club lacosta "pain in the @rse"

glen5213

Hi if this is in the wrong board can it be put in the correct one please

i am after some advice from fellow mse's

i shall start at the beginning

At the beginning of the year i had a phone call from a company i had entered a competition from saying i had won a holiday to Cornwall.

what was the catch i here you say

I had to pay the £50 returnable deposit to book the holiday home witch was returnable when we turned up at the place (Atlantic Reach near Newquay)

no mention of timeshare yet

In Feb I recieved a letter from discover cornwall confirming my booking for 5 adults and 3 children.On the letter it said we would be required to go to an informal meeting as part of the promotion i had no problems with that (the holiday alone would have cost over £1500) So we all booked holidays from work.

Today i recieved a call from club lacosta saying that they were cancelling our holiday as the promotions company that were running the promotion were no longer running.

they have offered me my money back in the form of a cheque so i will not be out of pocket.

Can anybody give me any advice on whether i should contact them again and try to get some compensation (Not in money terms) from them
we have 3 kids who were really looking forward to the holiday

any help would be appreciated

hollydays

Blacksaturn had a similar issue-although she won a holiday.I believe she contacted trading standards and was eventually offered something else (holiday) to compensate.

glen5213

thank you i may try that

hollydays

However just done some googling on them-featured in an article by the Guardian a few years back.Another google refers to them as crimeshare!

nej

Have a search for Paramount Holiday Pass. They cost £99 to join (although we joined for free using Vouch4Me) and you can book Atlantic Reach at very reasonable rates.

glen5213

Thanks but i am not going anywhere near places that clc have been
i am sure it is a nice place but clc spoilt it for me

nej

Atlantic Reach is quite nice. I stayed there in April (nothing to do with CLC though!). I'm staying at one of their "sister" resorts in August (Honicombe Manor). £216 for a week through that holiday pass thing.

elliebean_2

Sorry to hear about your experience glen5213. We had a holiday through Club La Costa in Spain 2 years ago. Our experience of them was actually good. All we paid for was airport taxes, the rest was free - flights & accommodation. The apartment we stayed in was lovely - I suspect they gave us a very good apartment to try and entice us into signing up. The only catch was attending a 2 hour presentation and spiel about the benefits of joining CLC - we didn't join up. They were very courteous and didn't try and pressurise us when they realised we weren't going to budge.

Things may have changed with them in the last couple of years or maybe we were just lucky, but I have to say we had a great holiday.

antenna

Please Please Please for the sake of your wealth do not buy timeshare or holiday points.....it will leave a very nasty space in you wallet.....please read the crimeshare website and then sit in a darkened room untill the feeling wears off..........allready i can feel the apologists and financialy confused (those that are sure timeshare/points have saved them money) reaching for there keyboards.....you woz robbed.......get over it......

glen5213

Thanks antenna
being a jock i would not part with the kind of money they ask for anyway

dollyb_4

I was contacted last week to say that I had won a holiday from an online entry. Great news. I was also told that I would get £50 of High Street vouchers and that I would have to fone an 0800 number within the hour, which I did. I was then told that the vouchers would only be £30 because I couldn't attend the afternoon session. When I asked how long the session was, it was 2 hours and that I was under NO OBLIGATION to buy anything. A weeks holiday for 4 in the choice of 4 resorts for only £29.50 each is very tempting. How hard is it to say "no thanks"? We attended one of these type of presentations in Portugal many years ago and might not go to this one. We do have time to think about it before the date.