Manhattan Club Lawsuit

I am an owner and I have just recently learned of this "lawsuit".

Was there any type of information letter or document sent out to owners to inform them of this legal action? I have tried to get info from The Manhattan Club and have tried to reach the Communications person, left messages and have not had any reply.

Would you or someone get back to me please.

Thank. you. Isobel Young

I used to get e-mail notifications when new messages were posted to this site, but haven't gotten any in quite some time. I was still able to log in with my red week account, but I'd like to keep up with the posted messages on a regular basis. Jeff, or whoever sends out notifications about this discussion group, please make sure my e-mail address is added. Thank you, Enid (Melody517@aol.com)

sunildajs,

NOW THAT'S BEING CREATIVE AND PROACTIVE.............i never thought of that, small claims court. i haven't seen any comments about it here in redweek.com unless i missed it. i assume there is a maximum dollar amount of settlement that this court section will consider (should we win) . i'd like more details, and if appropriate, COUNT ME IN. among other questions that need answering re small claims court, could the "plaintiffs" bring a class action or would each case be on an individual basis.?

hey sun..............i'll keep tuned in and look forward to more CREATIVITY AND PROACTIVITY ON YOUR PART. I'LL BE GLAD TO JOIN IN THE ACTION AND ASSIST WHERE/WHEN I CAN.

keep in touch.

chris

Hi Chris, I don't know what the top threshold of the claim would be. It may even vary by location. But I would go right to your county's court system and find out the information. Bring the paperwork or download, as the case may be and file it. They, then get served. They have to send a lawyer. You will then have your paperwork, supporting evidence about how much you spent yearly and for how many years. How many times you were closed out of getting your week, and demand a settlement, depending on your limits. This has been very efficacious for me when settling traffic accidents, etc. I cannot file since my timeshare was bought back for $200 (can you believe it?). But we were so desperate to get out, we took it. There was a clause that said that we cannot file a lawsuit against the MC. But you know....we might anyway. They'll still have to spend money to send a lawyer. They'll have to prove we can't file. But they'll have spent the money. If enough people do it, we can become a big pain in the kiester.

hey tulipblossom,

your comments are well-taken. keep in mind that we were the prime movers in assisting the nysag, eric schneiderman, in winning his case. he wouldn't have had a case if we didn't persist in bringing this FRAUD/SHAM to his attention, in addition to COMPLETING AND FORWARDING TO HIM HIS SURVEY/ QUESTIONNAIRE TO BOLSTER HIS CASE...............AND HE NOW LEAVES US IN THE LURCH WITH NOT EVEN A HINT AS TO HOW TO PROCEED.....RATHER UNEMPATHETIC, DON'T YOU THINK? HE WON THE CASE AGAINST TMC, GOT A PROVERBIAL FEATHER IN HIS CAP, THEN "CIAO BABY"................WE'RE TOTALLY ON OUR OWN. WE DESERVE MORE THAN THAT. HOWEVER, HIS RATIONALE IS PROBABLY "I WORK FOR NEW YORK STATE, NOT FOR TMC OWNERS" (WHO HELPED HIM WIN HIS CASE!)

but, we can't let that deter us from proceeding with our creative, proactive, unified actions to help make us reasonably financially whole, having the court eventually and in a timely manner, rule in our favor in having eichner and crew pay their dues to us, as should have occurred from the legal manoeuvering between schneiderman and eichner FOR THE PAST 3+ YEARS.

keep in touch.

chris

The problem with small claims court is the statute of limitations. I don't know how many years you have to bring a suit in small claims court in NY.

Enid -

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Phyllis

I withheld payment this year. Due 2 wks. ago. I haven't heard from them yet. Owned and paid for 15 years prior.

I think everyone should refuse to pay dues until the place is transferred to the new ownership. I did not pay 2017 dues until June of this year and there was a late fee which they waived. The time share I am responsible for is in my sister's estate and that was taken into consideration. Tim

Same here.,

That $2394 for the hotel(probably plus taxes+fees) vs the $2400 for TMC sleeps 4? Plus kitchenette.

Melody; you need to make sure that in your redweek account, that you are set up for this discussion group, and to receive email reminders of any activity. No one is manually sending emails. Its all automated and should work if your settings are correct. You might slso want to check your "junk" or "spam" folders in your email account. Some email services might send redweek stuff there.

Thank you. Since I wrote about the problem yesterday, I received two or three notifications. There was nothing in my spam folder. For some reason, I guess I just had to prime the pump. Enid

Tulip, I may be wrong but the claim might be from the last time you were denied a room. How long was that. In my opinion many mosquitoes biting would be a great reaction since were not getting any progress any other way. Maybe one of us will get a positive outcome and share the strategy with the others.

Dear Isobely,

When Eichner and co. created this scam timeshare organization, they were devious enough to record all our mailing addresses as the address of the Manhattan Club. Any communication intended to go to timeshare owners is directed to the Manhattan Club!

The NY Attorney General has been engaged in an "investigation" of TMC, not a lawsuit. If you want to know some of the history of the investigation, start back at the beginning of this blog and read thru several years of postings, thats what I did when I first discovered this site.

What follows is the post I have made on a few occasions to try to get newcomers informed:

From reading some of the most recent posts, I can see that there are some newcomers to the various "Manhattan Club" complaint sites who haven’t had a chance to dig into the history of The Manhattan Club (TMC) fraud. Frustrated over our inability to ever get a room at our timeshare, I started googling a couple of years ago to see if there were other owners as frustrated as I was. I really got an education when I found the RedWeek.com site, and reviewed all the pages of postings on their “Manhattan Club Lawsuit” link. There are literally thousands of owners who feel as cheated as I do, who have posted complaints. I've been following the RedWeek site since then, and the majority of owners have the same complaint; for years, despite paying our fees, we have been routinely cheated out of the use of our timeshare while the Eichner family and a small circle of TMC insiders have enriched themselves at our expense. The icing on the cake for me and my wife, and what finally convinced us to stop paying TMC, was when we read the NY Attorney General's July, 2015 court filing, which itemizes a remarkable list of allegations of civil and criminal conduct on the part of The Manhattan Club. This includes the charge that for years, Eichner has been personally skimming 4-6 million dollars a year from TMC through a shell management company that had no employees and provided no services to the operation of the timeshare property. In reading through the filing, I got sick as I learned how badly we have been cheated and how unscrupulous and devious the principals at TMC were as they perpetrated their fraud against us, in our case, for over 10 years. They denied us the rooms we were entitled to while renting those same rooms to the general public via the Internet. The enormity of the fraud and the magnitude of the numbers is staggering... at least 14,000 owners, 250 rooms, 52 weeks a year ( in some cases they actually sold more than 52 weeks a year per unit!) at $2500-$4000 annual maintenance payments each.

If you haven't already read this court filing, it is a MUST read for any Manhattan Club owner. Here is the link to that 2015 AG court filing: You may have to paste it into your browser. You’ll be astounded at the mountain of evidence the AG has collected during his investigation of TMC. Reading it convinced us we had been defrauded, our contract broken, and would no longer honor it ourselves.

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=arMAhc2Z8epneiTXUbb_PLUS_yQ==&system=prod

By simply withholding the last two years' maintenance payments for 2 units, I'm nearly $10,000 ahead. Knowing what we now know, I'm amazed that anyone would voluntarily continue to send these crooks money. I encourage all owners to revoke your credit card authorization, stop sending checks, stop funding the effort of the very people who are screwing us.

Bob Biello

And yet my wife and I have never had a problem booking time at our metro suite over the past 11 years (we have a split week of 4 days with weekend and 3 days without alternating every other year). The proviso is that, and this is as true with the Manhattan Club as our Hilton Timeshare, you must book well in advance, particularly for the highly competitive end of the year holiday weeks. We were informed long ago that one must be a planner to enjoy a timeshare. Those who refuse to pay their maintenance fees are not harming the Eichner’s but only all of the other timeshare owners who continue to dutifully pay theirs.

WS, you are correct that advance planning is the best way to enjoy a timeshare. Unfortunately, the MC was not represented that way to buyers, many of whom were led to believe it was not only a real estate investment, but an on-demand hotel alternative. After the first time I lost time, I learned to make my reservations early! In any event, there are 3500 posts on this site, with probably no more than 500 from unique posters, and I think I'm being very generous. There are some folks who post practically every day. (Perhaps Jeff Weir can provide the actual number of unique posters.) Personally, I believe that 175 pages of random "stuff" is counter productive. No one not already "involved" is going to tackle that hill. Since many MC owners are either first time, one time-never again, or only occasional visitors here, it might be helpful to direct them to the Redweek homepage/resources tab/askRedweek page, where the very first item deals with the settlement which has already been reached, and is as far as the legal system has taken this matter.

For what it's worth, this is what's happening on Nov 15 - 10:30am: Compliance conference. I have not paid my dues yet and am very interested in how/if the new owners are going to handle buy backs (the estate I represent is on the list). Or if the court will allow them to do this before they transfer the property. Tim

Appearance Date Time On For Appearance Outcome Justice / Part Comments Motion Seq 11/15/2017 10:30 AM Supreme Initial (first time on) OTHER SETTLEMENT (PRE-NOTE) CRANE, MELISSA ANNE COMPLIANCE CONFERENCE 15 10:30 A.M. STD F/W CC 9/14/17

Do I have to pay my maintenance fees of $3700? Can I wait until this lawsuit is finalized and we know the final outcome regarding fees etc. Thank you.

Do I have to pay $3700.00 maintenance fees now or can I wait until the terms of the settlement are finalized. thank you,