We have just been sent a copy of an email received by a concerned Macdonald’s owner, who was sent this update by the Macdonald’s Owners Group.
Dear member,
As promised, I am now able to give an update on the current situation at Villacana following the vote that occurred last Friday.
The vote was clearly a disappointment for those of us who wish to remain on fixed week/fixed unit contracts at the resort and looking at the figures, it will come as no surprise that MacDonald’s were only able to secure the 75% of votes needed by hijacking the votes of the “Options Club” members and casting these for their own proposal. I will let others judge the morality of depriving “Options Club” members of the right to cast a vote as they saw fit, especially as the vote this fundamentally changed the contractual provisions of their individual contracts.
We know that many of you were disappointed that you were unable to support the Alternative Way Forward at the ballot and were surprised to hear the Chairman of the meeting (Simon Jackson) state that the documentation had been “sent to Liverpool and not signed for by any McDonald’s employee”. We can state with absolute certainty that the Notice of Motion was served on MacDonald’s at their Aviemore address with a copy being sent to the registered office of the company, in Edinburgh, on 10th November 2015 and records clearly show that it was delivered properly and correctly on 11th November 2015.
The Notice of Motion stated that members should be allowed to vote for the Alternative Way Forward, also that the vote should be split so that members who are desperate to leave would not unduly and unfairly influence the result for members who wished to stay and that the vote should be conducted by “a reputable third-party and independent ballot services provide” so as to ensure absolute and incontrovertible transparency. MacDonald’s ignored these very reasonable requests and we are currently seeking legal advice as to whether or not the vote might be declared invalid.
Anyway, post-mortems are for the dead and the campaign, although wounded, is nowhere near dead! We are now working hard on the strategy for our next move, although we are conscious that many older members want to leave quickly and we need to ensure that they are not prevented by any of our future actions from doing so. We need to ride this punch and come back off the ropes with a greater resolve to fight for the rights of those who want to continue as members, or fight their case in court.
In a perverse way, the vote on Friday actually helped the MRLAG litigation! With such a large number of owners also being members of the MRLAG, the vote on Friday has now brought us into line with the three other Spanish clubs who voted two years ago and in legal terms that greatly simplifies the legal action.
Previously, many pre-1999 owners felt that they did not have a strong case against MacDonald’s as the provisions of Spanish law 42/1998 appeared not to cover ownership prior to January 1999. The good news is that having had their timeshare contracts converted to a “floating points” scheme that is unlawful in Spain, the strength of the case for pre-1999 owners has now substantially and unquestionably increased.
We came extremely close to stopping MacDonald’s plans for Villacana, on Friday last; in fact, we came the closest of all of the clubs to upsetting their plans and it was only through clever manipulation of the rules that MacDonald’s won the day. At the risk of meeting my metaphors I strongly suspect that they will be ‘hoist with their own petard’ and that this will be a genuine ‘Pyrrhic victory’ for them!
Onwards and upwards…
Best wishes
“Villacana Forum” <administrator@macdonaldowners.org.uk>
There are currently 354 Villacana timeshare weeks up for sale on the website of Worldwide Timeshare Hypermarket. These clients would have all paid £249 for the website listing option, and possibly more if they opted for the “premium listing”. This is a nice £88,000 in exchange for a template webpage.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk