On April 2009 I attended a time share sales seminar at the Villa del Palmar Flamingos resort in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. Here are the details of the well orchestrated, false and misleading sales approach used by this company and the sales team. Complicit in the deceit was Regal Resales and Rentals, a timeshare resale and rental company.

Rental of Unit – We were told that the weekly rental of the purchased unit would be in excess of $2, 000USD and the salesman pointed out that the income from the rental would more than offset the annual maintenance fee for both the purchased unit and the bonus summer week, allowing for cost free annual vacations. We also informed him that we could not use our unit this calendar year and he said just call and have it rented. Upon returning home we called to inquire about renting our unit through the resort management company but were told all deadlines had long passed. In fact the dates had already passed at the time the sale closed.

Sale of existing timeshare – Arrangements were made to sell our existing timeshare through Regal Resales and Rentals. This money was to be used to pay off the down payment which would accrue not interest for three months on the new II BAC credit card. The Villa del Palmar salesman contacted Regal Resales and quoted a sale price of $18, 000USD for our unit. During further negotiations and following a call to Claire Banks of Regal the resale prices was increased to $19, 900USD with the statement that we should keep it under $20, 000USD. Subsequent investigation revealed that the quoted sales price was totally out of line with the going price of resales at that resort. During this part of the sales negotiation Claire Banks was “conveniently” available by cell phone and assured us she had inquires all of the time for units in our resort. (The sales rep said she was very difficult to contact and quite surprised when she answered her phone – an obvious ploy as I discovered from other transactions she had been involved with). Both the timeshare salesman and the Regal folks alluded to wealth Mexican businessmen who buy the timeshares for “tax purposes”. They were very vague about why they buy them but very specific about them as possible purchasers.

Much to my dismay, a visit to Regal’s website discovers no display of inventory and you must be a registered representative of something to access any information. I almost think this is a shell company that collects upfront fees and makes no attempt whatsoever to complete any sales. Unfortunately the sale of our existing unit was critical to our financing and we will now need to find alternate methods of paying off this unexpected debt.