Beware! Park Royal is a fraud!
Complaint
Pamela Kadden
Country: United States
Research Royal Holiday before going on your vacation to a Park Royal hotel in Mexico. There are many complaints published on the internet about this company. This hotel is part of Royal Holiday - a big chain of hotels in Mexico.
Beware, they will try to sell you a membership. They will try to trap you into becoming their member, and will offer you deals that will seem too good to be true. Do your research first, and you will enjoy your vacation later. Put in Royal Holiday complaints, Royal Holiday fraud, or Royal Holiday scams into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. You will see that they give you everything you could want, because when you get home they deliver nothing.
Travel agencies online get special promotional prices to send tourists to these resorts.
The reason the price is so low is they will try to convert you into their member. They have a great web site, give you well done books and CDs, because they are taking tens of thousands of dollars, and that is all you will get, the book and CD's. You won't get any of the incentives. And what are you going to do about it when you are in the United States or Canada? They hire collection agencies to enforce the payments, even though they always say the resorts are booked when you try to schedule a vacation.
Stay away from these resorts. I got caught in this trap and I don't want anyone to go through what I am going.
Beware, they will try to sell you a membership. They will try to trap you into becoming their member, and will offer you deals that will seem too good to be true. Do your research first, and you will enjoy your vacation later. Put in Royal Holiday complaints, Royal Holiday fraud, or Royal Holiday scams into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. You will see that they give you everything you could want, because when you get home they deliver nothing.
Travel agencies online get special promotional prices to send tourists to these resorts.
The reason the price is so low is they will try to convert you into their member. They have a great web site, give you well done books and CDs, because they are taking tens of thousands of dollars, and that is all you will get, the book and CD's. You won't get any of the incentives. And what are you going to do about it when you are in the United States or Canada? They hire collection agencies to enforce the payments, even though they always say the resorts are booked when you try to schedule a vacation.
Stay away from these resorts. I got caught in this trap and I don't want anyone to go through what I am going.
Comments
What was our problem? We believed their lies - for the children, use it. If you can't use it, for a 10% fee, we'll sell it for you. When I go to a board meeting in Mexico City, I'll present your situation and get some of, if not all, your monies returned to you. Bunch of baloney!!! And, of course there is the underlying fear that you are in a foreign country with a bad reputation towards tourists travelling there, and if you don't sign a paper, who knows what will happen to you! I know this is extreme, but with all the salespeople, etc standing around in their pitch room, you do begin to feel qualms - esp. when you have just been denied a cancellation and you feel trapped! Good luck and wish we could get a class action suit going against this co. Don't know how they can sleep on their silk sheets at night! Esp the President, Mr. John Siegenthaler - if he even exists!
It DOES say on their 'free' vacation website "This advertising material is being used for the purpose of soliciting sales of vacation ownership plans." Sure it's high pressure sales, but the same thing has been going on in various forms from Bob Slepak's hotels in Vegas to "free airfare for two when you test drive the new [insert car model here] at [insert dealership here]".
So what is it we're to beware of? Some huckster offers free vacations to get you in the door and try to sell you something. Don't want the high pressure sales and questionable cancellation policies? Avoid the hucksters. With a phrase like "This advertising material is being used for the purpose of soliciting sales of vacation ownership plans." it should be pretty clear what you can expect.
Robert Heinlein, the engineer turned author, coined the phrase TANSTAAFL for a reason; there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Or, in this case, a free vacation.
What we got there was a sale pitch for a "holiday membership" with which we could travel the world for the next 30 years with our travel cost fixed (not getting higher year after year). After three hours of talks where the offers seemed always better and better, we signed... The worst mistake ever.
We signed a contract for 30 years, for 30 000 points per year, for 25 0000$US of which we a downpayment using our credit card for 8 750$US, having to pay 450$US per month for the balance for the next 3 years.
Almost immediatly that same night we started to have second thoughts but we decided to sleep on it. Before leaving Cozumel, the day after, we call their help-desk from the airport and told them we wanted to cancel. But they told us they could not do it yet because the contract had not been processed yet and was not in the system. They told us to call back when we were back home.
So the next Monday I call back, and still the contract was not in the system. I tried calling again during that week and finally I did receive an e-mail on December 20th sending us our password to access the site, stating that we had requested it! I call the helpdesk and they told us that they can't cancel our membership because we were passed the 5 days cool-off period!!!
During the Christmas holidays we were not able to contact anyone and then in January someone in Finance (Nancy d'Argence) contacted us to welcome us to the club. I told her I wanted to cancel my membership but she told me she could not do anything for us except refinance. So she gave us a refinance offer which would have cost us thousands of dollars more in the end (for lower monthly payments). We refused.
She then said that the only thing we could do was to resell our membership. And when we bought the membership I specifically asked if it was resalable and they told us that they sold easily, quickly and for a profit. So she gave our names to their sales department which in turn gave them to a broker in the States (Global Resort Services), which contacted us. I talked to the broker and they told us that we could get 29 000$US for our membership! Wow, we're even making a profit. We had to pay 600$US for the account and the publicity they would put out.
I called the broker about once a month but nothing was happening. So in April I started to do more researchs on the Internet and realized that there were a lot of people in the same situation as I was and moreover the only information I got on people that had been able to resell their membership was for about 10% of the price!
So I'm now in communication with a law-firm in Mexico that specialize in this kind of rip-off (I can't tell their name yet because I still not on a retainer with them).
So this is was they promised us: fixed vacation cost (about 2 weeks) for the next 30 years.
This is the reality: you have to pay an annual fee (465$US now) that can and will go up with the years; you still have to pay for your food, which will go up; and finally you reserve based on a point-basis, so today with 30 000 points I can get 2 weeks, but in 2 years it could cost me 40 000 points. Plus they told us that we could easily resale our membership for a profit, which is false. And finaly they told us we had 5 days to cancel but we got the turn-around with their helpdesk until it was too late.
I HAVE MANY GREAT THINGS IN STORE FOR AMERICA.
We paid it off fairly quickly, but now we are still stuck with this "maintenance fee" of over $350/year. Does anyone know what exactly the consequences are (besides a mark on our credit maybe?) if we simply count our losses and DO NOT pay this so-called "maintenance fee"?
They MAY sort-of "threaten" you with the following: repeated calls (in which you simply INFORM THEM TO STOP CALLING YOU), perhaps a Collection Agency (usually based either in FL, or 'someplace' out in the West), and/or, a "Lawyer", in which I use this 'term' quite loosely--as MOST, IF NOT ALL of their Lawyers (are ONLY Representatives), NOT ACTUALLY LAWYERS at all [WHO should you/could you believe from a phone call--that they're an actual lawyer??!?!!]
I have heard of NOTHING done, re: one's Credit Rating/ nor, ANYTHING ocurring legally.
Again, SIMPLY STOP YOUR ANNUAL Dues' payments!!
Put up with R-H NONSENSE, and go ahead & lead your life--NORMALLY.
HEY....., even finding MUCH BETTER DEALS on the Internet, WITH NO FURTHER COMMITTMENT on your part, as we have!!
The thing to do is to simply STOP PAYING THESE CROOKS!!
Those people who have stopped paying fees are RIGHT! I intend to do the same thing. I hope and wish a class-action suit is began (I will GLADLY join!), but until then the best thing we can do is to just STOP giving them anymore of our hard-earned money!
Just think. In 30 years at about $400/year, that's another $12,000 wasted!
After all. With today's economy, just about everyone's credit has a mark or two on it anyway!
SINCE AMERICANS CANNOT enact a Class Action Suit against R-H, "Against the(ir) law.....--RIGHT"!", you have BUT NO CHOICE/OPTION -- to just STOP PAYING YOUR ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FEES [since you already Paid them, at the initial presentation/Annual Fees/+ MUCHO ADDITIONAL CHARGES, such as: All-Inclusive fees at certain Resorts/going over you Membership points/TIME OF THE YEAR Points--which are EVEN HIGHER, Etc., Etc.
Junto al ardid y su consecuencia inmediata (el error), se encuentra la disposición patrimonial que se efectúa.
Estos elementos anteriormente mencionados (verbigracia ardid-engaño-disposición patrimonial) conforman la trilogía cuya sumatoria atribuye al caso la calidad de estafa
Ir o no ir, que duda...
Ir o no ir, que duda...
I have long known that vacation ownership is a waste of money. If you play these guys right, you can come out with the freebies and walk away. Just don't give into the pressure. Just thank them for their time and say NO.
I did this once before in Colorado and the "free airfaire" voucher turned out to be invalid. So I wasted a few hours that time, but usually you can come out with a bonus by saying NO.
You give the 30,000 of your Credits, PAY $300. by January 30th of that year, & get..... "What did you say....?", $1,000. back?!!?
YEA, after having to wait 6 to 7 months (with NO Interest), with GRIEF/R-H stating that it won't go thru to your Bank Account??! YIKES ! ! !
Let's do the MATH: $1,000 MINUS the $300. (that you pay into by 1/31) = ONLY $700. returned, for R-H Credits WORTH............ $1,500.!!!!
THAT'S ONLY 1/2 of what their worth!!
Rent-Sure Program ONLY BENEFITS R-H, NOT YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!