News has reached us of yet one more supposed company peddling the Hilton Diamond scam. Rather than TCA outlining the approach we will leave that to the words of our enquirer:
“I was cold called by a company called Dispute Resolution Contract Services at Abbeygate Business Centre, Luton. They claimed to be acting on behalf of Hilton International Resorts to recover unpaid maintenance fees.
I terminated my membership of Diamond in December 2018 and received a letter from them confirming that I no longer was a member or was liable for further maintenance fees.
The caller claimed that I had not responded to approaches from Hilton, not that I had been approached by them.
I naturally told them that I owed nothing and they said they would inform Hilton.
I suspect that they will contact me again and say that their legal department will represent me, for a fee, to conclude the matter”.
Fortunately as may be gleaned from the text, this enquirer had spotted the obvious scam. For sure they won’t give up even though they have fallen at the first fence and as rightly predicted by our enquirer there will be further contact and there will be a request for fees up front to do a job that’s already been done.
So who are Dispute Resolution Contract Services? Let’s engage the investigation team.
TCA Investigation
This will be an extremely short investigation. On checking with Companies House, no record was found for a company of that name. We did find a Dispute Resolution Contracting Services Ltd, however this company was dissolved in 2020 and was based in Smethwick not Luton.
Then on to the website, easy…. there isn’t one Back to the address quoted, unlike our normal address search where literally thousands of companies seem to be operating from the address (virtual office), according to Endole Suite there are only six companies at this address and guess what? No sign of Dispute Resolution Contract Services:
Unfortunately we didn’t get the contact telephone number but pound to a penny it would be a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) number. So as we appear to have a company that says it’s in Luton but isn’t, even if the dialling code is Luton (01582) they could be operating from anywhere, Tenerife would be our best guess.
TCA comment
Yet again we see the Hilton Diamond scam rearing its ugly head being perpetrated by a company that doesn’t exist without a website to check them, operating from an address that doesn’t seem to have them as registered, all in all nothing adds up.
We shudder to think how much money has been stolen by this viral scam, we know from experience that more often than we would like, victims contact us for advice after falling for this obvious fraud and have already paid money.
Diamond Resorts have certainly been the victim of a serious data breach and in our opinion must take partial responsibility for the illegal activities this breach has caused. The very least they could do is flag up a warning on their website but better still write or email ex owners and warn them, will they? We very much doubt it.
Data breach is a very serious matter and one which the UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) takes an extremely hard stance on. Fines running into hundreds of thousands can be levelled against the most severe cases. As a consumer there are reporting channels for those who have been, or nearly been scammed. Apart from the normal such as Action Fraud, Trading Standards and Citizens Advice there is also the ICO. Separately from data breach, nuisance phone calls can also be reported to the ICO, you can make a start by following this link.
Once again we will finish with our regular mantra:
No one ever lost money putting the phone down on a cold caller!
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