Shame on you Marriott Vacation Club
To anyone considering purchasing a time-share thru Marriott Vacation Club “beware” of Rogue sales representatives that will tell you lie after lie in an effort of make a sales commission. They will present you with a contract than no average person would have the patients to read word for word (over 100 pages) and cleverly narrate the contract in a way that doesn’t raise any red flags and supports their lies. You will fell confident about your purchasing until you book your first vacation and then the lies unfold. Once you sign that contract your trapped no matter what was promised and the lies that were told.
Here is my story. Several years ago while on vacation with my 5-month pregnant wife on the island of Maui in Hawaii, we were approached by a Marriott sales representative, who invited us to attend a time share promotion in which we were promised free vouchers for some of the island activates in exchange for attending a 1 hour presentation, so we decided to take the offer. After 2 long hours of what I felt was a very aggressive sale presentation my wife and I decided to purchase a timeshare unit based on the facts presented by the sale rep, which at the time seemed like a good investment. (We were fooled)
As we started to use the timeshare, I Quickly found out that the sales representative failed to disclose important facts about hidden room fees, resort taxes that your required to pay nightly and a nightly parking fee (totaling over $150 a night). After my first stay at the time-share I acquired a bad taste in my mouth “I felt conned misled” but it only got worse. My maintenance fees are also going up each year and I was never informed about that as well. And it gets worse. When it came time to book our yearly vacation thru Marriott, I found my self always settling for an off-season week that never worked well with our schedules. According to the sale rep it would be very easy to reserve the week we desired or if we decided to exchange our week we could travel anywhere in the world because the Maui property was the most desired and can easily be exchange. (Those were lies as well) From what I found out Marriott resells it prime locations to third party companies for a profit and sticking the less desire location and off season weeks to it members to trade. Also every time you stay at Marriott property they are constantly try to up sell you (very annoying).
But it gets worst!! This is when I decided to take action against Marriott. The main reason why my wife and I decided to purchase a timeshare unit thru Marriott was because on the resell value. This is where the biggest lies were told. Now looking back at the well-seasoned sale rep which is no longer employed by Marriott (Hmm I wonder why), the sales representative knew he sparked my interest when mentioning the resell value and it being a safe and smart investment, so he quickly reconstructed his sale pitch and focusing heavily on the resell topic. He mentions things like “ You can sell this unit at any time and make a profit” “This will be the best investment you will ever make” “This unit is like money in the bank”, “I sell units all the time to savvy investors”. The Vacation property Market is not like the housing market because vacation property always goes up in value over time. It’s a safe and smart investment. Well here I am several years later and wanting to sell the unit, as I mention earlier we just have a bad taste in our mouth about the whole experience and it ruins out vacation when we reminded of it. So we list the property with a time-share reseller who has been soliciting us vie mail since the first day we purchase the unit. They promised to sell our unit for a $690 fee and they suggest we list it at 75K because of the demand and location of the property. After 4 or 5 months of not hearing anything form the reseller I make a phone call, and hear comes the excuses. (Beware all time share resellers are scams just like Marriott sale representative they will tell you what ever you want hear to get your listing). So I decide to do some researching on the web and I found out that the time share biz is a big scam and companies like Marriott use deceiving methods to get your money. Surprisingly I found out that the timeshare that I purchased for over 75K has no value at all, and it’s hard to even give it a way because of the high maintenance fees. Well now I am really upset, the reason I purchased the unit was because of the resell value and I felt it was a safe investment based on what the sale representative informed me on. (It was just lies to make a commission!!) So over the last few months I’ve sent several requests to Marriott’s corporate offices, hoping to resolve this issue. After telling Greg Reynolds Manager, Customer Care my story his basic rebuttal is that they don’t care what tactic and lies were used by the sale rep (Of course it was worded in a nice way) and that I signed a contract with Marriott and that’s that. Keep in mind the contract I signed was well over a 100 pages and when signing a contract that size most people don’t have the patients to read it word for word, so we put our trust in the sales representative and the reputation of the company were dealing with, as I did. I believed what the Marriott sales representative was narrating to me on the contract. So basically the sales representative quickly narrated each page of course leaving out anything that would throw up any red flags and then pointed to where I had to sign. I put my trust in him and Marriott and I signed the pages as he instructed me to do and we moved on from page to page. (And I got screwed).
I have meet others that have experience the same dishonest tactics used by Marriott in order to sell timeshares. If this has happened to you please email me at
[email protected]. I am currently talking with a news network that wants to run a story on Marriott if you’re interested in telling your story like I am let me know.
