Just a very short article today that reinforces why there are so many court cases currently taking place in the States. First off, we would say, as we have said on many previous occasions, there are numerous fraudulent supposed timeshare exit companies operating in both Europe and the USA. TCA wholeheartedly endorse exposing them and watching the authorities shut them down, the court case we will look at briefly involves a rather dubious company but that’s not the focus of this brief article.
Physician heal thyself
We have lost count of how many times we have stated that if the global timeshare industry adopted sensible cost effective exit strategies then the entire exit industry, both good and bad would collapse overnight, but for reasons best known to developers; in most cases no such strategies exist.
Rather than work with their timeshare owners to alleviate the problem, developers would rather go down the legal route which is rather stupid because, as soon as they close one down, another two pop up, a bit like “whack a mole” in an amusement arcade.
Below we place an extract from a court case in the States mounted by Bluegreen Vacations Unlimited and Bluegreen Vacations Corporation in a complaint for damages and injunctive relief against various defendants involved in timeshare exit collectively known as Timeshare Compliance. The court document runs to some 54 pages, buried on page 28 we found a statement from the prosecution argument:
Forgive us if we fail to understand English but does item 124 clearly state:
there is no absolute way to “remove all liability from your timeshare contract”.
Well that about says it all! If that statement alone doesn’t confirm that there appears to be no way of escaping the clutches of a Bluegreen timeshare contract, we don’t know what does.
TCA Comment
Every time we report on cases involving so called Tortious Interference we ask why is valuable court time being wasted? There is such a simple fix but one timeshare developers are obviously keen to avoid. Apart for having to take some of the blame and responsibility for the plethora of scam exit companies, developers must also accept that the extremely punitive idea of locking owners in forever is counterproductive not only to their own reputation, but also that of the industry as a whole.
Bearing in mind that the USA has a reputation for being the land of litigation, it surprises us the “perpetuity” clause doesn’t contravene one or more laws of civil liberty, if not, it should do. To most Americans, Spain is probably thought of as a third world country, however using law, Spain has limited the term of timeshare to 50 years, still a lifetime for some, but at least a contractual end date is included in statute timeshare law.
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