Club Seasons worth £2950.00..

Thanks Littleholly, I appreciate that you are doing this for 1 year only and that you haven't been to your second break yet. You certainly sound more credible than the other contributors who support club seasons. It'd be really interesting to hear back from you later this year after your break in Carmarthen & when you cancel so we have a proper first hand report of how clubseasons are behaving nowadays. Not sure that many people will have paid £3750, especially when so many people win their comps. Perhaps when your at carmarthen you coudl do a straw poll and let us know how may people are comp winners & how many have paid the fee? Don't worry if you can't, better to have a proper holiday - hope you really enjoy yourself & have a fab time.

My husband won his "prize" last month. We eventually decided to go for it and have paid the £250 discounted maintenance fee. We've just had our free short break and are going to Cornwall later in the year for our week's holiday.

We went for the 4 night break in Ayrshire. My husband could only stay 2 nights so we stayed close to home (Glasgow). Brunston Castle is only about an hour and a half from Glasgow. The resort itself is in a really picturesque setting. Must be lovely in summer. The pics in the brochure are quite accurate. The unit was spacious inside and well equipped. I wouldn't call it luxury but it was very comfortable. The shower was crap though and that really irritates me. Too many places in Scotland /Ireland have rotten showers! Strangely the dining tables in the units are set formally for 6 people. Everything but candles! It just seemed incongrous and old fashioned in a holiday bungalow.

There are no resorts that take dogs either which is a drawback for us. We have stayed in lots of hotels/self catering in Scotland/Ireland that take pets on payment of a supplement. As a member of a club they could nail you to a wall if you let your pet cause damage. We arrived at 4pm and checked in. Around 15 mins later we were invited for a cuppa and a chance to see the "options available" to us if we upgraded. It wasn't a hard sell at all. They went down the road of asking what we looked for in a holiday. They seemed quite nonplussed when we said we preferred, for the moment, to holiday in the British Isles and out of season. We don't want to holiday when the kids are off school. Ours are grown now and we're not doing all that again. In other words the carrot they have offered in the "green weeks" is exactly what we like. We like all the locations in Britain/Ireland available and will be happy to pay £330-ish a year for a wet week in Wales and the chance of a couple of short breaks with pals.

The worst I could say about the spiel is that it was tedious and confusing. They are also trying to flog "Interval". Another complemetary (to Clubseasons) time share scheme. Red weeks, peak red weeks,yellow weeks or swap a red week for 3 green weeks etc etc. We don't speak timeshare lingo so we called a halt to it politely after 45 mins. There wasn't a problem but you could see they were a bit disappointed.

We are quite happy with what we've seen so far but we'll wait and see if we get bombarded with mail/telephone calls. At the spiel they admitted the "prizes" are a marketing tool. That's risky, because some people quite naturally squeal with excitement to everyone that they have "won" something. You could then end up feeling a bit foolish if you end up taking out finance to fund an extortionate upgrade. We are actually less open minded than we may have been about some of their products because we feel manipulated to an extent. If we stick to their basic offer then it's us who are ahead and happy and we can live with that! And would anyone really pay £2950 for the chance to pay another £300+ to holiday just in January or December?

To sum up, we are happy but wary. As of now I would recommend it and the resort in Ayrshire. It's not the Highlands and Islands but it is a pretty part of Scotland, good attractions for kids, near a golf course and handy for Glasgow's shops, theatres etc.

Will post again if we hear any more from them.

yup, there's a definite smell around.

However my mum has been (somewhere in Wales) and says the same thing as these newbie posters. There is probably a campaign going on where the company is running this offer to mend its reputation. Also to be fair there are a lot of newbie posters on the forum, it seems to have exploded.

Mum had to go to the presentation but soon made herself scarce.

I have to echo littleholly here. I'm new here because I came online looking for info when our so called prize required a £250 maintenance fee. All your radar picks up sh** right away . I've taken time to post my comments as honestly as I can. Said what I enjoyed and where I felt wary. However if the cynicism is so bad I'll just leave it here. Like littleholly I was genuinely trying to be a help. I couldn't trip myself up as everything I wrote was true. I understand these sites exist because there are so many sharks out there but if they are in these forums too then what is the point of sharing information that no-one can trust?

Some people travel longer than one and half hours to shop in Glasgow, as it has the best shopping outside London. That was neither a foolish nor careless statement.

Is the only info acceptable here that which slags everything off?
I didn't even feel my first post was particularly supportive of Clubseasons!!

Fair point.

My back was up a bit at the inference I was sitting in a Clubseason office somewhere fabricating a story!

As you say who is to say otherwise when you just appear out of nowhere.