Keith Thomson, Saver Express, Etc.
A very long post, but we need to put it all out there regarding the proposed alternative offer regarding our memberships.
Next email in about an hour regarding the Fraser Smith / Daniel Mamann side of the story.
This email mostly concerns just C&C residence club members, not purchasers of the Enchantment or other M-Hotel resort membership use – there was a clause in all contracts that said you had a core facility and whatever other facility M-Hotels or the providers made available, but you have no more M-Hotels and thus no other facilities at this time. Use at other M-Hotel facilities was not guaranteed – it was subject to change.
First, I have sent this post also to Keith Thomson and DNG, for his review and clarification and correction, so it is subject to any correction and clarification from either party that I will then post, but given we have nothing in writing so far, I will put this out there for your review and comment to him (email
saverexpressmexico@yahoo.com ).
This also assumes, and is most likely so, that C&C will be finished and available before middle of 2010. That assumes there would be no legal problems that would block C&C’s completion or use (more on that in next post, but let us assume Donald Busby and DNG can get over such hurdles that might exist or evolve, and that is probably my biggest concern – even if they want to get the building done and can pay to get it done, will it get done and be available in the time promised).
Keith Thomson is contacting all C&C residence club members, but not Enchantment members (or at least not for now – I guess he could make arrangements with owners of Enchantment property, but that is not being done at this time). Keith Thomson, co-owner with one other person of Saver Express, incorporated Saver Express only in Sep 2007, so not a lot of information found on this company by any minimal sleuthing I have had time to do so far. He was born in Britain, lived in Canada for quite some time has children there, now lives in USA. He is in discussions with DNG regarding managing the registered weeks and m-weeks at C&C and proposing taking over future sales of timeshare weeks at C&C also, and perhaps other accommodation options at Castles and Condos and Quinta Del Mare (also owned by Donald Busby). He is in direct contact with Donald Busby, owner of DNG, that company direct or indirect owner of C&C (see next post) and he says he has been in communication with Donald Busby since about the end of June 2009 (someone else says sooner than that, but that is incorrect says Keith Thomson). I am not surprised at this development, since DNG is not in the business of running timeshares and wants some other company to do that marketing and sales, initially signing the contract with M-Dreams to do that (see next post on “Daniel Mamann Fraser Smith side of story”).
Resorts Advantage has been told to refer booking requests for Castles and Condos members for C&C and alternative accommodation to Keith Thomson, as are Mae and Sylvia at DNG (castlesandcondospv@gmail.com) . Keith says that he has been given the list of all members of Castles and Condos and will be contacting each member on the phone to provide you with more information and a password for his vacation club portal so you can check out what he has to offer. More on that later. Thus one would suspect that this arrangement between DNG and Saver Express is moving forward and will happen.
Keith Thomson says the formal contract and thus also booking access through him for C&C and other accommodations is planned for Sep 15, giving him first time to talk with all C&C members and put more details in place about the offer, which C&C members can accept, or if not, can try to get your money back (good luck on that one unless you bought with a credit card – or maybe DNG could make us an offer to buy back the contracts, but I doubt that without a steeply discounted return, but worth asking perhaps – perhaps some have – let us know if that is true. Other option is some joint legal action by members, since to do it individually is probably too expensive.
Keith initially said on first contact with me a couple of weeks ago that all C&C members would get their one registered week at C&C and then unlimited booking weeks on his site, not just a certain number of m-weeks that were optional weeks subject to availability. He said a membership to book a week of condo and other accommodation and travel and tours etc on his web site is worth $10,000 per week (I assume lifetime use), due to the amount of money you will save gaining access to wholesale discount pricing, but that C&C members would get access for free for as many weeks as they want. We could use C&C members’ opinions on this once you browse the web site with the demo account. There would be no other privileges such as a car & driver, the chef, the golf, yacht and plane discounts. No hot-week or II or PPM but unlimited booking weeks on his web site.
I said that was not good enough. That members who bought, for instance, a 2BR with 1 registered week and 1 extra m-weeks paid substantially less than someone that bought a 2BR with 1 registered week and 3 m-weeks. That the latter were buying extra time at C&C, or the right to rent their C&C weeks, not just buy bonus hot-weeks and other privileges of the Platinum Preferred Membership, which some would liken Saver Express to be the equivalent of, though Keith says has vacation portal is far more valuable. Keith said he misunderstood the m-weeks and he would discuss with Donald Busby again.
Yesterday or the day before Keith then told me that Donald Busby agreed that m-weeks could be booked at C&C, subject to availability, just as the initial contract had noted (subject to availability). Keith noted, and I agree, that m-weeks are going to be in short supply in 2010 and 2011 as all C&C members try to get some initial time there at this exclusive resort. This is especially true since not all 16 suites are timeshare units (perhaps 10-11 suites), some suites having been sold as all-year-round condos to buyers with much bigger resources than most of us for vacation accommodations.
The argument from Keith Thomson is that the memberships sold to us were indeed too good to be true. That no company could offer and stay afloat from the revenue for what we paid as membership fees and will pay in weekly fees to purchase time at the quality of resort that C&C, even if the weekly fee price went up the permitted 6% per year, and that any future sales to new purchasers will be much higher priced and with much higher weekly use fees. The price we paid for the registered and M-Weeks and the bonus privileges was far too low. (So from that point of view one could consider your purchase to be fraudulent and work on the credit card company if you purchased that way.) He also points out that there may be insufficient space at C&C for all the m-weeks sold (that is questionable also perhaps – Fraser Smith disagrees with that if one considers only remaining active contracts - we need to do the math on m-weeks sold in each type of suite and for that we need to know how many memberships, and I only know some details from 34 members so far, but I will do a projection as the sample size is good – I note also that more contracts than I thought also have only alternating year use (every 2nd year), and that reduces the load also).
Thus Keith Thomson says an alternative that is financially viable is needed, and that is what he is proposing. He notes that we would get unlimited use of his web site for unlimited weeks if you already have a C&C residence club contract, and you would get your registered week at C&C guaranteed (note some of you only have alternating-year weeks), and other m-weeks at C&C if available. You would get the other non-accommodation booking privileges of his travel web-site also (flights, tours, cars, hotels, etc). He is considering offering at least transportation to and from the airport to C&C, but no dedicated chauffeur service. He is considering putting in place some kind of shuttle service from C&C to and from downtown PV, and from there you would take a taxi. He will see if he can arrange some kind of golf discount with the courses, but it won’t be free golf (which in original membership contract supplement was going to be free only for 5 years, only for registered owners, only for one week per year (your registered week), not guests or renters or other family using the C&C, and did not include a cart, so not much loss of privilege there). There will likely be not yacht club or private plane discounts, or certainly not on the scale that was originally promised in the initial purchase package. Likely no chef for just tips and other perks if anything else was promised to any of you.
There is still expected to be a fitness facility / wellness centre and also an on-site restaurant.
Some of the biggest concerns that stand out that need to be clarified will be from those that had planned to rent your registered week and/or m-weeks – will you be able to book the m-week and then rent it or put it on interval exchange like you were promised? Will you at least be able to rent or exchange your registered week (I would think that at least the latter is true). The other is that our contract calls for perpetual use of your registered week and m-weeks. Will that be in the new contract? It was an important selling feature, but will the building last much more than your lifetime anyway.
Are we going to get a new contract proposed? We need clarification as to what we have, even if no new contract is needed, clarifying the extra privileges outside of the core accommodation. We will need a new contract regarding the use of the Saver Express web site. When are we going to see those proposed contracts? The best scenario is that the primary contract for registered and m-week use stays as is, adding an amendment. I don’t want to lose the contract obligations DNG has, as we could otherwise lose the whole package if we signed new replacement contracts only with Saver Express if Saver Express then went belly up, DNG having far more resources. The provider is DNG (since December 2009 or January 2010), and that has not changed. The provider previously was Castles and Condos SA which was indirectly owned by DNG anyway (just legal and other maneuvering changing owners – see next post). If so, we should have all registered and m-week use as promised. The other contracts were between M-Dreams and II and M-Dreams and PPM and M-Dreams and II and M-Dreams and the golf club, etc, so I don’t expect we will see those honoured.
Regarding the Saver Express web site. On the web site you can book condos or hotels, air fare, etc, each of the booking options being a link to another companies search engine, those companies tending to deal only with other travel companies. I have browsed briefly the two condos links (I think one is to condos direct, part of Interval International, and the other to some segment of RCI, but I stand to be corrected). I have also browsed the air tickets search engine (there are much better search engines, Kayak.com for instance, but maybe not better prices). More playing on this site from other members is needed to get a better opinion of what we may have. In the first condo portal, there just was not a lot of selection, especially if you are a 2BR purchaser. In the 2nd condo portal, I did not like the fact that one cannot restrict one’s search to a specific week only on the 2nd condos portal, nor could one be specific only to the size of suite and/or number of people that could be accommodated in a single unit, nor could one eliminate the ‘mandatory all-inclusives’, which are a big unknown because you don’t know the all-inclusive extra daily fee. But if one is flexible on when one can go on vacation and where one wants to go in the world, the portals did offer a large range of selection. I am curious to see what other members think, and what you think of the prices if you then searched instead just directly on the internet for similar accommodation in similar facilities (according to Keith, you won’t find it, or it will be very hard to find, thus the value of the web site and membership).
Sorry again for the long post. I look forward to your feedback, either directly through email that I will compile and share, or via TUG posts for all to see right away.
Next post re Fraser Smith and Daniel Mamann and the other side of the picture in about an hour.
PapaBearAB - Joe F. – 403-510-5667 joefaubert at shaw.ca (replace " at " with "@"
