My husband and I made a huge mistake in buying a timeshare from RCI last year. First of all, we found over the course of a few months that we had been grossly mislead and lied to by the salesman. One of the biggest complaints we have against RCI is that we were promised to have no maintenance fees until 2011. period. He repeated this numerous times. Well, by February of 2010 we received a past due bill for unpaid maintenace fees, fees of about $900.00, also attached was around $2, 000 in late charges! This was the FIRST notice, we had not received ANY phone calls, letters or any contact concerning maintenance fees to be paid at that time whatsoever. We, unfortunately believed the salesman, so this was quite shocking to us. And what did the rep say when we called to dispute their obvious mistake?.."well ma'am, your contract states..bla, bla, bla" so in the end what is the purpose of RCI having salesmen if the product they are selling does not match what you are told you are getting? This is only one of the many misrepresentations we were told by the salesman. Another is the"free" developer weeks..don't be fooled, they come w/ a very high maintenace fee as well that must be paid upon reserving, which he failed to mention. So if we would like to sell the week, we would have to pay out an enormous fee then hope someone would want those dates. Now I have some questions, if the company is so "great" why do they have to mislead people so grossly about their product to get customers? why aren't they just upfront about everything..w/ nothing hidden? why make the contract so vague that you need a lawyer to decifer it for you?umm..maybe b/c it's not that great after all. perhaps they are just thieves w/ a business license. Just look at the complaints against them on the BBB. They have had several lawsuits against them. We never had a "new member consultant" contact us, we had to contact them to find out when our points would begin to go into effect. So please, anyone looking into buying a timeshare..DON'T do it..do your research, you will find it is not a "good deal." Just ask Dave Ramsey, he's an expert on investments and he does NOT recommend timeshares. We wish we would've known the truth behind them beforehand.
We had already paid off the cost of the timeshare w/in 2 months of the purchase date. We were not expecting to pay any more dues until 2011, so we were determined that they were not getting any more of our money since they had lied concerning the fees among other things. So we typed up and sent them a letter of all our concerns, informed them we wanted all monies refunded to us and to have our contract voided. Ultimately, we contacted a lawyer, he typed up a letter demanding that we get a refund and that our contract be voided due to misrepresentation. He contacted us just the other day with good news, RCI's lawyer is mailing him our refund check next week and our contract is being voided. So if anyone has had a similar experience, just know there is justice out there, don't give up and don't give in.
Praise Jesus