He said, she said, I heard, we meant...
Excellent point. If you are unable to cancel the "contract" and get your money back for whatever reason, you may demand that they return your money based on the fact that they offered to rent out your deposited RCI week when in fact this is not allowed by RCI rules.
Your angle would be that they charged you a fee to perform a service that they knew or should have known they were unable to perform. Therefore such a contract isn't enforceable because the terms were not possible to execute when the agreement between you and the rental company was made.
Any legal experts pease chime in on this. Good luck and please let us know what happens.
Two points I must clearly state first:
1. I despise
all of these lying upfront fee parasites.
2. I am
not presenting myself here as your sought after "legal expert".
That said, I submit that you have to look very closely at what actually constitutes a "contract" here. It is certainly true that a contract can be verbal --- that much is indisputable and not at issue. Most of these maggots operate with little or no paperwork; usually only conversations conducted over the phone, with credit card info being (
voluntarily) provided by the "client", also over the phone. Later recollections regarding who said or understood what is just a crap shoot. Any and all later claims of representations allegedly made are from faded memory (and it is unlawful to record a phone conversation without the other participants' knowledge). When pressed, the party line (...and defensible legal position...) of the upfront fee parasite operation is to simply repeat their rock solid mantra --- "we charge an advertising and marketing fee". Period, amen. On those rare occasions when there
is any contract paperwork, you can be assured that there is
not one word of guarantee to be found anywhere therein and that it is constructed soley to protect the upfront fee parasite operation.
These parasites are cagey, accomplished liars. They live in a grey world of subtle deception and fuzzy misrepresentation, but they know where that "line in the sand" is. They don't cross over into "illegal", which is how and why they will continue to thrive (even proliferate) until their practices are addressed legislatively. Only when their practices are
made illegal will they ever cease to be an awful, odorous blight on the timeshare landscape.
Ranting and preaching completed, it's off to the turkey and tryptophan...
