free breakfast, a bottle of tequila, a couple of passes to local attractions and be on our way. When asked specifically if this was a timeshare, he said "No, nothing like that, just the government wanting to show off its new hotel."
So we said yes and went on our way. The next morning (Sunday) he picked us up at our hotel and dropped us off with the people from Krystal International Vacations. We were shown around and it was a nice hotel, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then the sales pitch started, but like I said, they had a couple of twists that took my wife in and conned us into signing.
The first was that we would receive 25 extra bonus weeks, at no cost to us. We thought that sounded like a pretty good deal and then they dropped the bombshell. We could rent have them rent these 25 bonus weeks out for us and we would get the money back, and we were guaranteed that the 25 weeks would be boought up by businessmen coming to the convention center across the street, probably before our first payment was due.
The second twist they offered was that they would take our current timeshare we had in South Carolina (already paid off) in trade on the new vacation package. The reason they could do this is because the government would reimburse the Krystal International Vacation Club as an incentive to build more hotels.
The third twist was that since we were purchasing today, if we brought our receipts from our vacation to the resort on Friday, we would get a further discount for the amount we charged during our vacation. We were told this was another incentive by the government for us to spend more during our vacation.
And finally, instead of us signing a note or mortgage agreement, they had an agreement with Bank of America, where BOA would issue my wife and I brand new credit cards to cover the entire purchase price. I figured if BOA is issuing credit cards on behalf of this company, they must be alright to deal with, WRONG!
When we were signing the final documents, one of the documents that we signed was a form that stated that the rental of member weeks is done by independent companies that are acknowledged but not endorsed by Krystal International Vacation Club. And then goes on to say that rental is not guaranteed and the use of those companies is solely at member's option and responsibility. When we asked our sales representative (Steve Levy) about that, he said not to worry, that is just a formality, these weeks were guaranteed to sell, WRONG AGAIN! We were naive and continued to sign.
So after we signed our lives away, we went off to enjoy the rest of our vacation. We went back on Friday and gave them our receipts, and they gave us a voucher saying that we were to receive a reimbursement to our new Mastercard accaount for the amount of $4,120.
After we got back to the States, we started talking about the vacation club and how much we were charged and reading through the contract paperwork we were given. Found out the reason we were to come back on Friday was that was the day after our 5 day cancellation period expired. And by comparing the two balances that showed up on the two credit cards we noticed that they charged us $33,083.12 instead of the $28,470 on the contract. Then to add insult to injury, the $4,120 reimbursement we were to receive, only showed up as $4,103.72, why we were shortchanged another $17 heaven only knows.
As we were reading through the documents we had signed and got copies of, we noticed that there was nothing that said specifically that our timeshare in South Carolina was transfered to Krystal and that we were no longer responsible for the yearly service fee. We called to Mexico and found out they had no record of our transfering a timeshare to them and yes, we were still responsible for our annual fee. Oh good, another lie.
So far Ray Rubio, the "Quality Assurance Manager", and signer of my contract, has refused to answer my e-mails, phone calls and faxes. Guess it is time to go to the next step and bring the lawyers in to the picture, anyone know of a good one?
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