Suspected Scam paid on Credit card, but told to wait 30 days
DiB_2
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My parents received a cold call about a time share that they used to have to say that the contract has not been ended properly and they may be liable for unpaid maintenance costs. We suspect that this is a scam, and she is going to tell them she is not paying the rest of the upfront payment and would like a refund. When she contacted the credit card company to ask them to cancel the card in case they tried to take more money, she asks about getting the money refunded and they said she would have to wait 30 days before reporting it. This doesn't sound right to me. She paid £2000 and now thinks that she is not going to get it back.
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Cancelling a card isn't necessarily a viable way of avoiding charges, as there's an updater service available to merchants.
On what grounds would they be seeking a refund from the card company?
We take it that there has been a timeshare at some point, or still is?
Or is it up for sale?
Last week they got a cold call from a company saying that the contract hadn't been terminated properly, that there was a fraud investigation going on and that my parents may be sued by the time share company for unpaid service and maintenance charges. The cold callers said they could deal with the issue for my parents, they had a zoom call and showed them the contract still "live" on "the timeshare register". They said in order to deal with it they needed upfront payment of £9000. They paid £2000 on credit card last Monday and were due to pay the balance today. Once I started looking into it, the company looked very dodgyand we think its a scam. My step-mum has now cancelled the credit card and when they phone her today, she is going to say she changed her mind and wants her money back.
We are looking into the whole timeshare thing to find out if the contract is still live, but wanted to know if she is entitled to the £2000 back.
So, it may ultimately be viable to construct a chargeback or s75 claim if she can demonstrate that it's a scam, but that may be difficult where it's allegedly being used to service a debt, i.e. it needs much more than a suspicion....
What's the name of the timeshare company and the cold-calling one?
What was the mis selling about? Was this a company that said they would sell the timeshare for them?
If so, then they may well still own the timeshare.
I know some of these companies will say they have buyers, when they do not. As such the whole selling process takes a lot longer. In many cases never sold, just a means to extract funds. But until the timeshare is actually sold & they have the legal paperwork to prove it, they still own & are liable for the timeshare maintenance costs.
Barclays paying out is a totally separate issue to the actual ownership of the timeshare.
Perhaps it might be better to engage a solicitor in the country where the timeshare is to find out exactly what the status of the timeshare is.
Not any 3rd party company offering to sort it out for them.
Pretty damming.
163 companies registered @ address.
They called back and started saying she could cancel but she couldn't get a refund as they had already lodged a dispute with the European Court of Something something. When I said that all contracts have a 14 day cooling off period, he said that it didn't apply to this because it was "a SERVICE, not a product". Also he said that there were already arrears on the account and I asked how there could be arrears when they had never been sent a bill.