| Sometimes you wonder if there is a special place reserved in hell… …for people who deliberately take advantage of our elders. We wonder about it when we read about timeshare sales reps who take advantage of retirees without caring about the consequences. You can find plenty of examples of this among the 2,170 pages of complaints about Diamond Resorts on file with the Florida Attorney General’s office. But one case really stood out…even for Diamond. “Vacations do not come easily for us,” write Irene and Thomas. “As one can imagine, it is not easy to save up money for such luxuries when your combined retirement income is only $26,000.” Nevertheless, Irene and Thomas scrimped and saved enough for a trip to Las Vegas. Once there, they were lured to a Diamond Resorts presentation by the offer of tickets to a show. That’s how events began that would lead them to sign away nearly half of their retirement income to Diamond. At the presentation, a sales agent ignored their worries about being able to afford a timeshare: “At some point a minimum income of $50,000 had been mentioned and we advised him we earn only $26,000 between our Social Security allotments, but Robert did not seem to care.” “We explained that travel had become quite difficult because Thomas suffers from cardiac issues, COPD, and arthritis…I suffer from Multiple Sclerosis.” “Each time we resisted, they revised…the event dragged on for more than four hours.” “We felt that if we did not sign agree to a deal and sign the paperwork, we would never get out of there, and so we finally succumbed to the pressure.” If the story stopped there, it would be bad enough. But the very next month, Diamond started pestering Irene and Thomas to attend another session! That’s where a different sales agent told them that the points purchased in Las Vegas, “were not sufficient for even a week in a studio apartment in Las Vegas.” The second presentation went on so long that Irene “had to step away to clear my head.” While she was gone, Thomas was “essentially bullied into agreeing to another purchase, and not one that would replace and supersede the original purchase, but would be tacked on to it and would leave us paying out 47.6% of our income to Diamond for the next ten years.” Can you imagine? Irene and Thomas couldn’t. “We were unable to pay the costs for the contracts, as they far exceed our budgetary constraints and result in there being very little money for our needs related to our everyday lives. We fear damage to our near-perfect credit ratings, as well as the loss of our home and possessions.” “They took complete advantage of us and our trust.” One guy who can keep things like this from happening to other retirees is Mark Wang. Mark is the CEO of Hilton Grand Vacations, which purchased Diamond Resorts in 2021. You can email him at mark.wang@hgv.com and ask him what, if anything, he’s doing to protect retirees like Irene and Thomas. The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) represents timeshare companies in Washington, DC. Jason Gamel is the President and CEO of ARDA. Maybe he should hear about how these sales tactics impact retirees. Let’s email him at jgamel@arda.org. But Diamond isn’t the only timeshare company taking advantage of retirees. If you think your timeshare company is guilty of an aggressive sales culture, reach out and let them know. You can probably find your executive on this list of ARDA VIPS. Let us know what they say at info@timesharefacts.com. Follow us on social media. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. |
