# DRI - Customer Service



## JMAESD84 (Mar 3, 2009)

DRI - The Club sent out my annual maintenance fee statement late, with Interest and late fees already assigned (including a past due....due date).

I'm not a member of The Club, but I'm a first year owner of a resale week at a resort that is managed by The Club.

I paid the maintenance fees (less the interest and late fees) and made my 2009 reservation.  The supervisor,  I spoke with submitted a request to have the interest and late fees credited.  This apparently can only be authorized by the corporate office which they or you can't contact directly.  While waiting corporate response my deposit of these weeks with an independant exchange is held up because of the balance due.

Does anyone have contact information for corporate customer service?  

Or any experience dealing with The Club when problems like this arise?


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## dougp26364 (Mar 3, 2009)

First, pay the late fee's and interest, THEN argue the merit of them. It will only get worse and, you don't have much of a leg to stand on. If you don't get a bill for you car insurance and you don't pay it, you still don't have any car insurance. It is not their responsiblity to bill you. It's your responsibility to know when the bill is due. This might not seem right but, that's the way it is.

DRI is not completely without a heart. If you present a valid arguement with compelling evidence and, if you're persistant enough without becoming obnoxious, you might get the late fee's and interest refunded or credited to your account. But in the mean time, pay what you owe. You admitted you were late with your payment. Therefore you know that the payment was not on time. You own the week and you know it has MF's. You know that there are penalities for paying late. It's your responsiblity to make payments on time and to know when they are due. It is not coporate America's responsibility to hold the hand of every consumer out there.


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## JMAESD84 (Mar 6, 2009)

dougp26364 said:


> First, pay the late fee's and interest, THEN argue the merit of them.



I will do this if they keep me waiting any longer who knows when they'll get around to a resolution.

I did mention that I purchased this week resale and it closed in June of 2008.
My first usage was for 2009.  I had never been billed by DRI for this or anyother resort previously.  I was anticipating that MF's might be due January 1st for 2009 but did not know this for certain.  

My first statement from DRI had an Invoice Date of 2/10/2009 and a Due Date of 1/16/2009 while including past due fees.  I happened to be in Las Vegas 2/13-2/21 and opened this mail when I returned.  I paid the MF on 2/23/09 when I called and questioned why my first bill was late and not even issued until after the stated Due Date of 1/16/09, I was told some of the invoices where not issued on time.  I requested the credit of these late fees.

What I find lacking in their customer serivce is that they have no one at the billing office who has the authority to resolve something small and simple like this.  They record it, make a recommendation and submit it for corporate approval.

No sense making a big deal about it.   I was just wondering if this poor customer serivce was the norm for DRI.


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## pgnewarkboy (Mar 7, 2009)

There are posters who have had problems with customer service. That does not mean that service is uniformly bad.  I have never had a problem but that does not mean the service is uniformly good. IMHO most businesses could and should improve customer service - including DRI.

The best way to enjoy what you bought is to give it a chance and learn how to use the system.  Learning the system is key to enjoying timesharing.  I tend to get a bit philosophical but have learned over the years that managing expectations is also important to enjoying what you have.  

Many years ago I landed a beautiful suite at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC - for free!  The suite was indeed beautiful but the city traffic noise was unbearable and my wife and I couldn't sleep.  We had a wonderful weekend anyway and will always remember that trip.  

My apologies for rambling on about something that you probably realize anyway.


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## dougp26364 (Mar 8, 2009)

JMAESD84 said:


> I was just wondering if this poor customer serivce was the norm for DRI.



Oh! Well in that case, IMHO, yes. 

After reading some posts by others who have had issue, you might take a look at your credit record. I've read where some people had their late fee's turned over to collections already and have had a ding place on their credit files. I'm not certain how accurate or truthful that information might be. I've just read one or two posts to that affect. Unfortunately, at this point, it's something I find reasonably believable. 

OVer the last two years I've found this to pretty much be the norm for DRI when there's a problem. The problem usually is taken care of but, it seems to me that it's a much more difficult process with DRI than with any of my other ownerships. I've grown concerned enough about my accounts that I check them regularly to make sure there is no surprise bill that I didn't receive, like what happened when they hit owners for a special assessment on our THE Club dues. I never did receive that billing and, if I hadn't noticed the postings on these forums, would have been in for a nasty surprise at the end of the year.

One of my issues is what your experiencing now. No one seems to have the authority to take care of a problem. I bet I exchange 6 or 7 E-mails trying to get back $155 I had been over billed and paid. Because it can take so long to resolve even the simplist of problems (6 to 8 weeks you'll hear a lot), I've gone into protection mode and pay first, argue second. 

Even when DRI did admit that, in my contract it said THE Club dues were to be waived the first year, they still didin't actually refund my money. Instead, they issued a credit to my account.......eventually. By then I was so tired of fighting with them over such a small amount I gave up and just let the credit ride. 6 months of interest on $155 just wasn't worth my time.


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## RIMike (Mar 9, 2009)

*Pgnewakboy always a Pro DRI Spokesperson*

_


pgnewarkboy said:



			:"There are posters who have had problems with customer service. That does not mean that service is uniformly bad.  I have never had a problem but that does not mean the service is uniformly good. IMHO most businesses could and should improve customer service - including DRI."
		
Click to expand...

_


pgnewarkboy said:


> I have noticed that *anytime anyone *has had a problem with DRI or The Club Pagnewakboy always comes to the defense of DRI.  While one bad service, like late notices of fees and then being charged a late fee for not paying, as has just happened, neither does it reflect GOOD SERVICE.  When you are paying for a HIGH Quality Vacation experience/relationship...you want GOOD SERVICE. I think it would do DRI well to review this website and actually read the gripes of people who own DRI/The Club.
> 
> No company is perfect all the time, but it is frequent that people are voiceing concerns of bad service with them.


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## dougp26364 (Mar 9, 2009)

Keep in mind that individuals experience will vary by how often one uses the product. If you only use the product on rare occasion or, have nothing to compare it to, you might find you experience "good" service. 

On the other hand, if you own more and use the product more, there is greater opportunity to experience "bad" service. In my case, we own a reasonable number of THE Club points and are active with using our points in a variety of ways. We trade internally, we trade throug I.I., we use guest certificates, we save points and we convert points to MF's. For us there's a lot of exposure and potential for different experiences. We also recently converted our deeded weeks into THE Club and we offered to sell our units back to DRI when they offered their buy back program. Any change in ownership status also exposes you to different aspects of good or bad customer service.

Now, add to this the fact that we own with different programs and I can compare my experience with DRI to other management compaines. I have a wide range of uses and experience's. These will affect my opinion.

Now, if pgnewarkboy only uses his ownership to stay at his home resort and does nothing else, then his exposure will be considerably more limited than mine and would possibly account for his opinion being better about DRI's customer service. If all he's had is good experiences, I can understand his point of view and his apparent defense of DRI. I have no idea what pgnewarkboy's experience with timeshare or his ownership with DRI, I'm just tossing out an example of how or why someone's opinion can vary from what the typical post seems to be. 

Back when DRI was all we owned, we thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now that we're 10 years down the road and have seen and experienced many different aspects of timeshare ownership, we're more critical in our opinion. Heck, when we first started, I even thought Westgate was probably a pretty good outfit. Thank goodness we never bought into their product.


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## pgnewarkboy (Mar 12, 2009)

I have been timesharing for over 11 years.  As it turns out, I rarely go to my home resort and almost always trade.  My experience is what it is.  And it has been a good experience all the way around and in every aspect of my trading and financial transactions.  They have lived up to their word.  I have bought from them and sold to them.  All without any problem.  I always receive confirmations, I have no problems with II membership, membership dues, banking points, payment of maintenance fees, or cancelling reservations.  I have found my trades to be to well-maintained well located places that I desire to go to.  I am not alone in my experience.  I have friends who are into timesharing for many years and bought DRI and are equally happy.

I respect the fact that some posters here have not had good experiences with some matters.  I have no problem with that and attribute no motive by these posters other than to inform.  Similarly, that is my motive.


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## nightnurse613 (Mar 12, 2009)

OK, I have no affiliation with PGNEWARKBOY.  I don't know him and he doesn't know me.  Have I had trouble with DRI?   Yes!!  Do they seem to have the inability to make a decision in favor of the customer most of the time or resolve an issue, that's my experience.  Is it because of the corporate structure?  My husband thinks so.  That's probably why, when my husband complained about seeing some continued errors in their correspondence the VP of Operations called my house (I think it was during the Christmas holidays for crying out loud). However, in their defense; other than the pain it causes my husband to see them send messages and correspondence out that decry a certain lack of  professionalism, I have had NO PROBLEMS to speak of.  (If you don't count budget letters that make NO SENSE) :annoyed:  Yes, they monitor their Forums and will not post most messages until they screen them for damage control - if at all- and they have been promising to upgrade their reservation system for YEARS but can't seem to make the jump - even though their DRI Select site will show you all availability.    Having been a member for just a short time, I know nothing of Sunterra and am willing to give DRI time to improve the simplicity of their system. I do feel your pain, Doug.    P.S.  I also do not work for them.


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## dougp26364 (Mar 13, 2009)

pgnewarkboy said:


> I have been timesharing for over 11 years.  As it turns out, I rarely go to my home resort and almost always trade.  My experience is what it is.  And it has been a good experience all the way around and in every aspect of my trading and financial transactions.  They have lived up to their word.  I have bought from them and sold to them.  All without any problem.  I always receive confirmations, I have no problems with II membership, membership dues, banking points, payment of maintenance fees, or cancelling reservations.  I have found my trades to be to well-maintained well located places that I desire to go to.  I am not alone in my experience.  I have friends who are into timesharing for many years and bought DRI and are equally happy.
> 
> I respect the fact that some posters here have not had good experiences with some matters.  I have no problem with that and attribute no motive by these posters other than to inform.  Similarly, that is my motive.



I think I need to trade my membership for yours. It's unfortunate that my experience has been almost the opposite of yours. I'm still hoping it will get better in the coming years.


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## csalter2 (Mar 13, 2009)

*Happy Too!*

I too have been happy with DRI. I had one problem and it was handled. 

I have enjoyed most of the resorts that I have visited. I like the flexibility of the points. I don't even have problems with making reservations. I understand the rules and just do what I need to within them. I love the exchange to other resorts using my points.  That's a plus. 

I think it is very easy to complain and so a lot of people do. It is fine to have a concern like I did but it does not mean that everything is bad. 

It will take some time for DRI to gain people's trust after all of the maintenance fee hikes. A lot of the posts have had to deal mostly with that. No one is happy with those increased fees.


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## JMAESD84 (Mar 26, 2009)

dougp26364 said:


> First, pay the late fee's and interest, THEN argue the merit of them.



I paid the late fee's and interest on 3/9/09, as advised, so that they would no longer hold up my exchange deposit.   

As of today, DRI corporate has still not rendered a descission. :annoyed:


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