I wanted to share my family's experience with Capital Vacations, which took over management of our timeshare st Calypso Cay a few years ago. Thankfully, I stumbled on tugbbs in doing a Google search a day after signing a contract with them. It seems our experience is is similar to many other deeded week owners of resorts that Capital has purchased. CV is an acquisition firm and look to purchase deeds from timeshare properties so they can be the majority shareholder and do whatever they want. February 15th was the first time we traveled to Calypso Cay since Capital took over. We have had good experience depositing our fixed week breaking apart our 3 bedroom into 3 separate 1bedroom deposits with II, which we are owners and mainly have used it to travel to other resorts, mainly in Aruba. Since this was our first time back to Calypso Cay since Capital took over we were told we needed to go to a presentation for an owners update on our membership to get the most out of it. This happened immediately upon checking in. The staff makes you to visit another office to receive your parking pass. Instead of just giving you the pass, they coerce you into attending one of their sales presentations, which was promised to be 60 minutes in exchange for a gift. As a current deeded owner, I was told I needed to attend this meeting to activate my new membership with Capital since I haven't been to Calypso Cay since they took over. They also take your credit card and hold a 40 dollar deposit in case you do not show up.
The next day was our meeting to discuss the new membership and "upgrades" needed. My wife and I both had to attend, so we needed to bring our 3 kids with us as well. First, the podium speaker took us in to the presentation room and explained how our deeded membership was outdated and that they are going to stop allowing deeded members to use other weeks that they did not originally purchase. He informed us that since our week was week 10 we would only be able to come back on week 10. In covertingnto a Capital Points trust we would be given more flexivility to travel. Then, we were tsken from the podium speaker to a sa salesman named Daniel F. He gave a whole talk drawing circles and grids on a peice of paper and ripped off a small piece of paper explaining that this was all we owned in our deed and that a points program would be better suited for us. He then proceeded to tell us that our maintainence would be going up for our week each year and pulled up an assessment on his computer for our account that said we would have to pay 6k in assessment fees for the year in addition to our maintainence of 1800. He told us the way we could get out of this and avoid future assessments was by turning over our deed to Capital and upgrading into their membership vacation trust. The total cost would be approximately 3,000 in yearly fees, plus over 4,000 a year to pay for an additional 235,000 CV points plus 160,000 points from our Calypso Cay ownership. We were skeptical so to entice us into signing, he claimed these higher costs would be paid over the year by staying at Capital Resorts and that we would be given priority in booking and more flexibility in where to stay. They claimed we would get .02 cents in cash for every point you used that can be used to pay for annual fees and that this money could be banked for future use. We eventually agreed after 2 hours, and contracts were drafted up. Before signing, we were told what we should say in terms of why we were buying since the closing was being recorded. We were then brought into another room with another person to go over contracts and sign. Upon viewing the contract, I noticed the "upgraded" points were going to wind up costing 40k over 10 years because of a 16% interest rate!!!! 16%, which WAS NOT DISCLOSED by our salesman when he was pitching the offer to us for the upgrade to the trust. How do you not disclose an exorbitant interest rate to your buyers. In the end, stupid us, we signed to get out of there. I regretted it right away and started doing research where I stumbled onto tugbbs and learned about recision rights. 2 days later, we sent our letter of intent to cancel via certified mail to their headquarters in South Carolina. The clerk at the post office in Celebration Florida told me, " I should know this address by heart because this happens more often than you think." That quote says it all. Stay away from Capital. I hope others will read this before they get locked into debt and make a decisionthey will probably regret.
The next day was our meeting to discuss the new membership and "upgrades" needed. My wife and I both had to attend, so we needed to bring our 3 kids with us as well. First, the podium speaker took us in to the presentation room and explained how our deeded membership was outdated and that they are going to stop allowing deeded members to use other weeks that they did not originally purchase. He informed us that since our week was week 10 we would only be able to come back on week 10. In covertingnto a Capital Points trust we would be given more flexivility to travel. Then, we were tsken from the podium speaker to a sa salesman named Daniel F. He gave a whole talk drawing circles and grids on a peice of paper and ripped off a small piece of paper explaining that this was all we owned in our deed and that a points program would be better suited for us. He then proceeded to tell us that our maintainence would be going up for our week each year and pulled up an assessment on his computer for our account that said we would have to pay 6k in assessment fees for the year in addition to our maintainence of 1800. He told us the way we could get out of this and avoid future assessments was by turning over our deed to Capital and upgrading into their membership vacation trust. The total cost would be approximately 3,000 in yearly fees, plus over 4,000 a year to pay for an additional 235,000 CV points plus 160,000 points from our Calypso Cay ownership. We were skeptical so to entice us into signing, he claimed these higher costs would be paid over the year by staying at Capital Resorts and that we would be given priority in booking and more flexibility in where to stay. They claimed we would get .02 cents in cash for every point you used that can be used to pay for annual fees and that this money could be banked for future use. We eventually agreed after 2 hours, and contracts were drafted up. Before signing, we were told what we should say in terms of why we were buying since the closing was being recorded. We were then brought into another room with another person to go over contracts and sign. Upon viewing the contract, I noticed the "upgraded" points were going to wind up costing 40k over 10 years because of a 16% interest rate!!!! 16%, which WAS NOT DISCLOSED by our salesman when he was pitching the offer to us for the upgrade to the trust. How do you not disclose an exorbitant interest rate to your buyers. In the end, stupid us, we signed to get out of there. I regretted it right away and started doing research where I stumbled onto tugbbs and learned about recision rights. 2 days later, we sent our letter of intent to cancel via certified mail to their headquarters in South Carolina. The clerk at the post office in Celebration Florida told me, " I should know this address by heart because this happens more often than you think." That quote says it all. Stay away from Capital. I hope others will read this before they get locked into debt and make a decisionthey will probably regret.
