Lifestyle Holiday Vacation Club Scam! – I could not set up the website, the CD information for this was a long process. No Customer Service Rep to help. I was scammed out of $12,000

Lifestyle Holiday Vacation Club Scam! Reviews & Complaints

Reported By: Patricia Okereke

Contact information:
Lifestyle Holiday Vacation Club Scam!
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, United States

In 2010 summer my husband, i and 2 friends vacationed in Puerto Plata, if I recall the name correctly, and after a hard sale tactic we bought into the club for 49 years – I put a debit card down payment of $5, 000 and charged my MasterCard for $7, 000, totaling $12, 000.

We bought into the club because we were promised we could run it as a business by setting up the website, have internet traffic round on that website and book guests to recoup our money so the fees would essentially pay for themselves as a result.

These guys will say anything that will make you buy because as they’re selling you this great idea, they are also interviewing you for what lies they can tell you to make you buy into this fraud.

We signed up to the gold membership all around the world and had a great 6days vacation in a 4 bedroom villa that first time.

Thereafter, on returning to the u.s. we never returned to anywhere else because when we tried to set up the website as promised we never could as we discovered the process was an unnecessarily long process that even a website engineer would have had difficulties; or we would have had to pay additional fees to hire a professional to do this. So we decided to sell the vacation to our friends, family and people we knew in order to attempt to recoup our money.

We were never able to get the time slots we wanted, the promised equivalent villas in Switzerland and Dubai were not available. Essentially, our buy was worthless.

I realised this within a week of getting back home in the u.s. and when we tried to contact customer service we got promises that someone would call us to assist setting up the website. We discovered all that was just a posting strategy to ensure the 4day cancellation period expired good and proper.

Now, when we purchased they learned that I was a contracts attorney so my contract was a bit different. I believe they have varying contracts depending on the buyer they’re dealing with.

In my contract, the clauses were more vague – I could sue for cancellation but it had to be in Puerto Plata. I could cancel but then I never got any feedback on how to get my money back so I lost money and it would require additional money to try to get redress plus there fees involved with that process.

So I made a very hard decision to mitigate my losses by concentrating on paying off my MasterCard charges which I was able to get interest free for 7 months. I paid that off within 5months to ensure further losses (i.e. interests) were not incurred on this nightmare club.

All the representations stated about how I could make a business out of this never realised and the support they claimed they give to customers who do this as a business was never there; all were lies!!

This is a well thought out scam. Big names like RCI, Groupon and many big vacation companies must all be aware of this scam. The racket is so big that it milks many vacationers of billions in dollars. The way to go about this is to report company to their consumer board or via their law maker’s representatives board or a similar agency in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. A lawyer willing to take class action could make billions on this case but I just don’t have the time.

I was reminded of the valuable lesson – if it’s too good to be true it’s likely not true. I spent hours on the phone attempting to get a customer representative who all gave me a run of the mill. I sent emails and I got vague responses and i never had the time to action a real legal solution as I had 2 small children and busy work schedule.

I knew within a very short span of time that we had been scammed! I never booked anything via this platform, I never bothered to even use the club again because I reasoned every fee was additional money I was making for them having shelled out thousands against their false representations. Plus if I wanted to sue my best chance was in Puerto Plata DR; and my plane tickets alone I wasnt even ready to fork out additional money for this.

The fight needs to be down in their venue in DR. Maybe we should contact a local lawyer willing to work on a class action pro bono case there. I wrote this review because i realised that this club is still scamming people even in this 2018!!

Pls when trying to purchase anything online or similar to a too good to be true situation, Google scam alert on the company to see if there scam reviews. This lil tool could have saved us thousands. Goodluck.

Best,
Trish.

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