Advice for 5 day cancellation policy – Exotic Travel Club, Mexico

I hope I have posted this in the correct place as this is my first (and most panicky) post!

My wife and I signed up for the Exotic Travel Club at the El Dorado Royal resort in Mexico on the 1st October (last Monday). We are now back at home and realized we must have had too much sun / food or drink. I still don’t really understand what we signed up for and had given up any chance of a cancellation because we had signed away this right to cancel the contract.

After a lot of research I have found this is illegal and have since been looking at my options to cancel. After calling PROFECO who were extremely helpful, they advised me that today was the last day I had to cancel. We later found out it was Columbus Day and we cant get a post date recorded. We called PROFECO back and they said it would be OK to the email the request which I have done. I have an e-mail delivery and read receipt and my wife is out now trying to get a fax to them.

Does anyone know if we have any other options to cover our bases if they refuse cancellation? We will file a case with PROFECO if we don’t get a refund in 7 days and have challenged the charge on the credit card.

I will be very happy to share our experiences with others once I get this mess sorted out. It is very unlike me to fall for something like this. I have still not found out if the club is a scam and the resort is one of the best we have been too. However, we now know the salesman lied numerous times during the presentation and told us we could not cancel the policy. Therefore we have no reason to trust what we have bought into.

Many thanks for any advice.

Regards, Clive.

You are lucky,

1st that you figured out that you didn't want to spend that much money on this membership,

2nd that they had you sign away your rights, as that unlawful act will allow you to unwind this transaction even though you have passed the 5 day ror.

This site http://www.mexicantimesharefraud.com/ contains most of the links you will need to get the verbage needed to unwind.

It also has the contact information for Profeco.

Greg

What they sold you is probably not a scam, but it was almost certainly overpriced - way overpriced.

As Greg says, you are very lucky. Get this purchased rescinded. Then come back and read everything you can to determine whether timesharing or something close to it is for you and, if so, how to buy the most for the least cost!!

Thanks Dave and aliikai2,

Do you have any advice on whether an email is legal when asking to get the purchase price rescinded? This is our final day and we dont have the option to post as it is Columbus Day?

According to the Profeco primer, it's legal to cancel via e-mail, although sending the notice via certified mail is also recommended. Thus, you might consider sending a certified letter tomorrow, briefly stating that you are "confirming my purchase cancellation, as stated in the e-mail message and regular mail letter that I sent to you yesterday, October 8, 2007."

Also from the Profeco primer, it appears they have 15 days, not seven, to refund your money or credit back your credit card.

Hi Clive

Welcome to tug.

Do that extra letter via US postal service- certified & return receipt.

Do you have a website in your docs for that travel club? Could you post it here?

Thanks.

I think this is the Exotic Travel Club website, Ken.

Hi guys, thanks again for the assistance, I know that I owe a few people a beer. That is the website for the club that Dave posted.

As an update, we have also sent the letter resisted yesterday as a back up to the e-mails. PROFECO e-mailed me yesterday in response to the cancellation e-mail I had copied them on. They also advised to send a follow up letter (as you guys have), that they had my cancellation on record but they can’t do anything unless I have had no success in around 20 days. So far they have been exceptional in their advice and accessibility.

I had a call from our representative at the travel club yesterday and she said that she was upset I had lodged such a complaint, that they would refund my money by the end of the week but she would like my to e-mail her saying that I was not lied to so she would not get in trouble with her superiors. I said I would send an e-mail that we were not lied to by her after I received the refund.

To put the whole story out there for anyone who is interested, we agreed to go the Exotic Travel Club presentation while on vacation at the El Dorado Royal. We were not told that anyone would be trying to sell us anything and that we would be taking a tour of the more expensive rooms and to let us know about their other resorts. It would take 90mins and we would get $150 in vouchers for this trip and $1000 off our next trip. We were introduced to the salesperson and he took a while asking us about ourselves which is when we worked out they were trying to sell us something. After a couple of hours we had agreed to a contract with 20 explorer weeks and 20 exotic weeks for $5900 plus $400 admin. We were also told (and made to initial later) that because this was a ‘special promotion’, we were not entitled to a cancellation at any time. It is very unlike me to be swayed by such a deal but the fact the resort was very well respected, I figured the deal to be good. It was not until later that I started to question some of the things we had been told in the presentation. When we were quoted a club members price for a return trip, my wife asked if it included airfare to which the salesman responded ‘yes’. We later found this to be untrue – a big factor in deciding if the deal was going to save us money. Our rep who completed the paperwork afterwards did explain all the pricing to us but we had still been lied to by the sales person. We were also joined by a more senior sales person during the presentation who said numerous times that the company had been operating for 25 year so could be trusted. We found out later that is has been operating for 3 years. When I explained this to the rep on the phone yesterday she responded that he must have said ‘he has been in the industry for 25 years’. Both my wife and I confirm that this is not true.

The most controversial aspect is the 5 day business day ‘cooling off period’ offered by Mexican law. I realized that I was not happy with the fact that we had been lied to but put it down to a learning experience as I thought I had no option to cancel. I was doing some research into the travel club on Monday and came across a post by KenK where he said that it was not legal to make someone waive this 5 day right. I then contacted PROFECO (Best number I found was (+52) 55 5211-1723 and always found someone who speaks English for me) who said that as I sighed on the 1 October then I could still cancel the policy on the 8th (5 business days after signing). When I explained my 5 day right to the travel club rep yesterday she said that they were in fact allowed to waive this right as it was a ‘resale of an existing contract’ and not a new one, although they would still honor the cancellation. I don’t expect this to be true and have written to PROFECO to confirm. If anyone knows of this then please let me know.

After a lot of searching the web I cannot find anything to very much in favor or against Exotic Travel Club. The resort was outstanding and one of the best all inclusive we have ever been to. My concern it that if the travel club deals are good then why the need for the lies and deceit, specifically in regard to the 5 day waiver policy. If we had not been lied to, we may have still been happy members of the club.

I know that we are not the first and certainly not the last done this road but I hope our experience is of value to someone. I will follow up with the result of our cancellation. Please feel free to PM me with any questions.

It has introduced me to the brighter side of timeshare so I will be surly reading through this board for some advice and good deals.

Cheers,

Clive

Thanks Dave and Clive. I want to post it on the TA site where people were questioning about it. I never could find it.

Ken / Dave,

Sorry to resurrect this post but I just wanted to thank you again and let you know we received a full refund of the deposit the very next day. We have been waiting for the 1st November to make sure they did not try and take out the rest, and they have not.

I still think it is a legitimate club but with some very underhand sales practices! Your advice has saved us an expensive lesson in life!

Cheers,

Clive

Exotic Travel Club

We have been to El Dorado Royale 2x this year and are owners at the Presidential level. It is not a scam. Yes, it's expensive. But you get what you pay for. We love the resort and had the best vacation of our lives there.

I also know that depending on who one works with and how good one negotiates, weeks are purchased at lots of different prices. Don't have a heart attack but we own 400 (yes 400) weeks and did not pay 10 times what you did.

I feel bad that you were lied to, but that person should be fired. We've never experienced that. They've always bent over backwards to work with us.

Let me say that prior to ETC, since 1993 we owned 2 weeks of a Fairfield resort in Florida . We were not inexperienced or naive timeshare owners. At this time of our lives, we were thrilled to get rid of our maintenance fees and ties to Fairfield. They were not too upfront with us about hurricane damage etc.

Karisma Hotels are world class and ETC has a great website with information and specials at all the Karisma Resorts. You can still exchange with RCI.

Nancy

Advice

hy there
Could you please tell me how this membership works as my friends and I have bought into the exotic club 6 weeks ago after signing up at the el dorado royale.
We are not gettting much help via e mail form the verification officers whom we dealt with at the el dorado royale, and we are finding it difficult to see how there are savings to be made.

We paid £2500 per couple for a 2 week stay in Sept 08 and when we look at the prices via the membership, whilst there is a saving on the hotel portion, by the time we add the cost of flights there is no saving. We paid $12000 dollars for 60 weeks over a 25 year term and have been told we cant have our money back as the 5 day rule of cancelling in Mexico has gone. Its funny how this was not put to us at the time....plase help with any advice possible.

njwhite said:

We have been to El Dorado Royale 2x this year and are owners at the Presidential level. It is not a scam. Yes, it's expensive. But you get what you pay for. We love the resort and had the best vacation of our lives there.

I also know that depending on who one works with and how good one negotiates, weeks are purchased at lots of different prices. Don't have a heart attack but we own 400 (yes 400) weeks and did not pay 10 times what you did.

I feel bad that you were lied to, but that person should be fired. We've never experienced that. They've always bent over backwards to work with us.

Let me say that prior to ETC, since 1993 we owned 2 weeks of a Fairfield resort in Florida . We were not inexperienced or naive timeshare owners. At this time of our lives, we were thrilled to get rid of our maintenance fees and ties to Fairfield. They were not too upfront with us about hurricane damage etc.

Karisma Hotels are world class and ETC has a great website with information and specials at all the Karisma Resorts. You can still exchange with RCI.

Nancy

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