interesting newspaper article about disgrunted owner from 2010
The Garden Island Saturday, February 27, 2010
Timeshare owners still disgruntled
by Coco Zickos
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...PO‘IPU — Hundreds of outspoken timeshare owners at The Point at Po‘ipu are still fed up with mounting maintenance fees that continued to rise some 20 percent this year. Since October, the number of deeded owners concerned with the current management company’s influence on the resort has risen from 250 to around 500 according to Richard Batchelder, who is heading the group of “Concerned Deeded Owners at the Point at Po‘ipu.”
Even though the economy has taken a nosedive, timeshare owners like Brian Carlson, who said he is already enduring difficult financial times, are largely frustrated with Diamond Resort International’s lack of communication with owners.
“There is absolutely no communication between owners and management,” he said Friday.
He now owes some $1,800 in maintenance fees, but when Carlson first invested in the timeshare 14 years ago, payments were only around $500.
During his ownership, Carlson said, he has “never been given the opportunity to vote on anything.”
“I never hear from or know who the HOA is, let alone figure out how they can raise the fees like this,” he said.
Fees have reportedly escalated since DRI took over management in recent years, Batchelder said.
But what has also concerned Batchelder is that DRI still refuses to “give up the owner’s list,” despite repeated attempts by several owners.
“It is our opinion” there would be “thousands” of the resort’s approximately 10,000 owners willing to express concern if “the owner list was released so they could be contacted,” says a letter from the concerned owners.
Hawai‘i Revised Statutes Chapter 514A states, “The resident manager or managing agent or board of directors shall keep an accurate and current list of members of the association of apartment owners and their current addresses ... The list shall be maintained at a place designated by the board of directors and a copy shall be available, at cost, to any member of the association as provided in the declaration or bylaws or rules and regulations ...”
“Whoever controls the owner’s list controls the resort,” Batchelder said.
DRI also still controls a majority of the Vacation Owners Association and Association of Apartment Owners board members, as three of the five directors are employees of the management company, according to Batchelder.
However, Chapter 514A also states, “A director shall not cast any proxy vote at any board meeting, nor shall a director vote at any board meeting on any issue in which the director has a conflict of interest.” In addition, “the number of persons constituting the board ... shall have an elected board of not less than nine members” and that no single apartment should have more than one representative.
“There’s no way we can compete,” said timeshare owner Roger Veach.
In spring 2008, the board voted to give DRI management a $1.5 million “administrative fee” which Batchelder cites as “pure profit.”
“There are literally millions of dollars involved here,” he said.
Attempts to contact DRI Executive Vice President and General Counsel Elizabeth Brennan for comment were unsuccessful.
“The movement of deeded owners, in many people’s mind, is pretty much unstoppable,” says the letter written by the Concerned Deeded Owners at The Point at Po‘ipu.
For more information, visit
www.poipuowners.org.
Read more:
http://thegardenisland.com/business...42d-11df-91f7-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1b9yjZAu6
