Signed up for trail package in Nassau on May 7th 2007. Promised benefits do not match what the package offers. Promised European vacation and Alaskan cruise neither is available under trial membership rules. Promised maximum $200 per vacation found that the fee is $400. Have been unable to cancel.

I can't see how the headquarters of Hyatt can support the promotion of scamming Americans against the advise of the United States State Department. Where are the headquarters of some of these hotels? If they are American Companies, then the hotels should be sued, and maybe we can get some action from them? Is there a way to find out which corporations own the hotels being used in the scams. I say if we can let's go after the hotel chains that are not owned by Royal Holiday and make them notify their guests of the United States State Department warning. Every guest at the Hyatt in Cancun should be given a copy of the warning against Mexican Time Shares. I can't believe this company is complicate in stealing from me.

Beware of Royal Holiday! Royal Holiday will scam you out of your hard earned money! Here's a copy of the letter I sent to Profeco summarizing my experience with the crooks at Royal Holiday.

I am writing this letter to file a formal complaint against Royal Holiday a.k.a. TRAVEL EXPERIENCE, and to seek your help in reclaiming funds that were fraudulently charged to my account by this company currently based in the Hyatt Cancun Caribe Resort Hotel. My wife and I were accosted by one of their representatives as we exited customs and were lured with free tours and taxi fare into one of their vacation presentations. We met with them on Sunday May 6, 2007 and sat through over five hours of pushy sales tactics and incentives geared to lure us into a signing a contract. Their sales tactics are reprehensible if not downright illegal. They misrepresented the terms of the service that they claim to provide and used incentives and alcohol to coerce us into making a poor decision. We eventually agreed to sign the contract with the understanding that at any point later in our vacation we could simply call back or stop by and cancel with no ill effects. They also asked us to agree to a ‘pre-authorization’ of our American Express card, NOT a charge, for the down payment amount to lock in the incentives that they had promised. Our instructions were simply to determine how we would like to handle the real down payment and to contact them once we had made our decision. At no point did they inform us of the five-day Mexican right of cancellation nor did they indicate that a Notary Public was present during the signing of the contract. In fact, we have a copy of our contracting stating that "This agreement cannot be canceled by either party...". This is fraudulent according to Mexican Law. We left their office on Sunday with the understanding that nothing would be charged to us unless we called back to authorize it. Since neither my wife nor I speak Spanish and because we are novice travelers, we did not find an Internet connection until Wednesday May 9th, 2007. It was at this time that we realized that our American Express account had been fraudulently charged on two separate occasions for a total of 16904.07 US dollars. These charges were made on May 6th 2007. We immediately attempted to call the telephone number provided on the contract on 3 separate occasions on May 9th 2007 to cancel the contract and reverse the charges but no one answered. We also attempted to file a dispute for those charges with American Express but unfortunately the collect number on the Amex card did not work from the hotel phone. We kept getting a Spanish-speaking operator whom I could not understand. My mobile phone also did not work. We decided that we would head over to Hyatt hotel before we left on Saturday May 12th 2007 to resolve this issue in person since we had two remaining tours planned for Thursday and Friday. Our goal was not to delay but rather to try to make the best of the remainder of our vacation. My wife and I printed out a copy of our American Express bill on Thursday and attempted to contact them again via phone with no success. We finally went to the Hyatt hotel on Saturday May 12th to cancel the contract in person but none of the original three people we dealt with were there. We spoke to another manager who tried to appease us with an additional 15000 points but we turned him down and insisted that we wanted to cancel the contract. At this point he informed us that the 5-day cancellation period had expired and that there was nothing he could do. He then brought us to the on site director, Daniel Villa, who told us that he would explain the situation to the corporate office and they would contact us on Monday May 14th at my office in the US. They never did. We didn’t realize the extent of the fraud by this company until we returned home and were able to contact countless others via the Internet who have been similarly scammed by this company. I have included additional attempts to cancel the contract via email but I have received no replies. I am therefore hoping that you can help me resolve the fraudulent charges in the amount of 16904.07 US dollars.

All off these people are crooks! Please do not trust them and please don't fall for their scam! Also, please don't support the Hyatt Cancun Caribe resort. They know what's going on and do nothing to stop it!!

Here's a list of all the thieves we dealt with at Royal Holiday. Orlando??, Alex??, Hector Montalvo, Daniel Villa.

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

In March 2007, I attended a Royal Holiday 90 minute presentation where I met with Art Martinez, the program director of the Cancun sales office set up in the Hyatt Cancun Caribe hotel. He gave us the option to sign up for a 30 year, 20,000 point per annum program for $20,000, but also gave us a 60 day window to cancel our 30 membership and keep the 5 year Unlimited package for the down payment I made of $5995. It has been over a month and I am still trying to get Art Martinez to resolve my issue. I have tape recorded conversations with him over the phone in which he confirms his promise to me that he would let me back out of the 30 year membership program if I canceled within 60 days.

Art Martinez even provided me with his email address and cell phone number, but he has never returned a phone call or an email. I have also tape recorded all my voicemails on his cell phone.

I have done exactly as he has told me. I sent him a cancellation letter at his request via Fedex. I have the Fedex tracking showing that he signed and received the letter. I have him on the phone confirming that he received the letter and was going to work with the Mexico City corporate office to make sure that everything would be corrected and that I would owe nothing additional and would be able to keep the Unlimited Package for 5 years for the down payment I made. He confirmed to me that "Carmen" was going to send the corporate headquarters instructions to correct my plan.

I spoke to Carmen in his office on May 10, 2007, who claims that what Art told me would never be allowed and she has never heard of such agreements being made. She didn't even know about my letter of cancellation, even though she is the one he said took care of everything.

I have also been in talks with my account rep at the corporate office, Migual Angel Juarez, who has been trying to help me, but says that Art Martinez has never contacted him.

Do not do business with these people. My next steps are to hand over all my recorded conversations to a lawyer. I have also written to:

Story Suggestions
Dateline
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

I encourage others to do so, so we can gain support for this cause. I have send them the link to this website that shows the many complaints that exist for Royal Holiday.

I figure that this would be a great segment, especially since I have so much evidence against them. They love to play taped phone conversations on that show.

I am fed up with the lies and deception. I have over 20 phone calls recorded between myself and Royal Holiday, so you can see how much work I have been putting into this. Please don't fall for the trap. I am not even trying to get out of anything, I am trying to downgrade to the program that was given to me as an option in the very beginning.

Royal Holiday vs. Unsuspecting Vacationer, like David and Goliath

If you look at Royal Holiday’s web site and printed materials they are a big company that has been around for decades. Their in business and the business is sales. They have studied the psychology of sales and practiced on customers that don’t have the experience and information to make informed judgments.

The vacationer is often in a foreign country, a beautiful resort setting like Cozumel Mexico Park Royal, when they are offered the opportunity to be able to return as often as they desire if they join today. The presentation begins by showing the vacationer inflated membership prices. Then the offers begin, the initial prices, etc. begin to be cut in half. One freebie after the other is put on the table. Even free airfare for your next trip back. Actually being there is part of the incitements. It is beautiful; you are having a great time. Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to be able to afford this more often.

Of course, now you are home and you have tried to use the membership, the incentive coupons, etc. you see they could offer you anything, because they were not intending to give you any of it. One of the patterns you will notice is they ignore you. You call to cancel, they tell you to write, they never answer. They give you phone numbers that don’t have people in authority there to deal with you. They put you off. They rely on you taking so much time trying to work with them that it will be too late for you to get help. The more you read of the accounts of Royal Holiday members as you do research on the Internet you will understand.

First, the average membership for 30 years is around $20,000.00. Then you pay annual dues which are around $650.00. These dues can go up. They have a contract for you to pay this, and they go after you with collection agencies and put bad credit ratings on your reports. Then you can hardly if ever get a vacation you want, because they have people paying cash for the rooms you would use points for. Those people are potential victims of the fraud. If they give the rooms to members they won’t have the chance to make more money. Often by the time a member realizes this they feel hopeless.

You are not hopeless. Join groups on the Internet where people are sharing information. They have been successful. Use these accounts to demonstrate a pattern of misrepresentation and fraud with your credit card complaint. File a complaint with PROFECO. They take claims up to a year after the contract was signed. Like David, the victims who took action got the money back. For those who waited to research they have taken around a year. For those who discovered the scam early within the month. Just send as much as you can to your credit card company with your fraud claim.

You can do it, others have. Royal Holiday is not invincible.