Vacation Club Membership
Complaint
Unhappy person
Country: United States
We went to a presentation for what we thought was a membership in a vacation club. If we joined this club we would be able to access condo, cruises, and resorts that we could rent for $299 for a 7 night/8days visit. Sales pressure was very high and we were never left alone to discuss joining this club. When we asked for privacy to discuss, the guy left and another took his place. They told us over & over this was a vacation club membership and they were not connected to a Timeshare group. MVG would even finance our loan at 0% interest and if we were not happy then they would refund our money. Great!! We were taken to an office and documents were presented to us to sign. Just a lot of legal steps(right). We would have to sign a license agreement to be able to use the software to search their listings. The software upgrades were to be $199 per year. So we paid $2,500 down and financed $3500 at 0% interest. No mention that we had three days to cancel(knew we were leaving the next morning).
Sounds pretty good doesn't it. Well here is the truth of the matter.
There is no club membership. You are buying a software license to search listing where the $299 places are out of the way places that no one wants to visit. MVG does not finance the load they outsource to Universal Account Servicing, LLC (rudest people I have ever had to chance to speak to). Software upgrades are $299 for the first year with a 10% increase every year. When I asked to cancel the club membership(written, certified letter)they did not pick the letter up. Next I sent it in a letter and Ian called and when asked about refund statement was "you do not have that in writing".
We are still trying to get out of this but I do not know if that is possible. Bad thing is that the lone person in the Welcome Center at Myrtle Beach sent us over to this group. Does anyone have any suggestions about canceling this? Yes, we know we are stupid people to have fallen for this scam.
Sounds pretty good doesn't it. Well here is the truth of the matter.
There is no club membership. You are buying a software license to search listing where the $299 places are out of the way places that no one wants to visit. MVG does not finance the load they outsource to Universal Account Servicing, LLC (rudest people I have ever had to chance to speak to). Software upgrades are $299 for the first year with a 10% increase every year. When I asked to cancel the club membership(written, certified letter)they did not pick the letter up. Next I sent it in a letter and Ian called and when asked about refund statement was "you do not have that in writing".
We are still trying to get out of this but I do not know if that is possible. Bad thing is that the lone person in the Welcome Center at Myrtle Beach sent us over to this group. Does anyone have any suggestions about canceling this? Yes, we know we are stupid people to have fallen for this scam.
Comments
Sincerely,
Andrew McGill
Owner and Vice President
Good Luck to all of you.
Now,over 2 years later, with a sick feeling in my gut ,i have just set my mind that I'm just paying contract to give a company $6883.90 for no reason. (5,201.80 with 1,632.90 down payment 3,810.00 financed at 17.90% interest for 36 months = 137.55 a month that universal direct drafts).I do hope the "owner/s" and sales reps at least say "thankyou sucker" when they say their prayers at night.
Then in october they start billing for their 200. software payment, if you tell them "no" they will draft it automatically in 3 months without verbal permission anyway (what a wake up call that bank statement was!). I did browse the website, it is very exciting to look at , but scary because you really don't know what you're getting ( no guarentees there!) I called one time to book in MB they said they had nothing at that time to call back. I called back, they said they'd call me back, <<sigh>> no call back. so now we're down to hopefully 10 more payments which I'm bound by contract to pay(i have to try and get in touch with universal about my balance, i never get a statement), but i hope to cancel my "ongoing" membership without any duress this year directly. I really don't want to give "them" another dime more than i feel contractually obliged.
I can say the only good things that came out of my "MONSTER" experience is that 1. I learned to ask alot more questions before signing away my money 2. Never trust anyone high pressuring real estate 3. I am still young enough (42) to maybe make my money back (God willing). oh! BTW we did go back for our "complimentary" 2day stay at ocean front resort, could see the ocean if you stood on edge of balcony and looked around corner of building, I guess that would count, huh? Good luck to all that have been "hooked" so far , and plan carefully those who attend future "herding calls". this is my truth as i see it.
When my husband got frustrated because he could see this was not for us, and it was taking forever not 1 hour - they became very condescending and rude, poking fun at him etc. We should have walked away then, but we wanted our discount tickets :)
I really tried to listen to what exactly it was they were selling but couldn't for the life of me figure it out. Was it a website for booking travel? If so, why couldn't they show it to us live? That seemed really strange and should be an alert right there. why not login and show us exactly how it works.
The salesperson (who was very nice by the way) claimed to be new, which I think may be a sales tactic, or maybe she just didn't know how to answer our questions. they never explain how you could get discounts at hotels, cruises etc. using their website. Only showing pictures of gorgeous resorts and indicating we could stay in Hawaii for something like $799 for the week. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it generally is!!!
I luckily have a wonderful points system, which gets me any travel I need. It's tied to my mastercard, so every time I use it we collect points and they accumulate very quickly. We were in Myrtle Beach, staying at 2 different Holiday Inns for a week for FREE -yep I repeat FREE, how can you beat that???
When I simply mentioned that I was happy with my points, the owner just snapped back "Oh your points are CRAP!!" How dare he just blurt that out when he had no clue what I was talking about. That just sealed it for us.
I don't know if it's a scam or not, all I can tell you is that we were potential customers and were not treated nicely.
Be careful what you are getting into folks, read ALL the fine print and if it doesn't seem right - then don't do it.
I responded to one of Monsters many online ads about discounted hotel rates, calling the woman from the ads, Kerry, and informing her that I wanted to make a reservation through her since our condo reservation was most likely going to fall through and we did not want to arrive with no place to stay. Although the online ads said rooms for around $300 for 3 days, I was told that it would be about $166/night. I had no problem with this since I realized there were 8 of us and it was still a good deal. She said that I just had to give her my credit card information for a $50 deposit and attend a tour. If I needed the hotel the deposit would be put towards my balance, and if my original reservation did not work out she said as long as I came to the tour I would still get my deposit back along with $100 cash and a 2 day 3 night vacation voucher. I just had to call when I arrived and let her know if my original reservation fell through.
So we arrive in Myrtle Beach from Chicago, we go to the Baywatch Resort she told us the reservation would be at (since our reservation fell through), and come to find there is no reservation under our names… I call Kerry, who says that there is no reservation, she was waiting for me to call her back and I would have to wait until she got to her office to put the reservation through. Thanks, except at that point the room big enough for our group was no longer available and we spent the next few hours having to look for a place to stay, eventually finding one through a Wyndham rep at the resort.
I am then told over the phone that the deposit was not for the reservation but for the tour. Although angry at not having been told this I agree to go to the tour the next day, the address and directions which are to be emailed to me that night. The next morning I come to find the place is 30 miles away from where we are!! I call and say it’s impossible and they reschedule for a closer place (still about 15 miles) for Saturday. We have to borrow a car to get there, get lost, and call Monster to tell them we will be a little late. Tammy responds that it is a group tour and we most likely will not be able to attend, but we can only get our deposit back if we come to the place anyways. Fine. Get there 20 minutes late, cannot go on the tour, and Mark, although saying they won't try to “swindle” us out of our $50 bucks, refuses to give us the deposit. Although he is a “partner” he claims to have nothing to do with that and claims that that “division” is under Andrew, and closed on the weekends (conveniently the only days they have tours at that location). We leave furious, first no reservation, then tours 30 miles away, having to borrow cars, and now incredibly rude people. I called my credit card company who thankfully canceled the charge. However, when I called Andrew and left a message wanting to confirm I would get the deposit back, I still have not gotten a response. I’m just glad I didn’t get further involved with their company if this was how they treat potential clients – can't even imagine how it is once they have you and thousands of your dollars.