Well the New Year has got off to a roaring start in the timeshare scam field but we have to say, our latest investigation tops the lot or être le bouquet as they may say in France, why mention France, you may ask, well all will become clear later.
We received a communication from a French owner of points with Club la Costa. The lady had received a sales contract to sell her points to none other than the mighty Wyndham. Apparently Wyndham have offered her €22,680 for her 2,500 points, bargain except the whole thing is fake or to give it the correct name fraud. Naturally this piqued our interest, so the investigation began.
TCA investigation
We were lucky to receive a copy of the supposed sales contract. It appears that our scammer is targeting French owners at CLC as we later discovered at least four other French nationals had been approached. The contract is all in French so took a bit of translating but as to be expected it was all “déchets” or in English, RUBBISH.
Leaving the content aside for a while, our first question would be, why would Wyndham be buying CLC points. As we write, the only connection that CLC have with Wyndham is a franchise agreement and operational partnership. A further point would be that Wyndham won’t even buy back their own points, as owners will testify, so why on earth would they buy someone else’s? Maybe they are trying to take over CLC through the back door, more déchets to be filed firmly in le poubelle, timeshare points are not corporate assets they are merely a form of digital currency that in reality have no value.
As per usual, the communication made no reference to any monies payable but as we know, when you have the mark on the hook, that’s when the monetary requests start.
The jigsaw is a little confusing in that we have the largest timeshare company in the world approaching French owners via a UK intermediary to buy points. If this were really true, as Wyndham have their head office in Orlando, Florida, do we not think that these transactions would be carried out by one of the myriad of US lawyers they have on tap, if it was any element of truth, of course they would.
The UK connection
Apparently the whole sales process is being handled by a company called Property Link based in Bath, Somerset, well that’s what is says on the contract. Problem number one, the Companies House registration number quoted doesn’t exist:
Property Link is in fact a bona fide estate agency and TCA reached out to them, more to inform them that their corporate identity (sort of) was being fraudulently used. A conversation then ensued with a Director of the company and we were quite surprised that he was already aware of the scam having received several enquiries himself. Naturally he is going to take action and report this fraud in order to protect the long years of corporate reputation building being threatened by this fraudster.
The name Paul Drenford is the supposed representative of Property Link, this name is no doubt false and the Director confirmed that no current or past employee bears that name. TCA checked the corporate logos and it’s easy to spot the fake:
The logo on the left belongs to the real Property Link, on the right the fraudster. The eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted that the fake logo is just a standard downloadable freebie and looks remarkably like Chanel.
At this juncture we would like to thank the Director of Property Link for his assistance with our investigation and would also like to confirm that this legitimate company has nothing to do with the perpetration of this fraud.
TCA comment
Unlike many timeshare scams we have investigated, this one is far from sophisticated. The British public are wising up to timeshare fraud so maybe this fraudster thought to cast his net into parts foreign may yield better results. Common sense would present the first and most prominent question, why would Wyndham Hotels & Resorts whose net worth as of January 05, 2023 is $6.27B use a tiny estate agency in Bath to handle this? Well they wouldn’t, would they?
As the target market appears to be French citizens, why not use one of the country’s top law firms such as Gide Loyrette Nouel , or US Attorneys.
Like all these scams, it all looks good on the surface but when digging down the whole thing falls apart. If you are approached with an offer to buy your timeshare or points, no matter where, run for the hills for as sure as day follows night, it will be a scam.
Once again our thanks go out to our French reader who made us aware, and also for the assistance offered from the real Property Links.
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