Jeri Craine, General Manager, [email protected]
Festiva Resorts, Peppertree Atlantic Beach Villas
PO Box 1068
715 W. Fort Macon Road
Atlantic Beach, NC 28512


Jeri Craine:

My wife and I are deeded week owners of 24f and we were visiting the week of May 8th – 15th… Several issues during our stay made us decide to not convert to Festiva Points system:


1: We arrived after a three day travel from New Hampshire to be told that we could not enter our condo until 4pm. We ‘checked in’ and then went to our condo and proceeded to bring everything from our car up to the door of our condo figuring that by the time we moved everything up there we would be at 4pm to go and get our key. The cleaning crew was totally done with our building as they were standing on the deck below us smoking and laughing. I went back to the desk to get the key and still had to wait another 5 minutes even though I told them at the counter they were standing below doing NOTHING. Others were also waiting at the same time we were waiting for our key. This is the first time in the four years that my wife has owned the deed that we were not able to get in until 4pm or later.

2: We arranged two extra days via Expedia.com at $148.00 per night and were told we would be given a phone call to let us know when our ‘new’ room would be ready to move into… (We were moved to 31k) The desk people clearly said it would be well beyond the normal 10am check-out time as they had to clean 31k first and we should just stay in our condo, 24f, until we received a call to let us know when we could move. At 9:40am someone from housekeeping knocked on our door to say our new room was ready and wanted to know when we were going to be out. I told her that we were under the expectation we were going to get a phone call and it would be well after 11am. I told her we would be out and do the normal check-out (call for an inspection) by 11:30am as we had planned. Around 10:30am we received a phone call from the office to tell us 31k was ready and I informed her that someone had already knocked on our door. Apparently housekeeping was not supposed to have come to us but the office was to handle it. So we were finishing packing up and cleaning up, we closed the shades as another guy from housekeeping was looking in our window to see if ‘someone’ was still in there. After my wife waved at him, he said to another worker, yup, there are people in there. A few minutes later my wife had just finished her shower and was walking in to the back bedroom when she turned around to see the same man looking through a small opening in the living room shade. This is BS! Once we made it to the office to get our new keys for 31k, and told them of the incident, there didn’t appear there was too much concern.

3: We moved into 31k and my wife and I were sitting on the couch in the living room when the front door was opened. Come to find out, someone from housekeeping was checking rooms after they were cleaned and was unaware that someone was already in the room. We could get into 31k before 4pm but not our owned deeded condo 24f.

4: We put a load of laundry in the washer (in our room) before we went to dinner and came back and switched it to the dryer and started another load. The next day we left early for the air show at Cherry Point and returned late in the day to find our laundry had not dried. I called the office several times as no one answered and finally someone from security answered. I explained how I had two loads of wet laundry and were told that maintenance would look at it tomorrow. I informed them we were leaving 1st thing in the morning and I was not going to be hauling two loads of wet laundry up the eastern seaboard. Figure it out and call me back. I received a call back from security who told us to take our laundry down to the laundry room at the indoor pool and we would be reimbursed in the morning for the having to us the laundry room at checkout the next day. At check out, the girl at the counter to us she could not give us our $3.00 because she did not have access to petty-cash. But the person who could would be in at 9am. We were not going to wait as we had 988 miles to drive that day. I ask her to have the manager, that’s you, call me on my cell phone which I left the number with her. I never received a call from anyone.

You can send a check for the $3.00… You have our address on file.

Several things come to mind… We paid $148.00 for our room and still had to do a checkout procedure. When we were staying the two extra days, we were not there as timeshare owners, we were renting a room just like a hotel. Yet we were more scrutinized at our checkout inspection of the 31k room than our owned deeded room 24f… At 24f she look around for a minute and said all set to go… 31k was like getting the fifth degree the way she treated us.

Our deed condo, 24f, has 52 owners that pay roughly $580.00 per year. That’s about $30, 000 a year for the maintenance fees on that one unit yet nothing has been improved or changed in the past year... That is also close to $120, 000 in the past four years… Again, nothing has been upgraded or changed… We sat for three hours in the sales center trying to be sold points for either $6, 100 minimum or $10, 800 to get into the ‘club’ by Chris Subevt (spelling?)… Why, we already own a deeded week with one of the best views in the whole resort...In a RED week… We asked to see a condo like ours, 24f, that had been upgraded and there were none to be seen. All I have seen about Festiva is complaints, complaints, and more complaints about how they want to switch everyone to points and all the benefits of it. We have friends that also owned two deeded weeks in Peppertree and switched to points and have not found that it was as it was presented to them before they invested in Festiva. If Festiva is truly a great company, why does it not show at Peppertree. My wife saw the same demo room in Peppertree III the previous year while dealing with the high pressure sales like the ocean view from our condo was going to be gone because they were putting up a restaurant on the top of the dune. And our maintenance fees were going to double because there were not going to be as many deed owners to spread the cost out compared to the points owners.

Based on what we have seen and heard, we will continue to own our deeded week and not be switching to points unless there is some improvement to the resort. We don’t care about all the other options available to us by joining via Festiva points as we already OWN our deeded week for as long as we want.

Your comments would be appreciated,

K.Smith