Perhaps from Starwood’s perspective, this change is not a major change…this is a minor change since it only impacts maybe 0.5% of their customers. On Tug, it feels like a major change because it has impacted many of us here. Also, why do you think it was arbitrarily implemented…did they flip a coin and not even discuss it? Perhaps it was their intent, their strategy to not announce and bring attention to it since it really only affects a small percent of their customers.
I agree that given SVO’s actions to date, putting any faith in the elite program’s current list of benefits or even its continued existence is a fools’ folly. But the larger issue here is how can SVO continue to market a bundle of extra-benefits to induce sales, and then within months, and in some cases days, just up and cancel them with impunity when some people are even mid-stream in the process?
I think your right, someone somewhere in SVO decided to up the StarOption requirement to make 5 Star Elite for reasons that probably weren’t aimed at harming us existing owners (except maybe SDKath to get her back for publishing her 5 Star methods here on TUG
). I think it is also fair to say that that decision wasn’t made the exact same day that it was implemented across the board in the sales offices. The delay from deciding to up the StarOption requirement to actually implementing the new requirement probably means that someone, somewhere in at least one of the SVO sales offices was told of the old StarOption requirement as an inducement to get them to buy, and they actually did buy based on that representation, even though SVO collectively “knew” that representation was false when it was made.
Who cares you ask? Well, the law does. Intentionally promising someone something as an inducement to get them to do something with knowledge that the promised thing isn’t true are the three biggest fingers of the five fingers of FRAUD. (The remaining 2 fingers, --buyer is deceived, and injury results-- are certainly also present here). With knowledge of SVO’s top management being imputed to SVO and the actions of the SVO salesmen being imputed to SVO, SVO’s continued sales of developer timeshares after it made the decision to up the StarOption requirement but before actually implementing it, while also remaining silent to this issue to its customers amounts to good ‘ol American Fraud. As an added bonus, in some jurisdictions such corporate activity can also be considered a criminal act, with the corporate officers of the wrong doer corporation facing good ‘ol American jail time and a good ‘ol American criminal conviction on their record to boot.
Of course, this whole issue could have been easily avoided if SVO just gave folks reasonable notice before changing the plan. Since it didn’t, we owners have every right to be mad at SVO management, and SVO management has every right to hope that when their doorbell rings it isn’t a process server.
I agree that keeping customers happy is a tough job. Employee awards are nice and all, but that customer service job should start by at least not committing fraud against ANY of your customers, even if the number defrauded is less than 0.00000000000000005%. By the same token, if SVO didn’t commit fraud, maybe its customers would be happier and not complain so much. There could be a chicken/egg thing going on here.
Regarding the SVO Management conflict issue:
I think in this case, the company’s best interest is to keep its owners happy so we can all be little ambassadors of good will and get people, including ourselves, to buy more timeshares from the company. This parallels us owner’s interests’ nicely.
In contrast, SVO’s top management’s interest is to keep their salaries while maintaining complete control over the entire operation, even if they are not qualified for a particular role and even if that control compromises the best interests of the company and/or us owners. The conflict isn’t with the company and us, but with the SVO top management’s personal interests and us. But for us being a captive audience, this type of conflict could not last very long. But we are, so it does.
If anyone thinks that anything I’ve said here is BS, please point out the specific point or fact and I’ll be happy to link you to the appropriate authority. Otherwise, just globally calling something BS, is, well, BS.
-nodge
