Ocean Beach Club

[pedro47]

The Gold Key owner is renovating the Old Cavalier Hotel in Va Beach. It will a five star luxury hotel.

 

[DRI Hater]

Yeah, those are pretty expensive residences. Someone who is broke, seems to be doing pretty well. I want to be that broke. I am serious about getting a legal action going against these people, though. I can't stand how a sales agent acts like you are their captive prisoner and throws threats out to get you to listen to their stupid sales pitch. Once I told her I wasn't spending another penny and expressed that she was full of it, she got nasty and said that she had us for 55 minutes (mind you, we sat through their breakfast for over an hour). I told her I just wasn't going to listen to her anymore. She added in that she would just charge us for the 3 day event that we just had. I laughed and had to keep asking what 3 day event she was talking about. Turns out, that was for people they suckered in to their pressure sales pitch. Let me tell you, I was livid and ready to have the police come pull me out of that place. These people are so out of touch. You don't get nasty with people you are trying to get MORE money out of for the same property they already own. Not only that, she claimed that more than half of the people in the sales office were idiots. Talk about having your company's best interest in mind. This is someone that I want to do business with and just hand over my money to! Please, take my money and run with it!!! Um, not. She went on to tell us that we were going to be assessed a $5,000 fee for repairs on the Ocean Beach Club property, since GoldKey let the maintenance lapse and now it has a leaking roof. She threw out a number of $1 million dollars for the repair. She went on to give us a story about how DRI is so awesome. During the last hurricane, most of the Ocean Beach Club was ruined from the roof leak and they called people to tell them not to come. They offered DRI folks the ability to go to another location, while deeded folks were left stuck without a place. I wanted to get up a smack the living snot out of this woman. She tried telling us that DRI wasn't in the market to own any property and they didn't need the money from renting out empty units, but turned around and starting saying that they did about 5 minutes later. I told her that the lies were making me angry and according to her I was screwed either way. I would have to pay the extra repair fee of $5k, or pay them money to take my deed and treat me like a fool. I began looking out the window and watching the activating not in the building. She finally brought the paper that we "had" to sign before we could leave. Turns out, it is just a form saying that we are turning down their awesome deal. Are you serious? You can't tell me that this was important enough to anger a deeded owner that you are trying to buy out of the building you are planning to gut out. Of course, she tried telling us about some other resort that DRI had taken over and spent a bunch of money. She said DRI isn't going to run and tell the papers about how much money that they saved their points owners, but she forget that she was quick to point out that the deeded owners were the ones footing the bill earlier. Which means that DRI isn't the special people she is trying to paint them to be, it is the deeded owners that footed the bill and made it possible. This story keeps coming back to the old shell company game. You get investors to buy into your idea and then you run with the money. Doing searches on line shows that this is what is happening. She even admitted that DRI only buys resorts that show signs of distress. That sounds like disaster to me. Someone is going to foot the bill. She made it clear, that it was the deeded owners. She was trying so hard to get us to buy into their points. She said if we tried to trade with Interval International, that it would fail. Funny how we always hear that, but II has always been there for me. I checked and they are still there. Oddly enough, we are able to book almost anywhere we want. As long as there are people like me who are footing the bill to keep the doors open, I think it will be alright.

Anyway,

I already booked my stay for the owners meeting that is coming up. I will be reviewing my contract and contacting a lawyer. These folks toss lies around and think the nasty pressure sales will win someone over. I have news for them. It stops now. Even if it becomes my mission to expose their ever lasting lie to get them out of the business for good. I know I am not alone and I will get others to join in the fight.

To the end, DRI is starting to nickel and dime everyone. They play on words. Dinner cruise is a ride on a sail boat with snacks. They turn to threats when you don't agree with them. It is extremely frustrating. For those that say it isn't a pressure sales pitch for them, I'm glad that you were a lucky individual. Our account was "red flagged" according to them. She never pulled our file to go over it with us, until I told her I was leaving. She wanted to just go over our options and not let us get taken by an old resort scam. I laugh at her. I would rather be taken by GoldKey, who was always nice to us, than their nasty attitudes and sad faced staff that greeted us at every corner.

Best of luck to them!

 

[RLS50]

It is true that Diamond was buying out distressed properties over the last 7+ years or so to grow their network and try to deliver growth and profits. But Gold Key was different, it wasn't going bankrupt like past properties DRI had purchased, and most of the former Gold Key properties were in decent shape or fairly newer. What Gold Key did represent however was a collection of properties in a high demand oceanfront location where annual fees had been kept very modest ($600 for 1BR/1BA to $800 per year for 2BR/2BA). DRI seems to have a track record of looking for resort collections where fees were $600 to $800 per year and buying them. It appears they see the potential in those properties to double those annual fees and justify those increased fees to owners as "Diamondizing" those properties and elevating the standards.

I think what's different about the Gold Key purchase is that most owners were very happy with Gold Key. The properties weren't dumps in a total state of disrepair. So Diamond hasn't been able to come in and impress anybody. In fact most owners would probably agree that owners are getting less service and less quality from Diamond for higher fees than they got from Gold Key for lower fees.

Just ignore the sales side of the business. Never attend another update. You are not required to no matter how much they try to get you into one.

I think what ex-Gold Key owners should focus on now is the resort operations side of the business. What I have found most disappointing is how difficult it has been for DRI to provide even the same level of services that Gold Key provided. I know DRI will tell us they are trying, and I believe that to be true at some level. But after 18+ months of taking over, and after 10% increases to maintenance fees that last 2 years (with that money going to Diamond for their management and admin fees and not the resort), Diamond has taken way too long to get things running the way any resort should be.

At this point I could not recommend being a Diamond owner to anyone. The only reason we continue to hold out and hope for improvement is that Virginia Beach works for our family and Diamond has a monopoly position there. If there was a competing Marriott down the street from OBC or Oceanaire we would have been gone already.