Thursday, May 17, 2012

When Timeshare Gets Ugly

Below is a letter I sent recently, via certified mail, to Diamond Resorts, a timeshare group out of Las Vegas.  It was sent in response to a letter I got from them.
 


May 16, 2012

Diamond Resorts
10600 West Charleston BLVD
Las Vegas, NV 89135


To Whom It May Concern:

First of all, on behalf of my mother, DeEtta, who will be 92 years old this summer, and myself, as well as my wife Donna, thank you for the instructive letters, certified and otherwise, regarding our upcoming reservation and what we need to do at this point to keep it.  Unfortunately, having already paid nearly $2800.00 toward the reservation we booked last year, prior to your springing the special assessment, we’re not inclined to give you another $7000.00 just to keep it.  Sorry, but that’s the way it is.  Moreover, I’ve tried, on two occasions since you announced the water intrusion assessment—for which I see you guys are getting sued; my friend over in Haena keeps me in the loop; good luck with that!— to simply give you back the weeks, the contracts, all of it, no questions asked, but on both occasions I was told you aren’t “accepting voluntary surrenders.”

And I thought: Could that be?  That you would want me, or anyone else, to pay thousands of dollars toward something you, yourself, won’t accept for free?

More on that in a moment, after we go over a little history …

Back in 1996, my mother and I bought two “Float/Float” weeks at what was then the Embassy Vacation Resort in Poipu.  Bill Fernandez was our Sales Representative.  Back in 1996, Mr. Fernandez indicated to my aging mother that he owned three weeks of Embassy timeshare himself.  This, I would soon realize, was a common statement made by timeshare sales reps everywhere from Morritt’s Tortuga Club in the Cayman Islands to the property that, like yours, has also changed hands many times in Pagosa Springs, CO.  He, Bill Fernandez, as well as others in the flocking sales group, mentioned a recent law on the island that would prohibit further timeshare building.  Thus, on the south shore of the Garden Island, there was the Embassy property (formerly luxury condos built by a Japanese concern, sold following the Nikkei crash in 1990; perhaps after your 68 million dollar makeover they will become luxury condos again, that you’ll sell), the Mercedes in the lot, and the Chevy property, the relatively shabby Lawai, redeemed only by its proximity to the Beach House and decent snorkeling waters. 

My mother, nearly eighty years old at the time, had already fallen in love with the island, and was, in the end—ironically, you have to admit—seduced by the “your kids will have this forever“ pitch.

The following year we visited again, with my future wife this time.  We asked about Bill Fernandez, but he was reportedly gone.  No one was quite sure what had happened to Bill.  Someone who could sell my wary, crotchety mother a timeshare and he wasn’t on property anymore?  Stunning.  Was he at least coming out to use his three weeks of timeshare?  No one could say for sure.

A few years later, the Marriott completed its timeshare property down the road, near Poipu Beach: a Lexus between us and the Chevy—so much for laws prohibiting further building of timeshare.

Still, being resourceful, my mother and I, and later my wife and I, and others, continued to use the property, booking early, paying the maintenance fees—which weren’t really too bad until you fine people came along.  As many other unhappy owners have pointed out.  But I don’t need to tell you how hostile the climate has gotten over just that one thing, not to mention this new water intrusion thing.  Money, money, money—and for something we literally can’t give away.

Then, in 2009, after thirteen years of fending off your sales team during our visits (“So, just out of curiosity, what would our weeks fetch on the open market?” I would ask, and the sales rep would reply, “I really have no idea,” and I’d reach over and honk his or her nose), my wife and children and I, along with some friends of ours, came to our “home away from home.”  Once we got there we were approached, as usual, during check-in, by the concierge—the earnest if likable John, whom I’d known for years—wondering if we were interested in an “Owner’s Tour.”  We indicated, as we always did, that we already had more timeshare than we needed given the realities of the (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) ownership; but he retorted, very clearly, that even though we had no intention of adding to our position, we should nonetheless come and find out what exciting things were happening on the property, for which we would get the usual gift card, good for use throughout the island. 

Why be difficult? we thought.  Take the tour!  Tell them we weren’t interested.  Get the gift card.  It was part of the drill.  They were used to it.

During the tour, I mentioned, straight up, over and over, that this wasn’t a good time for me financially because I’d recently spent roughly $16,000.00 putting solar panels on our home. Our Sales representative, Glenn Hughes, however, had likely heard such complaints (objections, as you call them) before, and, taking it as a challenge perhaps, told us that this meeting was a “one-time opportunity,” that next time the price would be much higher (this he showed us on a sheet, and, sure enough, it was much higher), and that, most importantly, the industry was going through transition and we would sooner or later have to go along, too, or feel increasingly like outcasts.  In plain words, we could either join “The Club”—transition to the point system and a higher tier of ownership—or find it more and more difficult to book our usual spot.  Home would feel less like home.

Which, give it to Glenn, was a clever way to attack us—hitting our one insecurity—since, after all, for thirteen years, while raising my two nephews, while getting our oldest birth son through cancer, while trying to write a book of my own, I’d always been able to book.  No one had ever implied that we wouldn’t be able, with our seemingly enviable float/float week, to book it as we always had.  And if we couldn’t book our usual oceanfront in Building Three by calling one year ahead, because others—Club Members who had bought into the Hawaiian Trust, as, it was implied, we would, if we had any sense—would be able to book thirteen months ahead, and what would happen then?  If we literally couldn’t give the property away, despite it being a beautiful place in a lovely location, and would very soon not be able to book our usual spot, well then, that was seemingly a bind we had to consider doing something about, or what was the point of paying the ever-increasing fees year after year?

When I mentioned that I owned these weeks with my mother, who wasn’t present at the time, this, oddly, didn’t seem to faze Glenn and the others.  I was told, getting out on three hours now, that if we, my wife and I, bought into The Club, my mother could sign later on.  We would be deeded members until my mother signed, through the mail, after which we’d become part of the Hawaiian Collection Trust.  I was further told that we could book our former property at Morritt’s Tortuga Club as a “club select,” and that this would bump us up to Gold status as owners, which would offer us copious benefits … we were told a lot of things that, in short, didn’t prove to be correct, for which, as you and I both know, there is recourse.  But let’s not get all excited just yet.

So after three hours and an afternoon of vacation wasted on a one-hour tour, we finally capitulated.  I had friends waiting on us, restless children; we decided not to remain outcast “weeks” owners and to take the one-time deal (which, we would later find out, at your property in Lake Tahoe, wasn’t exactly true; there was no such thing as a one-time deal, we were told by the smiling sales reps).  Purchasing the least amount of points necessary, we “upgraded” to “Club” status, feeling as if we really didn’t have any good other choice: one can either divorce, at great cost, or agree to the next set of terms. 

Again, I mentioned my mother, the primary owner on the 1996 contract that was being folded into this new contract.  I was still trying to understand how we could do this one-time deal without her being present, without her getting informed consent, as we used to say back when I was a transplant coordinator at the hospital.  Here I was potentially committing my mother to more expense—a lot more, as it turned out—without her even getting the benefit of the presentation.  Without her having a say.  And now here she is, getting threatening certified letters from Diamond, my 92-year-old mother, the primary owner of the “float/floats,” who wasn’t even there in 2009, when we joined your club, all three of us … with only two of us signing the documents, late in the day, in the “just sign and date here” fashion. 

Later, when, through the mail, I supposedly got my mother’s signature on the documents (I have still never seen the signed documents), I was told, by Kerry Rath, via email, that no, we in fact hadn’t opted to join the Hawaiian Collection Trust, but rather had decided to remain deeded owners.  When I replied saying that no, I seem to recall that we opted for the Hawaiian Trust, and was there anyway to get that arranged, I never got a reply back. 

Had I known that a special assessment was coming, I would have kept pressing.  Of course, had I known there would be a special assessment of this magnitude I might have decided that with a property that one can’t, literally, give away, it was time to cut my losses.

A lot of owners might have. 

Which is why you never told the owners that the special assessment was coming.  Not a whisper of it, in sales pitches or otherwise, even as recently as January 2011, when I was on property and there was a great deal of discord leading up to Board Elections, elections that turned out predictably, with all your stooges getting spots.  At no point was it mentioned by any of the candidates, or by any of your employees pitching owners groups at the time to hand over their deeds to the trust, that a few months earlier this water intrusion issue had been formally discussed in Las Vegas.  At no point, until the bill came last fall, were you honest with your supposed owners about what was coming, about why, if the assessment was a fait accompli, they might want to either join the trust or pay someone to transfer their deeds back to your sales force.

Needless to say, looking back, I am frustrated, embarrassed.  On that long afternoon in 2009, I mentioned on several occasions that we were not in a position to add to our timeshare costs, to buy an upgrade, and then, after doing so, I discovered that booking the same time in the same location on the resort would cost me close to 75% more.  And now this special assessment for “water intrusion.”  When we first bought, we were able to book time in an oceanfront unit, reliably, for less than one hundred dollars per day.  Now, the maintenance fees and “Club” fees, which were never mentioned in the presentation (only that Interval membership would be free for life), have taken the cost up over $200 per day.  For this “upgrade,” 4,000 points, I paid the bargain price of around $9000 in 2009.  For an “ownership” that is worth nothing, that I literally can’t give away. 

Which gets us to now.  In calls made to your resort in November, and again on April 30th, I was told that the resort is not even taking “voluntary surrenders” of the weeks.  Imagine!  Quite a different story than what we were presented back in 1996, when our sales rep and others all owned three weeks!  When these weeks would prove to be quite an “investment,” since no further timeshare would be built on the island.  Before Club Sunterra, and now, The Club.

Alas, no one likes to be hustled, and this whole thing—all of it—was a hustle, a grand hustle.  And you guys, recently, have taken it to a new level.  There is no “investment,” and there is no longer even decent value when it comes to the yearly cost of a stay based on the maintenance fees.  For years, when we couldn’t make it to the resort, I was able to get people to take the weeks for the fees, but now, the fees are so high that no one in their right mind would pay them. 

And now you’re going to collect, or try to, upwards of 66 million dollars on the backs of the owners, who in fact own nothing, many of whom live in the delusion, as we did, briefly, unfortunately, in 2009, that the next set of terms is better than divorce.

Well, not this time.

I want my money back from our purchase to “Club” status in 2009, as well as the money returned from the booking of our reservation for this June, which came before the water intrusion assessment in October—which is to say I am not paying another $6800.00 and counting, in addition to the $2773.22 I have already paid, to stay in a unit that, a few short years ago, would have cost me $1400.00 for two weeks.  Furthermore, I am not paying you another dime toward my ownership in a property that I, we, quite literally, can’t give away, not even to your sales team. 

I want all these monies returned, and a release from any further expense and liability regarding my supposed “ownership” in The Point at Poipu, and, more broadly, from any relationship with your group, Diamond Resorts.  Should you find this disagreeable, consider that I am, among other things, a published author, with enough means and a mean streak to cause you far more trouble than you might imagine—which is to say I’m not your usual ranting chump.  I will write about you and your tactics relentlessly, and people will read it.  I have an agent in Manhattan, at Curtis Brown, who assures me that if it’s juicy—and it will be—there are many outlets eager to buy my clever telling on a subject as previously opaque as this one. 

Consider, also, in addition to the legal headaches, the media headaches, I would be more than happy to visit on you should you want to quarrel with me, screw with my credit, bother my mother, anything like that, that I have friends on the island, at least two of which have offered me gratis lodging should I decide to come over and pay a visit, and, say, spend a lot of time at the pool bar, at breakfast, on property, talking to your future clients, being politely and informatively disruptive, shall we say, and blogging about it, the posts of which would one day soon become a feature article, or a book, which might even lead to a documentary, with you in a featured role. 

Who knows, maybe no one would pay any attention to me.  Or maybe you’d have to call the police to the property again, like you did when my friends were visiting back in 2010, to settle everyone down.

Point being: the more interesting this gets, the better it is for me.  And I’m about done with my current project.

Let me know how you think we can settle this.

Aloha, and mahalo!


Craig Bueltel

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