Diamond Resorts-is it a scam?

slugs

hi skeggygirl,I have stayed at the fortina spa, nice place,exchanged through RCI,Anyway did you pay by credit card,as im sure you can get a refund if the contract was misleading up to two years,,,but cant think were i have seen this,perhaps on the DRIPS site,this site is free to join and you may get some info from there that will help you...was the fortina part of diamond resorts.

slugs

hi skeggyghirl, i found this but dont know if it would aply to you.... As I understand section 75 if you purchase anything costing between £100 to £30,000 and pay any part of it by credit card the credit card company have equal liability.So if you purchase say something costing £2000 you pay £10 on your credit card and the remaining by another means whether it be debit card,cheque,cash which by the way is what a bank transfer is you can claim the whole amount back from your credit card company however you paid the balance. good luck..

slugs

Just to let people know lancaster trading standards have been helping people get free from diamond [EMAIL="claire.box@lancashire.gov.ukYou"]claire.box@lancashire.gov.uk[/EMAIL] you need to contact..claire box with your details..the offer back will be a gagging leter and once signed you will not be able to make any claim in the future, money back etc,but you will be free..i am a member of DRIPS and have seen a large number of members leaving this way..;)

ben9090

We went on a £99 holiday and we actually had one of the best holidays we've ever had, excellent apartment and resort in Benalmadena. We got picked up and dropped of in a Chaufeur drive Merc S class and got a 50 euro meal voucher so it was effectivly free.

The 'presentation' was just us and 1 salesman, we had a coffee in the bar, had a look round then went to their warroom where we spend the next 2-3 hours. To be honest there was no massive hard sell I just let them get on with it til they ran out of steam.

I just kept repeating my opinion, that was I couldnt see the point of paying 18k up front and 1k+ per year when I could rent an apartment for a week or two for 1k without paying anything up front.

Id love to go back if anyone has any contacts, please pm me!

Holiday_lover_2

Hi, All

First and foremost sorry for my poor English as i am Scandinavien!!!

Me and my wife joined 6 years back inn Tenerife after a long day of presentasion. This was when it still was Sunterra and i most say i felt cheated and pressured inn too buying!!

They told us we would only travel inn 4-5* accommodation witch it definitively wasnt maybe 2-3* acept their main resorts. since then we dident go on a presentation and we where werry concerned about the rising maintenance fees as it maid no sence to us why untill 1 yr ago where we meet a werry polite reprisentativ that took his time going over both the product and company structure.

After that i was pleased to pay our fees for this year. Becouse i didnt know the reason sunterra sold to Diamond I blamed Diamond for 4 yrs of bad traveling. the fact is the old sunterra administration was not relay interested inn giving us quality Holiday but getting as much money out of our pockets as possible.

On top of that they had relay bad company economy they where brooke we as members where responsible for the massive dept the company was in lucky for us Diamond was on its way in too the euro-peen market and decided too buy sunterra, but with that it also came a responsibility too us members of a hige standard of travel, since diamond came inn the pictures the standard on the resorts has risen and service as well.diamond is currently spending between 30-40million € each yr to give us the best standard possible but after the mass adjustment of maintenance 3yrs ago the fee has only gon upp by 2.7% and we can live with that.

We are 15 000 points owners we have currently paid ca.39 000€ inn total and have a fee of about 1700€ it gives us an av ridge of 3-4 weeks a yr this gives us an av ridge of 400€-600€ pr week for a 2bed 3-5* apartment inn Europe if you guys relay think that is expensive you can go and live inn the flee bag hotel next door!!!!:T

Stop complaining you went inn too a legal agreement with this company and i am pretty sure 70% of you guys have bought more points even after the fees went up.:money:

Too you who can not afford it any more because you lost your jobs i understand your desperation.:cool:

The worst part of this is all you English members get 10 times more benefits with the club then we do + we pay much more for buying points and still you complain :mad:

I read by the euro-peen consumer council that 77% of all timeshare owners are happy with their memberships and that is of over 20 million!!!!!!! It is people like you guys that gives it a bad reputation and us as happy members are supposed too be ashamed of it no way!!:mad:



Thanks for reading :beer:

mumx3

Holiday_lover wrote: »

Hi, All

First and foremost sorry for my poor English as i am Scandinavien!!!

Me and my wife joined 6 years back inn Tenerife after a long day of presentasion. This was when it still was Sunterra and i most say i felt cheated and pressured inn too buying!!

They told us we would only travel inn 4-5* accommodation witch it definitively wasnt maybe 2-3* acept their main resorts. since then we dident go on a presentation and we where werry concerned about the rising maintenance fees as it maid no sence to us why untill 1 yr ago where we meet a werry polite reprisentativ that took his time going over both the product and company structure.

After that i was pleased to pay our fees for this year. Becouse i didnt know the reason sunterra sold to Diamond I blamed Diamond for 4 yrs of bad traveling. the fact is the old sunterra administration was not relay interested inn giving us quality Holiday but getting as much money out of our pockets as possible.

On top of that they had relay bad company economy they where brooke we as members where responsible for the massive dept the company was in lucky for us Diamond was on its way in too the euro-peen market and decided too buy sunterra, but with that it also came a responsibility too us members of a hige standard of travel, since diamond came inn the pictures the standard on the resorts has risen and service as well.diamond is currently spending between 30-40million € each yr to give us the best standard possible but after the mass adjustment of maintenance 3yrs ago the fee has only gon upp by 2.7% and we can live with that.

We are 15 000 points owners we have currently paid ca.39 000€ inn total and have a fee of about 1700€ it gives us an av ridge of 3-4 weeks a yr this gives us an av ridge of 400€-600€ pr week for a 2bed 3-5* apartment inn Europe if you guys relay think that is expensive you can go and live inn the flee bag hotel next door!!!!:T

Stop complaining you went inn too a legal agreement with this company and i am pretty sure 70% of you guys have bought more points even after the fees went up.:money:

Too you who can not afford it any more because you lost your jobs i understand your desperation.:cool:

The worst part of this is all you English members get 10 times more benefits with the club then we do + we pay much more for buying points and still you complain :mad:

I read by the euro-peen consumer council that 77% of all timeshare owners are happy with their memberships and that is of over 20 million!!!!!!! It is people like you guys that gives it a bad reputation and us as happy members are supposed too be ashamed of it no way!!:mad:



Thanks for reading :beer:

How long have you been working for DRI??

I ask because if as you say the English get '10 times more benefits' with their membership than you do, yet you are still happy to pay extorionate amount of monies for holidays that can be found MUCH cheaper elsewhere, then I can only conclude you must be an employee, or just plan mad!!!

maninthestreet

Holiday_lover wrote: »

We are 15 000 points owners we have currently paid ca.39 000€ inn total and have a fee of about 1700€ it gives us an av ridge of 3-4 weeks a yr this gives us an av ridge of 400€-600€ pr week for a 2bed 3-5* apartment inn Europe if you guys relay think that is expensive you can go and live inn the flee bag hotel next door!!!!:T

€39,000 over 6 years is €3,500 per year. Assuming 4 weeks a year staying in an apartment, that's €875 per week, significantly more than €400 to €600 you state.

mania112

Had a run in with these guys in Tenerife over Christmas.

There are a lot of people trying to sell you stuff on the side of the road in Tenerife (as with most places).

A quite charming woman asked if we had any trips planned, we said we were thinking of doing one. She said 'you see this hotel, if you let me show you around I can give you 40 euros of a trip to La Gomera' (normally cost about 100 for two).

I couldn't see the harm in it and we were interested in staying in a Villa in Tenerife this Christmas. She said it would take an hour, even though they can 90 minutes. I thought 'it won't take me more than 5 minutes to know if I want to come back here on holiday' so we agreed.

She introduced us to a charming Dutchman, he took our name and address for the voucher and we were introduced to a third person who was the one showing us around the villa.

Baring in mind at this point we have no idea who Diamond Resorts are or that this block of apartments was anything other than a one-off holiday we might book, my suspicions started to be aroused (now 10 minutes into our hour) when the gentleman walked us away from the villa's and down to the beach....

.... needless to say there was a lot of waffle and 3 HOURS before we saw the apartment we were initially interested in.

The interim period was made up of

- a tour of the surrounding beach and shops (that we'd just come from)

- a company history

- a questionnaire on our attitudes to holidays ('would you say you deserve more holidays because you both work hard all year round?')

- a breakdown of a service that 'wasn't available to us' (I think he was telling us so we would say 'please can we')

- When I told him we'd spent circa £2,500 for a week, he repeatedly said that 'I don't know how much this will be for you, but it will definitely be less than half what you paid' (a fourth person dealt with the money)

So we finally take a look around this 5* villa. Yes it was nice.

We were then, finally, told the price (while another couple were popping Champagne, the fools):

£795 up front, today. After I'd told him I will not be parting with any cash today.

£140 a month (approx) payable for 2 years.

£129 to reserve the apartment.

My response was as scathing as I could muster while still keeping cool:

"You asked how much my holiday cost me, although it's a personal question, I told you honestly. You assured me I would pay less for this one. I told you I only wanted to book a holiday for Tenerife next Christmas for me and my family (I wanted to take parents next time) and i'm not interested in taking/commiting to any further holidays. So let's compare the holidays. This hotel i'm staying is 5* (I lied a bit on that, it was 4*, but I was annoyed) and is all-inclusive, it cost me £2,500 including flights, transfers and spending money. Adding up what I will pay over the next 12 months to you I make that over £2,000 and it's room only. How is that good value?"

After a moments silence we were escorted (literally) out of the hotel. I asked if I could have the brochure/questionnaire that we had completed and he said no because it's only available to people that sign up (like that might change my mind).

Anyway, steer clear of this. It's so obvious that these things are a scam. There is no benefit to these sorts of arrangements whatsoever.

P.S - We got the 40 euro voucher but the Mrs fell ill on the day we were supposed to go so we missed it!

barryd999

I wasnt sure if I should start a new thread or just add to this one. Anyway Ill try here first.

One of my friends and customers has a Diamond Resorts Time Share.

He recently had a heart attack, is trying to retire and his financial situation is not good anymore. He is 62 but apparently has to keep paying into it until he is 75. Currently its costing him £2000 in maintenance fees a year which he pays monthly. Apparently these fees have shot up over recent years and when he started they were about £200.

I have promised to help him out here as he doesn't do forums or the internet really. Ive joined a couple of discussion groups but thought I would post on here on the off chance that any of you good people have had similar experiences or may know someone who has got out.

He never gets to use the holidays anyway or use his points as whenever he can go away nothing is available or flights are prohibitive.

They have offered some kind of deal which sounds to me like a con where if he pays for 4000 more points and pays in for another year he will then have enough to convert the whole lot to shares which he "should" then be able to sell for an estimated (by them) £26000. He has calculated that this "Further" investment will cost him £12000. I have told him not to touch this with a barge pole! He is so fed up he is happy just to give them away and stop paying.

There is also this company who apparently sell your points for you for a fee of £220 which sounds a better bet but I don't know anything about them yet. http://www.travelandleisure.co.uk/buy-dri-points.asp


Anyway, he is a top bloke who I really want to help.

I appreciate that this is likely to draw a blank but you never know. Any help or ideas appreciated.

slugs

hi barryd999,tell your friend do NOT advertise with travel and leasure another £220 down the loo.DONT change to any other scam. if the only thing he owes is maintenance fees,then stop paying,you dont pay for what you dont use if he has had problems with his health his GP may for a fee write a letter to say his travel is extreamly limited ..i am a member of a group,of over 3000 members called. drips http://drip.enjin.com free to join may take a few days to get in but well worth it, lots of members are now OUT plenty of help with letters etc, oh, and how to deal with diamonds very own debt collector who try and scare you into paying ... hope this is of help.. DONT.. spend anymore money you will not get any return on your money,now or later.what you first payed out has GONE.. 3000 members will tell you the same..