National Vacation Sales & Service are evil

From a reader...

I was contacted by National Vacation Sales & Service in Nov. 2009. I paid $1500.00 for them to sell my property by Worldmark by Wyndham. I have never heard a word from them since. I left several messages and never heard from them again. Since them I have been scammed by others and have still not sold.

Yes, indeed! A quick Google search for them shows alerts from Wyndham and I even blogged about them previously.

There are, fortunately, reputable companies like Redseason that can re-sell memberships. The best such companies either purchase your credits directly so there's no "fee" — but they will only pay a market-discounted rate since they've got to earn a bit on the resale. Also, there seems to be a lot of sales via eBay.

Last resort... hand out leaflets outside a Wyndham office offering to sell credits at half-price to all those who enter. hehe

-- Fabbo
Tags: trendwest worldmark

Steamboat Springs says Wyndham is a scam

From a reader calling themselves DenverJulie...

It's a scam!! My husband and I started off like everyone else, going to this presentation followed by a sales pitch. After telling the salesmen "no" several times, they offered a 'trial package' with 12,000 pts for $1800 (paying $100 per mth for 18 mths) but the places we allowed to go were limited. It was do-able, so we signed up for it to try 'the experience'.

We were now locked in & we were making payments. Every time we called and talked with someone we got a completely different answer as to when our points expired. We finally got the same answer with the last couple people we spoke with so we decided to wait a couple weeks and then book our first trip to Vegas.

So when I call back to book a reservation, they said our points had 'expired'! WHAT???!! They said they had expired 6 months prior (August 2009), which is funny because the other 2 people I had spoke with told us we had until July of 2011. That's a HUGE time frame window of error. Anyways, they said they could reinstate our points, but we had to use all 12,000 points in 120 days. Wow, ok.

My husband was beyond mad, so he damanded an answer. The phone operator he actually spoke with was very nice & told him the REAL reason our points 'expired'. Worldmark had eliminated a department in their company which changed the 'rules & dates' in our contract. He said many people were upset, but there is a sentence in the contract that basically says rules can change whenever & customers don't have to be notified. WOW>> We were livid, but had paid for the trial & decided to use the points and be done with Worldmark.

Well we decided on Steamboat Springs in Colorado as our first weekend trip. On your first trip they make you attend a mandatory meeting with another salesman and the reservation had to be a minimum 3 night stay. We ended up wasting 1 night of points because of the limited time frame they gave us to use our reinstated points. The resort was beautiful and that the was the only good thing about the resort.

We went to our manditory sales pitch meeting (if you don't go, they fine you), on the day we checked out. We met with a nice lady and started to explain our concerns. We were so very nice in hopes they might give us back the points for the 3rd night we HAD to book & didn't use. She looked at us like we were crazy & said there is NO mandatory 3 night booking, and had no clue how to respond to our other concerns (expiration date changes of our points), so she called out the manager of Steamboat Springs Worldmark. HERE'S the kicker! You ready? He says he didn't know about the mandatory 3 night booking for first trip.

We started to tell him about our expiration date change for our points and before we could finish he interrupted us. He bluntly told us the Worldmark salesmen & phone operators will tell you ANYTHING to get you in the door to get your money. That's their job to get you locked in & they will tell you anything true or not. We were like 'What? How is that legal?' After that we were so mad but remained calm & had so many more questions to ask him. He started to yell at us & didn't want to answer any of our questions.

He then said 'If you don't like the Worldmark experience then you can leave right now.'

I said, 'Well this meeting is mandatory or we will get fined.'

He said,'You won't be fined bc you at least showed up.'

We indeed left right then. I was shocked at how UNPROFESSIONAL the mangaer could be. The funny thing is, I can't believe he bluntly told us Worlmark is a scam! His own words... Do not get fooled by these people.

Oh I want to just say one more thing. I just read up a few comments where people were asking how to use the trial package once it's paid off. According to that rude manager at Steamboat Springs, you HAVE to use your points BEFORE your last payment of the trial period. Yes you heard me, you have to use the points (take all vacations) before you are even done paying for it. That does not make any sense to me at all. He told my husband and I that we are very lucky that our points were reinstated so we could use our points. Scam.

Mmm. Makes me think that I should record all my contract-related phone calls to keep evidence for these sorts of conversations. (By the way, Skype add-ons let you record calls. Very handy!)

Thanks for your story, DenverJulie!

-- Fabbo

Tags: trendwest worldmark