Why a class action lawsuit?
Everybody knows the only people who win in such a lawsuit are the lawyers! Just look at how RCI settled.
A small percentage of people who attend these sales presentations don't do any homework ahead of time, and are then upset that they were sold something they don't understand. Can anyone show me any other situations where someone would spend $20-$30,000 without knowing what they are buying? It's an impulse buy, and if the homework is not done before attending the presentation, you have time to do it after you sign. That's why they have a cooling-off period.
Did you do any research following your purchase, during your recission period? Or did you just assume that the "too good to be true" offer really was true? It seems to me that n increasing portion of our society is willing to make the rest of us pay for their mistakes, and take little responsibility for their own actions. If you purchased, and had difficulty cancelling your contract within the recision period (or were not told of the recision period) I can understand, but 2-3 days should be enough to verify or refute any "lies" you were told at the presentation, particularly if $20,000 was riding on your research. If you don't want to dedicate the time to do the research, don't purchase - wait until you can do the research, and understand you might not get such a great deal, or maybe the deal will still be there 6 months down the road.
As a tax preparer, I constantly have to deal with clients who are upset over things others have told them - they can deduct their work uniform, tools, and union dues (but they don't itemize, or don't spend more than 2% of their wages on these things), they can deduct the value of the car they donated (again, they don't itemize), or the best one, they're going to get a big refund this year because of the house they purchased in December because their realtor told them so (they'll get the new homebuyer's credit this year, but they still won't itemize, because they didn't pay much in mortgage interest or property taxes). Then there's the ones that are upset because they have to pay taxes on the MSRP value of the car they won (because the MSRP is much higher than what they would have willingly paid for the car, they're paying almost as much in taxes as they would have for the car, and to make matters worse, they're losing tax deduction or credits because their "income" rose too high).
I understand the timeshare developers take advantage of people, but people need to to learn to take responsibility for their own decisions - and to understand that the bottom line for all salesmen is to make a sale. Lining the pockets of lawyers will not make the situation any better.
Regarding South Beach, I suspect the sales staff there have no clue how the original memberships worked. They assume that you had to go through RCI to reserve anything other that what you own, and thus you would pay a fee. The original developer(or perhaps the HOA) obviously sold the remaining inventory to Holiday Inn, and signed a management contract with them. While there may be some growing pains, I would expect things to settle once everyone is more familiar with each other. Amenities closing may be an issue of underfunding, which could be resolved with next year's budget. Rules being ignored, while a serious issue, has unfortunately been an issue at many resorts we've visited. Again, it may be an issue of having enough staff to enforce the rules, as well as an issue of whether the staff believes the rules are reasonable.
