Club La Costa Disgusting Customer Service and Misleading 'Prize Luxury Holidays'.

marleyboy

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]A new court ruling in Spain on the 27 of May 2010 is set to see an avalanche of timeshare compensation claims against developers, the ruling can now be used by European timeshare owners to seek compensation from illegal contracts signed after 1996 In Spain and its territories.

It is now thought that up to 400,000 contracts were made illegally after 1996, industry experts believe that timeshare compensation claims could reach 2,000,000,000 (Billion) Euro.

Magistrate D. Juan Carlos Socorro Marrero has ruled that a timeshare developer in Gran Canaria must pay back double the amount of the timeshare deposit taken within the cooling off period. In a case brought against Anfi Sales SL, part of the Anfi Del Mar Group in Gran Canaria the Magistrate commented The case of paying an advance instalment is in opposition to what is dictated in the law 42/1998, article 11, the second section of this mentioned rule permits the acquirer at any time to get back double the stated amount.

Anfi Del Mar reportedly one of the most largest and luxurious timeshare developments in Europe is now set for up to 10,000 new claims for timeshare miss-selling under the 1994 European timeshare directive. Anfi Del Mar, built by the Ling Group in Gran Canaria in 1989 and once owned by the largest travel agent in the world TUI is said to be in a state of panic at this ruling. TUI who own and operate several of the best known UK high street tour operators including Thomson were also responsible for taking illegal timeshare deposits at Anfi from 2001 to 2004.

At present there are over 200 live claims for timeshare miss-selling against Anfi Del Mar in the Spanish court system and with fresh claims coming in at a rate of 10 a week before this ruling, it is not known what affect this will have on the stability of Anfi Del Mar.

Under Spanish law, even if a property is sold on all debts and encumberments are passed to the new owners, so even if a timeshare property has changed its ownership, the new owners will still be liable for new compensation claims.

However in Tenerife in the last two years a number of timeshare developments have already been repossessed by the unscrupulous developers by way of inflating yearly maintenance fees, once seized they split the apartments up and sell on as real estate, this then circumvents this ruling, it is widely thought within the industry up to 200 developers operating out of Spain, Canaries and the Balearics are already moving to sell off timeshare resorts that have or will have actions brought against them.

Five out of the top 10 timeshare developers in Europe including Brand name companies have taken illegal deposits during the cooling off period and some as late as 2009 were still selling illegal contracts. In contracts shown to Claims Directive this year, one developer based in Mallorca, Spain is still taking illegal deposits even after this was outlawed in a 1994 European timeshare directive, that Spain adopted in 1996. The European timeshare industry does have a regulatory body, however 4 of its paid members are developers that have broken these laws previously, and until the regulatory body in place condemns these actions committed by their own members, there will not be a fair regulatory body representing timeshare owners in Europe.

Claims Directive and its sponsor believe that this new ruling gives power back to the timeshare owner, and because this ruling can be back dated on claims to 1996, it will give timeshare compensation to owners who never before had a chance of taking on large corporate brand developers.

If you have paid a timeshare deposit on or during the cooling off period after 1996, in Spain or its islands, you are now entitled to reclaim double your deposit, even if the company you purchased from is no longer trading, as long as the timeshare development still exists.

http://www.timesharetalk.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12212
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MothballsWallet

I wonder if CLC's lawyers are all, genuine, hard-working, above board people who keep the company right with their advice. I hope they are, otherwise what chance would there be of a fair hearing involving them?

antenna

Without the brackets around the (la) in Club la Costa this thread should easily rise to the top of page one on the Google search engine...............RESULT

antenna

Love the NEW title.........should i hold my breath..

marleyboy

Consumer Complaints

The level of complaints about an industry are a valuable measure of how that industry is perceived by its customers. In the case of timeshare – badly.

Consumers generally accept that larger companies generate more complaints than smaller ones, but the experience of TCA – who receive some 50 contacts every working day from consumers - is that the number of complaints about an individual trader is not a function of size .

Of the top twenty developers in the industry Hapimag, HPB and Interval International failed to produce one single complaint to TCA during 2005. All the other seventeen “big boys” generated complaints with Club la Costa, Macdonald Resorts. Petchey Leisure (RMI Consortium and Clube Praia D’Oura) , Resort Properties & Sunterra producing more than their fair share.

But complaints about the Spanish Resale scam and holiday clubs outnumbered complaints about mainstream timeshare by a factor of three to one.

Some comments made to TCA during 2005 by consumers.

· “after the horrific problems with Holiday Advice Bureau (a Spanish resale scam) I’m frightened to answer the telephone”.
· “Norman Anderson (manager, RMI Consortium) was so objectionable to my wife that she was in tears for hours afterwards”.
· “Adrian Gleeson (Graig Park Marketing) told my pregnant wife that he hoped she would lose her baby”
· “The only way out of the resort (Pearly Grey, Spain) was by taxi – we were trapped and the salespeople pestered us morning noon and night all through our holiday. Which was no holiday at all”.
· “We drove nearly three hours to collect our prize as they said it wasn’t timeshare. Only after four hours being bombarded by three different people did they admit that it was timeshare. We walked out to loud comments about “so you can’t afford it, then” from the salesman (Shakespeare Classic Line)”
· “Last year we paid them (La Dorada, Majorca) £35,000. Last week we found we could get the same for £1,500. We feel gutted”.
· “They (Club la Costa) made us sign a loan agreement which we simply cannot afford to repay. We told them that but they kept on saying they would make it so that we could afford it”
· “Walking along the street in Malta was just like fighting your way through bandit country as touts pestered you everywhere, even inside a shop where we sought refuge.”

The Office of Fair trading , London, receive around 4,000 complaints about timeshare each year. In comparison to the level of complaints about package holidays, timeshare complaints are proportionately four times higher than those for package holidays.

Other complaints refer to unfair restrictive practices:-

· Refusal to transfer ownership unless bought through the trader
· Refusal to allow an independent exchange company to operate on their resort
· Refusal to transfer ownership if sold for less than price bought from the trader
· Refusal to allow use of facilities outside week of ownership if not bought from trader.


Complaint Handling

It appears that some organisations (notably Club la Costa, RCI & Sunterra) have substantial departments whose sole task is to tell complaints to “get lost” – usually in a long letter totally avoiding the actual complaint and extolling the benefits of membership of their organisation – often the very matter complained off.

TCA has seen copies of extended correspondence between timeshare owners and traders where the trader persists in denying responsibility – the “not me, mister” defence - when all the evidence indicated otherwise. And, even when a trader eventually concedes a mistake they fail to advise the consumer or offer an apology, just leaving the matter to die.

Pricing

Prices are immensely varied between developers often differing by a factor of three. Whilst supply and demand does play a part, it appears that aggressive selling techniques enable high prices to be charged. Both Club la Costa and Club la Dorada appear to charge nearly twice the price of other traders – making a purchase from them especially poor value for the consumer.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ayHEfJqqmRoJ:www.timeshare.org.uk/tr5_new.doc+club+la+costa+court+appeal&cd=27&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

CHR15

Ahhh. I wondered what happened there.

We've been merged and our friend has been PPR'd

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=25334933&postcount=10


LMAO

marleyboy

Wow, I guess he went against the MSE rules n regulations, but what has been merged???

CHR15

marleyboy wrote: »

Wow, I guess he went against the MSE rules n regulations, but what has been merged???

The first few posts on here are from on old thread about CLC, We've been tacked on the end of it, hence the new title.

I'm sure toprobroy is still reading lol

marleyboy

He breached the rules regarding self promoting his website, its not as if he was not warned NUMEROUSLY to read MSE T&C's properly, this site being so independent just will not allow advertising or self promotional posts. Maybe this was the reason the old thread got pulled.

I have no doubt he is reading this thread, No doubt he can rally support from his fanclub to troll the thread with nonsense, I can imagine he will PPR Mpython in retaliation, which is a shame, as I would love to see his posts bad mouthing MSE as a direct result of "falling on his sword", the old phrase "those who play it, say it" has kicked in again.

mpython

O. that took me by surprise, I couldn't work out what had happened at first.

I was quite enjoying TB and his pontifications and inability to debate, factually or otherwise.

Ah well, we'll just have to wait till the next plant comes along.

If TB manages to PPR me I'd appreciate knowing on what grounds, don't recall breaking any rules, and this site has been brilliant to me. I'm a long time member of the competitions thread and have won, probably £20k worth of prizes (TVs, holidays, laptops, cash, sporting events) and people have won off my threads (hence the high thanks count), and if I have to say goodbye to it, then, yes, it will be sad, but if that's how petty such people are what can I say.

I wonder whether my membership of the free but costs money to join website (better not mention any names in case we get sued) will still be active?