It would appear that Anfi has made another new offer to members, this time the Customer Services Department have sent letters to members explaining they are updating their database of Club members.
They have set a date of 31 January 2019 to complete the task, so what is this offer?
According to Maria Hidalgo of Customer Services, they understand that the personal circumstance of members may change which affect the title holders of the membership certificates. They may wish to add or remove names and even make other revisions to the certificates.
Now they are being very generous in this as they say that this will be done with no charge to the members.
This raises the question is this just to update the database or is there another underlying reason for this?
We must remember that when it comes to Anfi, not all is what is seems, for example in june 2017, they held a Special General Meeting regarding their contracts. Members were asked to vote for three resolutions:
Resolution 1:To establish occupancy periods for a maximum of 50 years duration, with an option for further recurring occupancy periods of 50 years.
Resolution 2:To limit the duration of the Timeshare Scheme to a maximum of 50 years.
Resolution 3:Total change of the Timeshare Scheme to adapt to Spanish Act 4/2012.
As we know this was a very clever ploy in their attempt to prevent any further legal action and court case against them for the illegal perpetuity contracts.
Resolution 1 was voted in, (see link below), but they could not change the contracts without the permission and signatures of the members, if the member refused to change there was nothing that Anfi could do.
We also wonder how many members did change to the new contracts, not as many as they would have liked we think.
So is this another attempt to entice members to change to the 50 year contracts and again remove the possibility for those very members to take legal action against Anfi?
Will they try to issue new contracts as well as make changes to the membership certificates?
As always with Anfi, nothing is ever clear, they are very adept at confusing any issue that may affect the members. In the end many members have been mislead in their dealings with Anfi, from the initial purchase through to all the upgrades.
How it used to look!
Now what if the member does not make any changes before the deadline to complete the changes, will Anfi then introduce a charge to add or remove names?
As always time will tell, but think carefully about anything that Anfi says, ask yourself what is their motive?
If you have any thoughts or coments on this subject, then use our contact page and let us know.
Tomorrow we publish another article about another company that was brought to our attention by regular and concerned reader, it is once again revolves around the many “bogus” claims companies that have been popping up over the past few years. What makes this one even more worrying is the information that they had on our reader, they knew what he owned, when he purchased, how much he paid, how much his maintenance fees are and what his membership number is.
So join us tomorrow for another day in the murky world of timeshare.
Vanessa’s article was scheduled for today. It just happened to follow Saturday’s horrific mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh that resulted in the death of eleven worshipers.
Is it so much to ask, Starpoint, to show this family compassion? If you had bought a timeshare in Pittsburgh, believing you experienced unfair and deceptive sales practices, and then experienced what Vanessa experienced, how would you feel? Has greed in the timeshare industry so run amuck to show such callousness?
What do you think? Inside Timeshare would like to hear from you via our comment section.
But first continuing with our theme of reporting some of the latest companies that are appearing on various blogs and forums, today we give the basic details of another new enterprise.
Registered on 20 June 2018 and due to expire on 20 June 2019, so not intended to stay around long, the registrar is not named but the website is registered in Gujarat India, not really giving much confidence there!
“Can I use the 20-22 Wenlock Road Registered Office service if my company wasn’t formed by you?”
Their answer: “Absolutely. Our Registered Office service, which operates from our own offices at 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU – can be used by any England and Wales limited company, even if it wasn’t formed by us. This is provided that you pass on the necessary proof of ID and proof of address documents needed to comply with the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.”
Which does not really seem to ring true considering the company we are talking about here, Hutchinson Holidays, the other contact details are email:[email protected]
So what are they offering, well according to the website and their homepage they appear to be another “Holiday Club” that we have seen so often in the past, think Designer Way Vacation Club and Club Class Concierge. You pay to join and presumably trade in your timeshare (or is it originally pitched as a reslae with guaranteed buyer) and bingo, none of the holidays are available and with the time left on the registration they are gone never to be seen again.
We also believe that this is the same lot that were doing the resale with guaranteed buyer scam, highlighted on another blogsite in July 2018, the logo is very similar:
Anyway more on this little “scam” as more information is found, so on with our Tuesday article with Vanessa.
Our Las Vegas Timeshare Experience on October 1, 2017
The Callousness of Starpoint
Sapphire Resorts DBA Starpoint
By Vanessa Hernandez
October 30, 2018
To be honest, I don’t remember as much as I’d like about the purchase of our Starpoint timeshare October 1 of last year. That night Rogelio and I went to the concert that flipped Vegas upside down. We hid and ran for our lives, hoping to make it out alive. Thankfully we did. We cut our trip short, so I didn’t look over the paperwork as I told myself I would. I couldn’t get out of bed or eat for a month.
I remember feeling pressured and pushed into buying the timeshare, which was why I told myself I needed to look over the paperwork as soon as I got home. The reasons I felt uncomfortable with my decision:
They said the timeshare was prime real estate,
I was not aware the credit check was being run,
They told me to wait 30 days before booking,
They promised a free trip (which never materialized).
As the days wore on, I tried to get back to my everyday life, learning how to live with the trauma I had just experienced. About a month later I received a certificate of membership. I got out my paperwork and started looking through it. That’s when I realized the misrepresentations.
I thought I was going to be done paying off the timeshare in three years. It turned out to be a seven year loan financed at 21%. The loan document had circles on it as if this had been explained, but I don’t remember the sales agent doing so. I think that part was deliberately skipped. I suspect the sales agent circled those items after we signed the documents.
We were staying at the Excalibur. When we walked by CVS we were invited to attend a timeshare presentation at the Jockey Club, affiliated with Starpoint. We met with sales agents Brandon and Matthew. Matthew said he wasn’t supposed to help with presentations, but wanted to help out. They told us that the Cosmopolitan next door had been trying to buy the Jockey Club and that some members had already turned down offers from those wanting to buy their Jockey Club timeshare. They said that if we bought and sold the timeshare back to the Jockey Club we could make good money because the Jockey Club was prime real estate on the strip and was basically priceless. We have since learned timeshares have virtually no secondary market.
They ran my credit when they said they wouldn’t. I told them I was rebuilding my credit. They assured me they were not going to run it, but they did without my consent. I received an alert from my credit monitoring company.
They sold the timeshare as a week’s vacation for the next 45 years. We understood there would be maintenance fees, but they never mentioned the resort fees charged at every stay. The Starpoint timeshare cost $5,995.
They told me I had to call Starpoint to book 30 days before my desired travel times, which was beyond the contract rescission period. When I called, there was no availability. The 5,000 points they sold us was not enough for a week’s stay.
They promised us a complimentary three night round trip airfare and hotel package if we signed. We never received it.
In short, I felt pressured into making the purchase. I wanted to review the contract when I got back from vacation. Unfortunately, the events that took place after I bought the timeshare meant that I did not check the contract within the cancellation period. When I did review the contract, I found discrepancies between what we understood the benefits to be, and what we actually bought.
I asked Starpoint to show some compassion in light of the trauma I experienced, especially since most of what we were told was not true. I asked to be released from the contract, but there has been hardly any communication and certainly none that addressed my concerns about the misrepresentations, or whether they would cancel the contract on compassionate grounds.
I have been back to Vegas two times since the shooting, once was to fill out paperwork. The other was for a reunion to meet with other shooting survivors.
Before the horror:
I have no desire to ever go back to Las Vegas again. I bought on October 1. the day the shooting happened, so anything about that day brings back bad memories.
I have a certificate that states I was a victim of crime. I am seeking professional help. It feels like nothing matters to Starpoint except getting my money.
I am 30 years old. I guess the only silver lining is the life lesson learned. I will never believe a word a timeshare sales agent says. The general public needs to be aware that buying a timeshare can turn into a financial disaster you are stuck with for life. What other product carries this weight?
Thank you to Vanessa for sharing her traumatic experience. Only someone who has experienced the symptoms of PTSD can understand the power of association. Even if Vanessa had been happy with her purchase, she would have had a hard time enjoying future vacations because of the negative associations brought back after experiencing that terrible day. Feeling she had experienced unfair and deceptive sales practices, makes it even worse.
Like John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted, we hope Vanessa can learn to channel her trauma and grief outward to help others, like other timeshare victims.
Self-help groups we feel are not industry influenced:
On Thursday we will be reporting on another company that was brought to our attention by a regular reader, this one revolves around one of the largest scams over the past few years, the bogus claims companies. Once again this company has full details of who the client has dealt with, what they purchased, how much for, when purchased and even membership details and number.
In this case our reader is fully wise to these scams having fallen for one in the past and then finding out via Inside Timeshare, he now regularly informs us of the companies that cold call him, on this occasion he has also given us a recording of the telephone conversation. So don’t forget to join us on Thursday.
Remember, do your due diligence and check any company that contacts you or one that you have found on the internet, if you are not sure how to check or need help in clarifying their legitimacy, then use our contact page and ask Inside Timeshare, we will be happy to help.
Welcome to Start the Week, today we have a look at some of the items found while having a look at some of the forums, groups and blog sites on the internet about timeshare.
First we look at a discussion on the Diamond Resorts Advocacy page of Facebook, one of the members started a thread regarding an owner update meeting at their resort. During this meeting the sales agent was discussing transferring their deed week into points, part of the pitch was that there were no maintenance fee associated with points.
Well you can imagine the comments that abounded following that post.
So, if there are no maintenance fees attached, that has to be good, yes?
No, after the owners pushed and pushed the sales agent, they admitted there were fees associated but this wasn’t maintenance, so what is it?
As you can guess, just a change of name, it might be management fees, club dues or some other concoction of words, but in the end they are what they are, extortionately high fees!
To us in Europe especially the UK it is what we call PC or political correctness, I prefer to call it Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984, change how you say it to confuse the masses. Some good examples are the cook, you are not a cook you are a nutrition technician, a garbage collector or what in England we call a binman or dustman, they are waste disposal engineers. It makes no difference what they change the name to it is the same thing.
We also received from a reader a post in the Anfi del Mar Contracts FB page, it was an advert for a timeshare for resale, it was far far less than what they probably paid for it. This is a subject we have published in the past, (see link below).
Many of those advertised are either for the derisory sum of £1 or even less, we have even seen them for £0.01, this particular one even showed the annual maintenance fee of £687!
There are many others such as Marriott, which are not cheap when originally purchased being advertised for over £2,000, this is the value the owners believe it is worth, having paid around £15,000 upwards for in the first place.
We all know that many owners believed the original sales pitch, it was property, it is an investment, it will go up in value. The only thing that is likely to go up is maintenance fees!
There is also another problem associated with resale, the “scam” companies that have been set up, taking upfront fees to list the timeshare for sale, knowing full well that it will never sell. As Lisa Ann Schreier asked in her “Open Letter to Timeshare Developers” published on Inside Timeshare, Why do you not buy back?
Another valid question to our readers is: What do you think your timeshare is worth, considering what you paid for it? We would love to hear from you.
Last Friday, Mindtimeshare published another warning of a cold calling company called Resort Management Direct or RMD, this is actually an old company offering bargain priced holidays at various resorts. The whole point is what is known as “flybuy”. Part of the deal is that you attend a presentation for a timeshare.
The Warning put out about this one though is very disturbing, the call from a lady called Angelina, states that she is calling from “Resort Management at Club la Costa”. So once again we have a company calling timeshare owners purporting to be from their resort.
So there we have it, from timeshare sales agents trying to bamboozle owners at update meetings to Owners believing they actually have a timeshare that is worth something, finishing with a “flybuy” company clearly stating they are from a legitimate timeshare resort. You really do have to be careful and not believe the first thing you are told.
Have you had an experience of sales agents giving you the runaround, have you tried to sell your timeshare and ended up losing money, or even had a call similar to those of RMD, if so Inside Timeshare would like to hear from you.
