In the first week of June my family (of three) signed a Vacation Club membership contract with Royal Holiday in the Dominican Republic.
We were convinced by the sales person and an impressive show of membership benefits and operations that persuaded us to sign a contract that appeared to be a great deal.
That same evening we realized that the membership promises were not present in our contract - and two days after we returned to the United States, we discovered that this company was a well-know fraud. Like many other victims of the company, we have immediately begun to try and dissolve our contract because we realized we were also scammed. We were given a misrepresentation of a membership and ended up signing a contract with hidden fees and nothing that was promised to us during the sales.
The contract includes hidden fees, additional payments, and unexpected membership fees. The main reasons of our complain are:
1) The RH promised that our 5,000 points would get us a two-bed oceanfront (Presidential) suite will fit our family of three, which they showed us a lie and typical scam tactic. According to the RH Guide we can get only studio (for 2 of us) for this quantity of points.
2) So-called "all-inclusive" service means to pay additional costs ($80 for each of us per day for each). We found that we could stay 1 or 2 days at a limited number of locations and family should spend much more than we expected. Joining the Club as Members will present financial burden for our family budget. Also in the RH Guide we found that RHC has a very limited quantity all-inclusive resorts in Mexico and Dominican Republic only.
3) During the presentation in the RH office we tried to look into the RH catalog that has been on the table. Unfortunately we could read that just after the contract was signed because the representatives didn't allow us even to open it "because it is pretty old, and you'll get a new one after you sign the contract". Later we found that "In addition to the Annual Club Fee, each Member shall be responsible to pay the Management Company charges for any Special Club Fees as may be levied on the Membership by the Management Company. Such Special Club Fees shall correspond to any extraordinary event, cost of expenses not included in the Budget" (Royal Holiday Resort Guide, Operating Rules, Royal Holiday Credit System, B. Other Charges, page 368). Again, additional costs that we cannot accept.
The service is not articulated in the contract as we were told. We hired a lawyer to help us start this process to rescind this contract. She managed to write two letters to the Attorney General and to our Credit Card Company. We drafted a letter to rescind our contract after she helped us with the initial preparations mentioned above. At this point, our CC company is not supporting our claim to their fraud department, and the Club is now transferring debt to their collection agency.
We have decided to take the legal matters on our own.
The collection agency will attempt to solicit payments we owe - yet we are waiting for responses from the attorney general. We also drafted our letter to the vacation club demanding to rescind our contract and are waiting the 30-day period to hear a reply.
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