Cancellation by Diamond Resort

[cdm375 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close cdm375]

Can someone please tell me what my recourse is? I purchased in Epic Vacation Club in 3/2000. I paid my loan off within 2 months of purchase & have been paying my annual assessments yearly. I paid my 2008 assessment fees but apparently not the entire amount. During the beginning of January I moved & didn’t receive any notice of the additional amount. Now Diamond Resorts is telling me that my entire Vacation Club is CANCELLED because of non-payment of $217.00. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Should I seek legal advice? Has anyone had this happened to them?

HELP!

[Spence Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Spence]

Can someone please tell me what my recourse is? I purchased in Epic Vacation Club in 3/2000. I paid my loan off within 2 months of purchase & have been paying my annual assessments yearly. I paid my 2008 assessment fees but apparently not the entire amount. During the beginning of January I moved & didn’t receive any notice of the additional amount. Now Diamond Resorts is telling me that my entire Vacation Club is CANCELLED because of non-payment of $217.00. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Should I seek legal advice? Has anyone had this happened to them? HELP!

These guys are sharks and they have their documents written to take care of DRI. You were converted to the Trust when EPIC was bought out by Sunterra. The Trust provides advantages only to DRI, the salesman will try to tell you that it protects you from MFs jumps but in the long run you just pay more because it all has to be paid and now you're paying for the Trust to be managed, too. You are an example of why they have the Trust and don't sell deeds anymore where foreclosure is a legal hassle for DRI.

Your recourse would be to email to all the addresses below

Phone and Email Contact Details

For general inquiries
generalinquiries@diamondresorts.com

Feel free to contact our
Chairman and CEO
Stephen J. Cloobeck at
chairman@diamondresorts.com

For information regarding
membership in THE ClubSM
theclub@diamondresorts.com

explain your situation, ask for forgiveness and reinstatement, ask how much you owe with interest and penalties. I assure you that any legal recourse taken by you would be a waste of your money.

Please let us know what the answer is/was.

[cdm375 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close cdm375]

Update on cancellation

I took your suggestion & emailed everyone. I got a canned reply from the chairman of the board. I still haven't heard from anyone.

I was very upset about the fact that they just cancelled me. I started doing some research & the fact is I did pay the $217 back in May. Diamond Resorts had me marked incorrectly. My membership should of never been cancelled. I got that all resolved.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

I assure you that any legal recourse taken by you would be a waste of your money.

Please let us know what the answer is/was.

I don't know about that. Since DRI can not prove the member received notification of the unexpected special assessment, the member may have recourse against DRI. Since those notices were not sent out registered mail and had to be signed for, they can not prove receipt of the billing. Therefore they may not have the right to cancel the membership since the member may not have received proper notice of an unexpected and unplanned SA.

IMO, the member may very well have recourse and DRI may have no choice but to accept payment and reinstate the membership.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

I took your suggestion & emailed everyone. I got a canned reply from the chairman of the board. I still haven't heard from anyone.

I was very upset about the fact that they just cancelled me. I started doing some research & the fact is I did pay the $217 back in May. Diamond Resorts had me marked incorrectly. My membership should of never been cancelled. I got that all resolved.

It's not unusual for DRI to "misplace" money or send out a bill that is not due. I recently paid an unexpected bill for $155 that should not have been charged to me. I paid it and then asked them to research this error. They have agreed that the bill was in error and are suppose to refund the payment to me. As of my last CC statement I have not seen the refund.

ALWAYS keep a record of payments made with these guys. They seem to have issues with billing correctly or finding the money once it's been sent in and accepted.

[tonyg Goomba & Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close tonyg]

Sounds like a company financially on the ropes (again). Looks like the accounting department is either incompetent or ethically questionable.

[winger Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close winger]

Sounds like a company financially on the ropes (again). Looks like the accounting department is either incompetent or ethically questionable.

how nice to go through life knowing you are either a dumbanal or a crook. your mama must be proud.

if i were captain of the ship, i'd get rid of the acct dept crew.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

This is one of the reasons to always buy only deeded timeshare.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Sounds like a company financially on the ropes (again). Looks like the accounting department is either incompetent or ethically questionable.

DRI's accounting dept. has always been somewhat questionable as far as I've been concerned. They're not the only timeshare company to suffer these problems. I've read others post that, when having to pay MF's ahead of time to be able to resrve and deposit next years unit for exchange, they've been billed and had to provide proof of earlier payment. Like TS salesmen having difficulty telling the truth it seems to be more of a systemic problem.

DRI took over one of the largest timeshare companies in the world. That company had issues of it's own. DRI was a relatively small player in the game with only two resorts in one building and their accounting dept. wasn't always all that hot. There's bound to be problems that are going to take a long time to straighten out.

DRI's purchase of Sunterra was a VERY large bite of the apple. I'm wondering if it wasn't to big of a bite to take. We see improvements in some area's but other area's really seem to be having problems. I was overbilled, and paid, for this years club membership fee's. They've acknowledged that it was a mistake and have agreed to reimburse those fee's. It hasn't happened yet. At this point it's only been three weeks so I'm not as concerned as if it were 8 weeks but I am watching.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

This is one of the reasons to always buy only deeded timeshare.

It's certainly one of the main reasons I don't intend to ever belong to a trust program. I prefer to own what I own. Not pay someone a lot of money and then "trust" that they'll do the right thing.

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

This is one of the reasons to always buy only deeded timeshare.

When Steve is right he's really right. I'd never own anything except a deeded timeshare - never a trust or other non-deeded club thing.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

When Steve is right he's really right. I'd never own anything except a deeded timeshare - never a trust or other non-deeded club thing.

On the other hand, if you want to get out of timeshare, don't want the hassle of trying to sell your timeshare and don't want to pay one of those PCC's to take them off your hands, all you have to do is miss a payment and they cancel your membership. I suppose that's the ONE advantage to owning a trust. Especially one as aggressive as DRI seems to be in canceling memberships to take the trust points back.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

If I were a Bluegreen owner, I think I would be studying how the documents governing the plan are designed and what it takes to change them. Some of these management practices do seem highly questionable from a member standpoint. There would certainly be a concern, if it were possible, for DRI to amend the Bluegreen system to make it more highhanded like DRI/Sunterra. I would strongly suspect that many things can be amended by trustees who are effectively in the pocket of the developer, although the trustees are probably nominally elected by members. THe larger the organization, the more difficult it is for an independent candidate to run for director / trustee. Management will almost always gather the proxies and win.

Your best bet would be if DRI planned to continue running two seperate clubs but with reciprocal priveleges rather than trying to merge them. That would at least create less pressure to make Bluegreen conform in every respect to the way DRI does things.

[donlig Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close donlig]

Well, we just found today that our membership was cancelled as well. I know is our fault for non-payment but had some hardships in the beginning of the month and now that we are ready, no luck. We followed Spence advice and e-mailed the chairman plus general questions.
Because, we had two accounts one was paid in full and the other one we still making payments. Here is the deal they took the one the was paid off, and left the other one. However we can not even make the maintanance fee for the other one, the system is not allowing it. They told us to keep making our monthly payment, but we are considering just letting it go. If we can not work something out.
We will keep you posted.
This seems like a fight between Goliath and David.

[Spence Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Spence]

Well, we just found today that our membership was cancelled as well. I know is our fault for non-payment but had some hardships in the beginning of the month and now that we are ready, no luck. We followed Spence advice and e-mailed the chairman plus general questions.
Because, we had two accounts one was paid in full and the other one we still making payments. Here is the deal they took the one the was paid off, and left the other one. However we can not even make the maintanance fee for the other one, the system is not allowing it. They told us to keep making our monthly payment, but we are considering just letting it go. If we can not work something out.
We will keep you posted.
This seems like a fight between Goliath and David.

The unfortunate thing for the 'owner' is that DRI seems to have all there i's dotted and their t's crossed. Sunterra knew what they were doing when they set up the Trust and I've been warning about it since it came into being no matter what someone else says. The salesmen tells you how wonderful the Trust is and it protects you from individual resort's MF jumps but in reality over the long haul, you are just paying more for another layer of management. What it really allows is these foreclosures without having to go to the court house. A recent post on Street Talk by someone I must assume works for DRI in some capacity but not close to these cancellations says they personally know of 24 cases such as yours.