| Even under the best of circumstances, divorce is stressful. The most you can hope for… that everything gets settled amicably and quickly so both parties involved can get on with their lives. You just hope that financial institutions – say, banks, credit card issuers, even timeshare companies – will do what they can to help. Or at the very least, not make things worse. Apparently, that’s not how they roll at Westgate Resorts. Far from it. Because, as Michael from Festus, Missouri discovered, Westgate sees divorce as an opportunity to help themselves, not their customers. We found his story of just how unhelpful Westgate was among the 4,256 pages of complaints against Westgate Resorts in the Florida Attorney General’s office. “Back in 1988, I purchased my first timeshare from Westgate with my wife at the time Stacy. The purchase price was approximately 6000.00 dollars.” When Michael and Stacy divorced, a judge assigned Michael sole responsibility for the timeshare. Westgate offered two option to reflect the change and BOTH options cost a lot of money. Not helpful, Westgate. “I did not have the funds to do this with going through a horrible divorce, and I had to file for bankruptcy myself…I decided to go several years down the road with my ex constantly reminding me I had to remove her.” “This is when I decided to go to Florida myself and try to get her removed totally from the account by doing a new account. This is where things really got messed up by Westgate.” At a Westgate sales meeting, a sales agent and a sales manager suggested a solution. “They stated just open up this new account and we will take care of the old account by merging them together. At no time did I know that this was not going to happen.” “The new account was nearly 16,000 dollars compared to the 6000 dollars one.” Again, Westgate, not helpful. “When I got home, I called Westgate and inquired if the account was closed or not. This is when they stated both accounts were open and I was financially obligated to pay on both accounts and I could not merge the accounts.” Okay, now we’re waaay beyond “unhelpful.” “I have never seen a company be so dishonest with the customers.” “So now, I had two payments on two mortgages…I struggled making payments on both of these.” Fast forward a year. “I went back to Florida for a third time…Westgate again made me upgrade to get this done.” “They did do it correctly and closed out the other two accounts but this was nearly at 30,600 dollars now and my payment had tripled from what the first account was.” “I feel like they do this on purpose because they know the customer is stuck and they have no options so they simply do not care to help and as long as they are making money, they are good.” “If I could call the president of Westgate myself and tell him what his sales people are doing I would.” Well, Michael… …Westgate’s President and CEO is David Siegel. You can’t call him directly, but you can email him at david_siegel@wgresorts.com And so can we. Let’s ask David if Westgate always tries to make money off personal tragedy’s such asdivorce, or whether Michael was just a special case. And let’s see what Jason Gamel thinks of all this. He’s the President and CEO of the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the trade association for timeshare companies. His email is jgamel@arda.org Does your timeshare company profit from divorces too? Use this list of ARDA VIPs to email its leaders and find out. Meanwhile, if you know of a timeshare company that was more than unhelpful during a time of stress, let us know at info@timesharefacts.com PS: Follow us on social media. Twitter Facebook Instagram |
