Spinnaker Snafu Unresolved lost two years of use and Interval Deposits
I am writing this memo to document the problems I had with Spinnaker and Interval today and yesterday.
In 2019 we purchased a timeshare studio from Royal Floridian that was upgraded to a one-bedroom in the South Royal Floridian the next year. That latter purchase was subject to substantial fraud which is another subject that I will address separately.
Apparently both timeshares gave us a 1-year membership in interval international. Also in 2020 we were solicited by Interval International to purchase a 6-year membership for the price of 5 years (exact terms not remembered at this time but was a good deal.
I have had extended conversations with both Interval and Spinnaker in that things did not seem right to me. I do not keep either Spinakers or intervals records for them although I do have my memory, email and payments records. I was unware
that Spinnaker had activated a new one year membership for me and that it had a different number that the six year II membership until yesterday. Prior to this I do not recall ever being advised of this number.
Last week I called to deposit the 2023 week and was informed yesterday and this morning by Spinnaker that I could not do so because my Interval membership had expired. I also discovered from them that my '21 and '22 weeks had not been accepted by Interval for the same reason. I was then givien an II number that I did not recognize. This took several minutes to find out what was wrong. I told the lady that I had paid my maintenance fees and I expected those weeks to have been deposited with II. I was then unaware that I had two different active interval numbers. They told me that they had left a message for me that informed me that my interval membership was not active but I do not recall receiving it on my phone. If I had, I would have definitely taken action to resolve the problem.
More or less I was told by Spinnaker that the maintenance fees and taxes that I have been paying for the past few years was lost because we did not use those weeks. That is almost $2,000 plus the loss of use of 2 1years of interval.
Spinnaker does not permit its members to deposit their timeshare weeks directly to Interval in that we must first request that Spinnaker do so which I did for the past few years. Then Spinnaker takes over and deposits the weeks for us with their designated Interval International membership. They used the WRONG membership number that they signed us up for one year.
When we signed up for interval we gave our current phone numbers and email addresses along with my 54 Elm Street Worcester Massachusetts address. I updated our address as we moved to New Mexico. Why was this problem not corrected. Why must I lose 3 years of interval benefits and why have we lost 2 or 3 years of our Royal Floridian? What can I do to regain the two weeks we lost.
Finally yesterday afternoon after the 5th call to Spinnaker, I reached Mr. Andrew Lambert, an excellent Spinnaker agent, who helped to discover the inside facts why Spinnaker lost my supposedly II deposits by them. He then contacted Mildred with Spinaker's II desk and after about an hour, she was able to merge "my" two accounts which were the expired account that I never knew existed and the original Spinnaker account that I upgraded to a six year membership. I did pay $49.50 to extend the expired account basic membership for which I could either be reimbursed or extend my basic membership to our Gold membership for one year. Both our timeshares were put under the original membership and our Spinnaker listing was upgraded to the one bed room apt in the newer section after remaining uncorrected for three years. Andrew advised that he would get back with me today as to my request to be restored the two years. He said his supervisor had only offered one year.
I also spoke to II Customer Services which continued to blames Spinnaker withe Snafu while Spinnaker blamed them. I have been told that an II Customer Relations supervisor willing call me within 24-72 hours. Also Spinnaker's Customer Relations David has not returned my 3 calls to him. Should I sue and/or ask for resolution with the Florida timeshare oversight board or Attorney General Consumer Affairs attorneys? Anyone else with the same or similar problem? Jim Savage