On March 5th while staying at the Villa del Palmar on our honeymoon, in Cabo San Lucas, my wife and I were lured into a tour of the brand new Villa del Arco Resort with the promise of free gifts and hotel discounts.
We went on the tour and were very impressed with the amenities and styling of the new Villas del Arco resort. The sales person showed us a two bedroom unit then a studio unit. The product that was being represented for sale was ownership in these units in this resort. When we reached the sales office, we had many questions. We discussed with the salesperson the many benefits of timeshare ownership. At the time of this discussion the terms timeshare and ownership were used in reference to the product we were being offered. We were especially interested in the significant savings represented by the salesperson. The salesperson also discussed with us membership in the Interval International. The salesperson emphasized the tradeability of the Villa del Arco units at all levels (studio through 3 BR) through Interval.
We spent at least two hours asking specific questions about this. We tend to be spontaneous travelers and were assured that since we were interested in a winter week (the high season in Cabo) it would be no problem to book last minute trips and trade our week. We were interested in going on cruises as well. We were told that, should we decide to purchase a studio unit, that the unit would be tradeable for cruises on many of the popular cruise lines.
Finally, after the salesperson provided answers to our questions assuring us that this is an investment into our future with substantial savings that we would be reaping the benefits for years to come, we decided to purchase. We were presented with pictures of the very units we had just toured at Villa del Arco, neatly arranged in a sales binder, with the full price of each unit clearly stated. We were then presented with discounts and incentives for purchasing today. We decided on one summer week in the Villa Del Arco Studio unit. The price, including an additional summer week marketed as the Gold Week Option, was $13,395. We were told that a deposit of $6,995 would be necessary to secure the unit today and that we could finance the remaining balance of $6,400. The final purchase process was very fast, and surprisingly they needed no personal information for the loan. When we asked about this we were told that it was actually financed by the Mexican development company, Constructora de Los Arcos Del Cabo, but would be administered by the U.S. Based ResortCom company.
We were very excited about our decision to own a piece of the brand new Villa Del Arco resort in Cabo San Lucas and even talked of referring our friends and family. It wasnt until we returned home 5 days later that we began to experience some remorse about our decision, because of what we had heard from other owners during the remainder of our vacation who had experienced this sales pitch and failed to get what they thought they had purchased. However, because we were told we would lose our deposit if we tried to cancel (which is also misrepresentativewe have since discovered under Mexican law we had 5 days to cancel with full refund of all money deposited) we decided not to cancel and to enjoy the rest of our honeymoon at the resort we were staying.
It was not until we returned from our trip that we had a chance to review the contract and realized that we were eligible to cancel within the 5 day period. After looking through this website (usacomplaints.com) and others, we noticed that several vacationers had fallen into the same sales pitch and made the mistake of buying into false promises.
We have tried to contact Resortcom requesting a cancellation of my contract, but they have not answered our request.
We also informed them that the sales representative told us that we would loose our down payment if we cancelled within the 5 day period and thats why we hesitated. After a second call the representative mentioned that we are legally bound by the contract and unless we had some thing in writing that was not in agreement with the contract, we could not cancel. After requesting to speak with the developers, we were told that resortcom is only a financial company hired to collect the money for the Villa Group and cannot give any they cannot disclose any information about the group.
The last time we spoke to a representative on the phone he put us on hold saying that he would bring his supervisor, shortly after that he hung up.
Our next recourse is to look into publicizing this with other consumer based websites and spread the word so that others are not duped into the same scheme we fell into. We are also looking into disputing this with the credit cards.
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