Regarding 14 day Credit Card Cancellation Policy
Hello,
First of all, I thank everyone here who helped me throughout the process.
I was able to rescind after 5 day cooling period with help of the resort and the credit card company. We sent rescission letter on the 7th business day and the resort tried to downgrade our membership twice (2nd time with a better offer) before they offered the cancellation with some fees for an upgrade, which we took.
The whole process took about a month, and I have learnt a lot and I would like to share that with others.
Credit card (Mastercard and VISA) does have 14 day cancellation policy.
This rule, I was told by CC company, is something that resorts agreed when they become a merchant of the credit card company and clearly states under their chargeback guide. There is very slim way out for the merchant if the cardholder cancels within 14 days (this is calendar days) and followed all the process and the merchant cannot provide otherwise. So most of the resorts are very well aware of this policy. One of the user told me that "based solely on your credit card agreement, you unilaterally decided to cancel", this is NOT the case. This is the agreement between the merchant and the credit card company and I, as a card holder, was exercising the options that I have. This rule is international rule that applies regardless of the location. From what we have researched, chargeback hurts merchants reputation and even if they win the chargeback, they have to pay certain amount. If they have too many chargebacks, they might lose a deal with creditcard company. However, keep in mind that chargeback does not 100% guarantee your money back and takes about 2-3 months and credit card chargeback dispute do not break the contract legally. So that is the tricky part.
So in order to be out of the contract legally, you need to have a cancellation/settlement document signed by both parties. (I am not sure if you rescind within 5 days. I believe you're safe in that case.)
We have consulted the lawyer anyways and was told that it is very unlikely that they will chase after us and sue us so that we are tied to the contract even if we go through chargeback method. That is because it is not that much of money and hiring a lawyer would cost more money. He said, most likely, they'd rather spend time with a new couple who is willing to sign up for their membership, than deal with us. lol.
However, we wanted to be legally out and be safe. So we chose to pay, even though we felt the upgrade was over-priced. We will consider that as a life-time lesson fee.
I guess we were very lucky in a sense that the resort was helpful and willing to cancel. I am thinking it maybe because of the Credit Card policy that they are well aware of, or simply because they are nice. We'd like to believe that it is both.
Anyways, thank you and good luck to everyone.
