I so wish I had found this website before! My husband and I bought a membership at the Club Melia Caribe Tropical in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, in April 2014.
It was my brother-in-law wedding, we were all happy, and having drinks and not thinking right, clearly. We went on their sale pitch because they promised vouchers and several other little perks if we did. This was the first red flag we should have seen!
Anyways, we love to travel, and now that we have a family (2 kids) it gets more expensive, so we were stupid enough to believe this club membership could be a good way to always travel and save money. We paid some $2k upfront and - to make matters much worse - financed the rest! We owe them some 42 parcels of $241 and change, plus the maintenance fee, which started at $745 and went up to $900 within one year.
We went on vacation this year to one of their resorts in Cozumel, using the "free week" that the salesperson offered as incentive to close the contract right away (red flag! red flag! no time to do internet search or even talk to other people at the resort and ask opinions!). Another family went on this trip with us. When we got to the hotel, we found out that the all-inclusive was not included in our free week, and we had to pay separately. The total came to be pretty much the same that my friend had paid for her family stay - meaning, the free week was worth absolutely nothing!
Then, we now have found that the 31,000 options that we got this year will expire in January if we don't use or transfer them. They gave us three options:
1) book a vacation in one of their resorts for certain dates in 2016 (no high season, obviously). Most options they have will either use less than the 31,000 options and we would simply lose the rest, or, worse, would take more in which case they said we can buy extra options. That's not the worst, though, but the fact that, again, it does not include the all-inclusive part. The customer service lady herself told me that if we don't do all-inclusive we would pay much more eating there a la carte. So I add up how much it would cost for my family to pay the all-inclusive fee for one week, and go on to Expedia to see how much it would cost to simply book the exact same week at the same hotel. You guessed, very little difference! That means my club membership is worth less than what I pay in maintenance fee, let alone the principal! So pissed!!
2) Second option would be to deposit points into RCI (paying a fee of $250 for that). I call the RCI/Club Melia number they provided to see what's available for 2016 with our points - almost nothing, and all crappy hotels with horrible reviews!
3) Third option is to convert our 31,000 options into Melia Rewards points. According to the same customer service lady, these points however would only be enough for - shock! - 2 nights at one of the Melia hotels. Are you kidding me?? Again, maintenance alone is over $900 and that gets me only 2 nights in a hotel?? Oh, and don't forget there is also a fee for doing this conversion, of $51.
We are at a loss! We don't know what's the least terrible option there and what to do about it. I feel it's outrageous to simply lose these points, after having already paid almost $9k so far for this thing between down payment, financing, annual fees and closing costs (seriously, closing cost!)
Most of all, we want to get rid of this horrible deal, but we saw that it's almost impossible to sell it or even give it away when we still owe them beyond the annual maintenance fees. I mean, it's such a horrible deal that I would feel bad passing along to someone else, really!
Can I cry now?
