Dear Sir / Madam:
In August, 2007 there was a internet advertisement for a vacation deal for a three night stay at Myrtle Beach, SC for only $99 along with a gift card of $50.00 with a condition to attend a welcome meeting for couple of hours. Like anyone else we also got lured by this attractive deal and paid $99.00.
We went to Myrtle Beach on 08.24.2007 and on 08.25.2007 we went to attend the so-called welcome meeting by Festiva Resort. While attending the meeting we found that this meeting was a fraud. Infect this was a high-pitched sales meeting for timeshares. But we never want to buy a timeshare but those very well trained sales people got us in this trap and we ended up signing a contract for the sale of a timeshare.
When we came back from trip we found that we cannot afford to pay every month for the timeshare mortgage. Also something bad happening happened in wife’s family in India and she has to go to India and for this reason she needed money. We decided to write e-mail on 08.28.2007 (after three days of signing the contract) to Festiva Management to inform them that we cannot finish the deal and want to cancel it. But the Festiva personnel instead of canceling the contract he told us that now we cannot cancel this and if we do not pay the mortgage the Festiva will inform the credit bureau about this and this can ruin our good credit. We thought we have no choice other then to pay and we started paying the monthly mortgage.
In July 2010, we decided to go to Myrtle Beach again to stay at the resort. While staying there we met someone and I tried to share my experience and told him how I ended up buy this timeshare even though I never want to buy it. Then that person told us that there is law in South Carolina and I have the right to cancel my contract within five days as per the South Carolina Code of Laws, section 27-32-40 after signing the contract. That’s what I did but they did not honor my request and mislead me. Unfortunately I did not have any knowledge about this law at that time and when we were signing the deal the management never mentioned it to us.
Now since I have through knowledge about this law I contacted the Festiva management and send them the proof of e-mail I sent in 2007, showing my intentions to cancel it and asked them to cancel my deals and refund my money, which they collected from me over the period of three years. But they refused to implement my request. After I became aware of the law I stopped paying them the mortgage and they have informed this to the credit bureau and it affected my credit score. I did not know until one day when I decided to buy my first house and it showed up in my credit report and I was decline to get a loan.
So please help me to get out of these traps set by these tugs of Festiva resort and instruct the credit bureau to fix my credit report which is falsely implicated against me.