Vida Vacations & Grand Mayan lies

arelg wrote:

I'm not too worried because I fully rescinded in person and have receipts bht just know somehow random ppl are getting Vidanta information

Good for you for spotting this scam. But it's not necessarily random people getting Vidanta information. Likely, someone who works for, or used to work for Vidanta, is selling owner information on the side. It's also possible that some people at the exchange clubs (like RCI) are doing the same thing.

Yes, that was me! We were about 3 months into our contract when I discovered what a fraud it was. We called our credit card company. They recommended starting a dispute and blocking any further charges to our credit card (they will do this for 13 months). We lost the initial dispute since our signed contract was produced by VIDA, but then took it one step further and CONTESTED the charges. We wrote a response of just how fraudulent the whole VIDA scam was, and that there is a clause in there that says you CAN cancel your contract after 5 days (vida just won’t refund your money after this time). Anyhow our cc company REFUNDED our money, over $10,000!!!!!!! I’m telling you the truth!! It was worth it to take it that one extra step. VIDA still got to keep our initial deposit, because they didn’t pull the money from VIDA, the cc company refunded us with their own money (probably a drop in the bucket for them). VIDA still pestered us for a few months and even threatened legal action, but once I stopped responding to their emails, all communications stopped. They have also stopped trying to automatically withdraw from our account each month. My hunch is someone has pushed harassment charges on them. Anyhow, it is completely legal and your right to dispute charges and block further withdrawals from your account. You CAN break your contract after the fact. You may not get your initial deposit back, but we did by contesting the charges in writing after losing the initial dispute. If you have a good cc company and they don’t want to lose you as a customer, they will help you out!!

Our deceit started many years ago & we continued to fall for their upgrade contracts to try to fix what we had done initially. It is embarassing how much we have given them. There is no way we can file a complaint with our credit card company at this point. Our main issue was that we were told we could use our "equity" on a real condo or home purchase. We have found out that they have stopped construction at the one location where they had started building. I will post on the new site. Thanks

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Tweet Vidanta they will reply quicker. We had a similar experience and if we all get together and spread the word maybe it will save all the other people they try and scam.

Twitter is very useful in these cases. I had questionable charges on my credit card and no one would answer my emails, within 30 minutes of me tweeting I got answers. They don’t want everyone knowing what scammers they are.

We have been owners for over 15 years or longer and I must say our last breakfast owners update was the worst treatment we have experienced. We loved Sasha our first person we interacted with during the presale of Grand Mayan and we purchased presale of Grand Luxxe. Yes , thats how long we have been members... This time They gave us a salesperson ( Dr. Damico Hernandez) who is also a medical doctor on the side( so he said, His card does not have MD or any type of professional identifiers ). He claims he made more money selling timeshares than managing patients health care. (wow)Coming from the medical field it really is a peculiar combination. He started off kind and concerned and quickly turned into a high pressured desperate person and at the end of our our so called 90 minutes which went from 8:45- 1:30........ ( longest 90 minutes ever) At the end as he was abusive, argumentative and unprofessional, claiming we need mental health checkups since we didn't know our contr act inside and out. His claims of not taking his deal and forking over additional money would be detrimental . We love our timeshare however this last incident has given us incentive to get out. The updates are disgusting .

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It is unbelievable, isn't it! We have lost so many vacation days dealing with them. Our main reasons for going to our "update" meetings has been because we want them to deal with all of the issues, but it always just turns into a stressful battle.

Post on the new site, lets try to gain traction!

Need advice regarding our timeshare we have used twice and deposited a few weeks with RCI. We purchased it in 2002 (paid in full) Mayan Resort which is now Vida Vacations. Every year we pay our maintenance fees and renew our membership with RCI. As we do not travel, or use the timeshare we want to know how we cancel this timeshare. Any advice appreciated, question is am I still responsible to keep paying my maintenance fee. We have no plans to travel to Mexico in the near future. Thank you!

We just bought at Vidanta last night. Nothing in the contract about how to rescind. After reading reviews and the details on the contract we find we were also lied to and want to rescind but don’t know how. A registered letter from a resort? Any ideas how to do that and who to send the letter to? And how to word the letter?

lancec13 wrote:

lauraj239 wrote:

The Vida salespeople are still super high pressure and insulting. They told us they could care less about losing a $20,000 sale and walked away when we said we would be rescinding.

If you are rescinding, make sure you do it via the proper method pointed out in your contract. If might tell you to send it certified mail. If those are the directions, make sure you do that rather than just tell the sales people you are rescinding.

lindat623 wrote:

We just bought at Vidanta last night. Nothing in the contract about how to rescind.....And how to word the letter?

Are you sure there is nothing in your contract or owner's package about how to rescind? Legally it has to be there. Legally, you also have five days to rescind regardless whether the instructions are there or not.

You do not have to be fancy with your wording in your rescission letter. You just have to state that you are exercising your legal right to rescind. Also, all parties who originally signed the contract must sign the rescission letter.

Maybe check this out:

https://tug2.net/timeshare_advice/cancel_timeshare_purchase.html

lancec13 wrote:

lindat623 wrote:

We just bought at Vidanta last night. Nothing in the contract about how to rescind.....And how to word the letter?

Are you sure there is nothing in your contract or owner's package about how to rescind? Legally it has to be there. Legally, you also have five days to rescind regardless whether the instructions are there or not.

You do not have to be fancy with your wording in your rescission letter. You just have to state that you are exercising your legal right to rescind. Also, all parties who originally signed the contract must sign the rescission letter.

Maybe check this out:

https://tug2.net/timeshare_advice/cancel_timeshare_purchase.html

Thanks for your help. I read every word and couldn’t find it but will read again on the morning. Your suggestions are helpful. Will work on it in the morning. It’s ruining my holiday right now but I know I can get out of it thanks to these posts.

lindat623 wrote:

lancec13 wrote:

lindat623 wrote:

We just bought at Vidanta last night. Nothing in the contract about how to rescind.....And how to word the letter?

Are you sure there is nothing in your contract or owner's package about how to rescind? Legally it has to be there. Legally, you also have five days to rescind regardless whether the instructions are there or not.

You do not have to be fancy with your wording in your rescission letter. You just have to state that you are exercising your legal right to rescind. Also, all parties who originally signed the contract must sign the rescission letter.

Maybe check this out:

https://tug2.net/timeshare_advice/cancel_timeshare_purchase.html

Thanks for your help. I read every word and couldn’t find it but will read again on the morning. Your suggestions are helpful. Will work on it in the morning. It’s ruining my holiday right now but I know I can get out of it thanks to these posts.

The 1st thing you should do is call your credit card company & dispute the charge. Then just let your sales person know that you are cancelling the payment & want to cancel your contract. I would do a hand written`letter & bring all your paperwork over to the sales department & have someone sign off on it. And I would even have someone take a video when you are there so you have some back up that you have done this. They can not be trusted. As an aside, if you like the resort, you can go onto the VRBO site (Vacation Rental by owner) & rent a unit for about the same price you would be paying for the maintenance fee stated in your contract.

laurab848 wrote:

The 1st thing you should do is call your credit card company & dispute the charge. Then just let your sales person know that you are cancelling the payment & want to cancel your contract. I would do a hand written`letter & bring all your paperwork over to the sales department & have someone sign off on it.

That is a good idea to dispute the charge with the credit card. However, it is not recommended to go to the sales department. For one thing, that is not the method stipulated in the contract. Secondly, the sales people there will just tell more lies to get the buyer to change her mind.

I would contact Profeco to see what instructions there are to rescind in addition to writing a letter.

I am quite surprised that the rescission instructions can not be found. They might be hidden carefully like Westgate is know for.

I would send a registered receipt return letter cancelling the contract immediately and keep copies so they can't claim they didn't receive notification . Disputing the charge gives you leverage over the resort .

Lisa...if you love what you own, don’t go to updates...that’s what we’ve begun to do. If you’re unclear as to what you own, call the reservation number and they’ll give you all details of your contract. We love our time in Nuevo Vallarta and look forward to our visit each year. Our friends and family love going with us. We own at the Grand Luxx, The Grand Bliss and the Celebration Park..whenever that opens.

We went back to the resort on our own dollar and rescinded last year when we were in this predicament. They are AGGRESSIVE and try to sell to you 3 more times. You gotta get pretty nasty for them to finish the process.

Thanks to everyone who posted reports about Vidanta scams. These reports helped me to request cancellation of the timeshare I purchased. I would like to relate my experience to help other people who were also deceived by Vidanta.

I stayed with my family at the Grand Luxxe Jungle , in the Riviera Maya, from 01/14/19 to 01/26/19, using 2 exchange weeks of Interval International, who I have affiliation since 2013 with Westgate Resorts.

The room I stayed in Vidanta was of high luxury, with a full kitchen. In addition, there were several facilities, such as concierge, swimming pools, golf course, tennis courts, restaurants, shops... Although the price of restaurants and shopping products were above the average, the quality was very good. New facilities were being built. We were impressed with the size of the complex and the quality of the facilities. We could never imagine that this group would be able to apply so many scams to its consumers.

On 01/16/2019, we witnessed the presentation of Vidanta (performed by sales representative Jason Cachaguay). He explained the following advantages over the package we already had:

1) There would be no annuity payment (unlike our situation at Westgate Resorts). FALSE!!! There is an annual fee of USD 400.00 for maintenance of the Vida Lifestyle (kind of a travel agency);

2) When use the timeshare (transferring the week of Vidanta), weeks would duplicate (because of that we accept exchange our 2 weeks (Westgate), for 1 week (Vidanta) FALSE !!! This only occurs when transferring to SFX, for a limited time;

3) SFX had a larger inventory than Interval International and RCI together (a pyramid image was shown , where SFX was at the top). FALSE!!! Although not paying annuity in SFX (gold member), the transfer options are very limited.

We agreed to exchange our current timeshare with a USD 17,000 payment because we would not need to pay more annuities and the exchange options would be much higher. We have a presentation of Jason, where there were trading options in Brazil, Punta Cana, India or Greece.

We tried to use SFX in February/2019. Otherwise, the damage would be much greater. After enabling membership with SFX, we discovered that there were no exchange options in Brazil. We also tried to make the reservation in Punta Cana (only option presented by Jason, who actually existed in SFX). Unfortunately, there was no availability in any week of 2019 (we tried every week). We consulted SFX by email, which confirmed that there were no options in Brazil, unlike the Jason presentation.

At this point, we began our cancellation process with Vidanta on 02/25/2019. We tried phone contact, without success. We sent an e-mail reporting the above facts and requesting the cancellation of the contract. We already paid USD 9,650. We received the answer that the options of "exchange" in Brazil would be through Vida Lifestyle and Interval International. The Vidanta group reported that Jason's presentation is just a draft and is not part of his contract.

If our family was in a Grand Luxxe unit Jungle in the Vidanta Riviera Maya with an exchange made by Interval International, a company which we were affiliated, what would be our motivation for the exchange of our upper unit (double room with kitchen) for a lower unit (junior loft) with an additional payment of $ 17,000? We conclude that the Vidanta group not only agrees with this type of approach, but also order its sellers to use any “not in the contract" artifacts and therefore would not have legal value, to make the sale effective.

We exchanged some messages by e-mail, where Fernanda Longo, from the Vidanta group, has offered progressive discounts to keep us with their product. However, we do not wish to do business with a company that even aware of the abusive and misleading practice of its representatives, claims that there is a signed contract and a contract verification record and that the "draft" has no legal value.

I formally submitted a registered letter (using DHL) to request the contract cancellation. This letter was received on 03/04/2019.

I made the complaint at PROFECO, stating that the group Vidanta acted in bad faith, in violation of Articles 32 and 92 of the Ley Federal de Proteccion al Consumidor because they sold a product that does not exist. I still have not received a response from PROFECO.

I filed a dispute with my credit card, reporting this history. The amounts paid have been reversed, but the process is still under review. In all messages, Fernanda Longo informs that will not refund the amount already paid, threating us they will send the contract to collection agencies and saying that the dispute with the credit card takes about 6 months.

We are awaiting the outcome of this problem.

I bought exactly 7 days ago. I questioned the salesman on day 3 and 4 about concerns I had from reading the contract and these reviews and each time he assured me the things I read were not true with our contract. He also assured me that we would have no problem trading through SFX so we could sill return to our original timeshare in Orlando ( which we traded in to buy Vidanta). Now I have read a few more reviews that say trading power is limited and it sounds like there will be extra exchange fees in future which he did no tell us. I can’t prove this as I have not even received my welcome package. Am I wasting my time trying to send registered letter to rescind 2 days late?

Linda, See statement 11 in your Contract (page 4). After 5 days, it says that you have 3 months to ask for a cancellation, but you will loose part of your money. I asked (registered letter) with 40 days of contract. Probably I will loose part of my money.