Visited florida for past 5 years but in september was approached by a slick gentleman in a suit whilst taking our children out for tea. He very quickly befriended my 2 youngest children then aged 6&9 by showing them posters of all the dinnershows in orlando.
Knowing what children are like they instantly demanded we go to the show and with the offers he had on how could we refuse, after all he basically told the children how could we not go for that price. So the following day off we went to sit through our 90minute presentation.
The children were showered with free drinks and cookies as soon as we entred the westgate palace off international drive but within 10 minutes they were being escorted to a nursery play room so we could 'TALK'. Our 2 oldest children 12 & 14 and me and my wife were taken in a lift and shown round a beautifull apartment by the creep in the suite showing my daughter (14) the king size beds and flat screen tv's on the wall.By this time we had had enough and he hadn't even stared.
The 2 oldest children were then taken to a play area where there were ps2 and other video games they could play on for free. Then so it began, 90 minutes turned into nearly 4 hours with my wife gettin agitated as she didn't know where in the enourmous building the kids were.
We were finally offered after a 3rd sales rep had come over a 2 double bedroomed appartment 1 week a year floating over 7 different weeks for $13,000 which sounded like a bargain as they said if you don't use it 1 year it carries on to the next year and so on. You'll never have to pay for another holiday again they said. With what he said it sounded great so we said yes. They were all cheering and then annonced it over a speaker whilst trying to get us to go to the office up the stairs to finalise things. My wife asked to check on the children which he replied you'll be out in 10 minutes so i'll go and see if they are ready and then dissapeared. Another 2 hours later we were leaving, 6 HOURS we were in there and the kids had been palmed off with cookies and fizzy pop.
When we got home we still thought we had done the right thing, something you can pass on to your kids they said, free holidays for the rest of your life with drastic discounts off your flights we were told, until this year, we tried to book the 2 weeks we missed for september by email as we didn't know how to book. We had a reply within 30minutes telling us yes we can book but it will cost $160 a week. We sent an email asking why we had to pay when we had 2 weeks owing us to which they replied they don't do that and it's not in our contract. I couldn't believe it, and as for the flights, they cost MORE than if we booked in the uk.
I decided to try and do provisinary booking on the westgate website to see if it came up any different but i only typed in westgate, and to my horror, pages and pages appeared with SCAM all over them. My heart dropped, oh my god, what have we done? The only thing i couldn't find after days of reading the same stories as ours was IS THIS LEGAL??? I went to my bank to try and stop any further payments as we have finance on it and they said we couldn't because of the way they took the payment details.
So all in all we are paying all year for 6 years for a timeshare thats going to cost us the same price as a holiday we would book with a uk tour guide which is not what was stated and promised when we signed. Does anyone out there know how we can stop this. Please help
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