BEWARE- Holiday club Club Class Concierge

paul123

Just got duped in Portugal, we got conned using a scratchcard where we "won" either a holiday, camcorder or cash. No quibble guarantee. After a 4 hour presentation we surprise surprise won a free holiday. The website did look a bit too good to be true, 4 half price accommodation holidays a year plus loads of specials.We asked on numerous occasions whether the club was linked in anyway to timeshares and was told no, no and no.So we signed up, 1000 deposit and 3000 pounds to be paid within 14 days .This for a 3 year membership.
Too cut a long story short, we were duped. Did our research afterwards, did not do it before because the high pressure salesman said that once we left, the offer was withdrawn.The accommodation offered was all unused timeshare accommodation, the specials, all popular resorts and peak periods are never available , you are just left with the dregs.
PLEASE HELP we can get our deposit back as we cancelled within the 10 day cooling off period but we are still liable for 1400 Euros in admin charges. (this is how they get round giving your deposit back). As we were blatently lied to about the nature of the club how does this stand up if we are threatened with court action. We paid our deposit by credit card.

Hagar_uk

paul123 wrote: »

Just got duped in Portugal, we got conned using a scratchcard where we "won" either a holiday, camcorder or cash. No quibble guarantee. After a 4 hour presentation we surprise surprise won a free holiday. The website did look a bit too good to be true, 4 half price accommodation holidays a year plus loads of specials.We asked on numerous occasions whether the club was linked in anyway to timeshares and was told no, no and no.So we signed up, 1000 deposit and 3000 pounds to be paid within 14 days .This for a 3 year membership.
Too cut a long story short, we were duped. Did our research afterwards, did not do it before because the high pressure salesman said that once we left, the offer was withdrawn.The accommodation offered was all unused timeshare accommodation, the specials, all popular resorts and peak periods are never available , you are just left with the dregs.
PLEASE HELP we can get our deposit back as we cancelled within the 10 day cooling off period but we are still liable for 1400 Euros in admin charges. (this is how they get round giving your deposit back). As we were blatently lied to about the nature of the club how does this stand up if we are threatened with court action. We paid our deposit by credit card.

I guess the only thing you could do is to take them to court but that will involve going through the portugese legal system, which could easily cost more than you will save. Even if you get a judgment against them, does not mean you will get the money.

The people running these operations are villans, so will never play fair

moni72

Hi
Just read your post as I am doing research for my mum and dad who've been scammed by Club Class Concierge.

Check out these websites for loads of advice, you may have a claim against your credit card company!

http://forum.holidaywatchdog.com/Timeshare-&-Holiday-Clubs-Club-Class-Concierge-Thread-8556-Page-59.html


Also https://www.grumbletext.co.uk and https://www.timesharetalk.co.uk

There's also been a fair bit of bad press coverage re this company so credit card companies should be protecting their customers more.

clubclasscon

CLUB CLASS CONCIERGE, ETOO and CASHBACK EUROPE ARE ALL PART OF A BRAZEN FRAUDULENT SCAM OPERATION, that have scammed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people, including myself, out of millions of pounds. There is a huge amount of bad publicity on the internet about them. From reading it all, it appears that:

Cashback Europe plc is part of the ETOO and Club Class Concierge group. The registered office address of Cashback Europe is:

Garrison House, 3 Library Ramp, P.O. Box 1469, Gibraltar

(see paragraph 1a of the claim process page on www.cashbackeurope.com)

This is the same address, apart from the PO box number, as timeshare resale scam company ETOO.

(see contact page of www.etoo.com).

ETOO have recently had their television advert in the UK banned because it was misleading:

(see http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44892.htm)

ETOO promise to find a buyer for your timeshare, ask you for an upfront fee of 850 pounds sterling or more, which they say is refundable once they find a buyer, and then tell you they have a corporate buyer and you need to to travel to Spain to meet this corporate buyer.

This corporate buyer is a holiday club called Club Class Concierge who have the same registered address (apart from the PO box number) as both ETOO and Cashback Europe.

The address given on the website of Club Class Concierge (www.clubclassconcierge.com) is their sales office in Spain but their head office has the same Gibraltar address as those of ETOO and Cashback Europe.

All three of these companies seemingly use the same firm of accountants, Sochalls of London, and strangely Sochalls is also the company to which money is paid by the public to join Club Class Concierge.

Club Class Concierge will not buy your timeshare. Instead they try to get you to buy membership of their product by getting you to trade in your timeshare to them in return for their product. They reduce the value of their product by whatever value they ascribe to your timeshare weeks or points. But there is still a sizeable balance (thousands of pounds) to pay as their product is always more expensive than the trade in value they give you for your timeshare. In my case they valued my timeshare at 14k and told me their platinum level membership was 20k, leaving a balance of 6k to pay.

In order to make this pill slightly less bitter to swallow, they tell you that you will be still be able to end up well in pocket after 3 years through their cashback scheme : they issue you with a cashback certificate under the Cashback Europe scheme for the same amount as the trade in value of your timeshare and tell you that if you follow the Cashback Europe claim process properly, that you will receive between 80 and 100 per cent of the amount on the certificate back in 36 months. So in my case above, my cashback certificate was for 14k, implying I would get between 11.2k and 14k back in 3 years time if I followed the claim process properly, thus meaning I had paid 6k for their product in order to get back between 11k and 14k in 3 years time.

If you go ahead with the deal, the documents you sign only concern membership of Club Class Concierge and the transfer of your timeshare into their name. You do not receive any details of the terms and conditions of the Cashback Europe scheme until after the 7 day cancellation period of the Club Class Concierge membership and then you discover that Club Class Concierge only pay 12 per cent of the money you have given them to Cashback Europe and that there is no guarantee of you getting anything back.

They claim that many large well known companies such as Next, Currys, RBS, Kodak etc use Cashback Europle plc but it is almost certain that the only companies that use Cashback Europe plc are the companies in the Club Class Concierge group.

If you ask Club Class Concierge, they will deny that there is any link between Club Class Concierge and Cashback Europe or between ETOO and Cashback Europe. They may admit that there is a connection between Club Class Concierge and ETOO by saying that ETOO is a subsidiary company of the same group.

If you cannot afford to pay for their product in cash, Club Class Concierge will try to persuade you to take out a loan using their broker by saying that the repayment amounts will not be much more than the amount you pay for your annual maintenance fees to your timeshare resort, when calculated on a monthly basis. In fact the figures they quoted me were under a loan taken out over ten years, in order to keep the monthly repayment amounts down. They tell you that once you get your cashback cheque from Cashback Europe in 36 months, you can use the cashback money to pay off the outstanding balance and then pocket the rest.

Of course, if you get nothing back from Cashback Europe after 36 months, and bearing in mind all the lies that have been told it seems highly unlikely that you will get anything back, then you will be left with seven more years of a loan to pay off, you will have paid Club Class Concierge thousands of pounds for their product, given them your timeshare, and you will have paid ETOO hundreds of pounds for the privilege of setting all this up.

If you have been conned by Club Class Concierge, cancel within the 7 day cooling off period if you still have time, and if you are past the 7 day period then contact your credit card company immediately and fight tooth and nail with the card company for the payment to be reimbursed because of fraudulent misrepresentation. If you are threatened with legal action by Club Class Concierge, just ignore it, they do not have a case against you.

deko

A Very Interesting Thread I To Have Just Returned From Fuengirola In Spain Where I Was Directed By Etoo. When I Got There It Was Club Class Concierge They Convinced Me That My Timeshare Was Worthless After Etoo Valuing It At Over $16,000. To Cut A Long Story Short We Handed Over Our Title Deeds With The Promise Of Cashback In 36 Months For £10,000 And Membership To The Holiday Club. On My Return Home I Read Up On Etoo Club Class And Euro Cashback And Realised We Had Been Subject To A Scam, I Contacted My Credit Card Company Immediatley To Cancel The £1151 Deposit It Had Been Authorised But Not Taken But Still To Late To Stop, They Put A Block On My Card And I Am Disputing The Payment At Present. What I Would Like To Know Is, Have You Mannaged To Get Your Title Deeds Back From Club Class And If So How Did You Do So. I Wrote A Recored Letter To Them Within One Day To Cancel And Demmanding Mine Back But Have Heard Nothing As Yet Any Info Would Be A Great Help Thanks
Deko

malaita

Timeshare Resale Centre told us a) that they had a corporate buyer willing to pay £7000 for our Timeshare, b) that the buyer would pay all their costs and c) they would refund all our travel expenses up to £50 to go to their offices in Maidenhead, and d) they would put us up in an hotel if necessary. It turned out to be Club Class Concierge and NONE of this was true. They don't even do Resales. Watch out!!

Does anyone know anything about Timeshare Resale Solutions in Exeter?

wearynurse

Just joined this site as we signed up with Club Class Concierge whilst in Tenerife a fortnight ago. Now we're home and I've seen these postings I'm seriously concerned and am not sure if we're still in the 14 day cooling off period. We signed on a Tuesday and flew home on the Friday so we haven't been back 2 weeks yet but does the 14 days start from when we come back or when we signed? Can anyone help pleas?

MrSmartprice

Isn't it strange. This thread had lots of dodgy postings from people who joined MSE and made one posting saying how wonderful this scam was. They have now been deleted, as have all the ones highlighting the problem and exposing the scamsters (mine included.)

It is my view that all posts should have been left so that people could have judged for themselves what a racket this scheme is. By censoring it all there may well be some more unsuspecting mugs who fall for it and lose thousands of pounds.:rolleyes:

Stevev99

Is it just me or is anyone else continually baffled that people still fall for scratchcard sales techniques?

I feel very sorry for people who have lost hundereds and thousands of pounds, but for goodness sake when is it going to sink in that it just isn't worth the risk?

My advice...never ever accept scratchcards off anyone on holiday, we all know you get nothing for free unless you're lucky to win a proper regulated competition of which there are thousands online.

Please please can people stop accepting scratchcards on holiday, it's no different than mugging!

clubclasscon

Have just seen this interesting post on the holiday watchdog site:

The Sales Manager of Club Class Concierge in Fuengirola, Spain is Stephen John Lawrence, previously the director of UK based scam timeshare resale companies Yacht Trading UK Limited and T One UK Limited, which you can read about on :

http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2008/01/toni-muldoon-scams-holidaymake.html

and

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/columnists/article.html?in_article_id=430168&in_page_id=19&in_author_id=5

lordie

Anybody duped by this company needs to watch this weeks Watchdog on BBC1.
Andrew Cooper, an employee of Club Class Corporation which owns amongst others Club Class Concierge and ETOO was interviewed and run rings around by Nicky Campbell.
What a prat he made himself and more importantly ETOO and CCC look. Major blunder on their part if they thought his appearance on the program might difuse some of the flack they have been recieving regarding the blatant con they are fronting.
I myself was caught up in a similar scam by a company called Resort Properties in Tenerife. They too said they could sell your timeshare, but only after you aquire a larger block of timeshares at a considerable cost.

My advice to anybody googling any of these companies and finding this and numerous other threads.....

Ordinary people like me are not just wasting their valuable time highlighting what is going on. Take heed of these cautionary tales and steer clear. Timeshare is, and never has been an oportunity for investment. Any company telling you that a timeshare property is worth in excess of £10,000 is living in LALALAND !!!