Any vacation ownership contract you sign is going to cause you headaches down the line. Annual maintenance fees are ever-present and rise every year. If you got a mortgage, not making payments can result in foreclosure and financial disaster. When you compare them to the lower costs and lower risks associated with hotels, timeshares don’t make much sense.
But some timeshare companies have worse reputations than others. According to its customers, one of the worst companies is Capital Vacations, LLC. This timeshare developer, which maintains resorts mainly in the eastern United States and the Caribbean, at first might not seem so bad. After all, it is accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and has an A+ rating.
To see the whole truth of this company, though, you have to look at the customer reviews and numerous complaints. If you spend even a little time looking at these, you’ll see the same story repeated over and over again: long, dishonest sales presentations; shoddy, run-down resorts; truly terrible customer service; and of course, lots of money down the drain.
In this article, we‘ll examine some of the reviews of Capital resorts and the company that sells timeshares at those resorts. In particular, we’ll look at some reported issues with Capital and the best ways you can avoid these problems.
Capital knows that people are wise to the timeshare industry. It still has to sell its inventory somehow, so the sales techniques get more and more creative. A common tactic, as seen in reviews, is that the Capital Club will sell multi-day “vacation packages” to its resorts.
These Capital offers might include theme park tickets or other vacation experiences. For example, if you check in to Calypso Cay or another Orlando-area resort, you might get a package with tickets for Walt Disney World. Or maybe you are taking a trip to Branson, Missouri, and you were promised concert tickets.
Upon seeing some of these offers, many travelers think they have “scored a deal” and eagerly sign up. The resort may even offer a gift card for showing up.
However, when you get to the resort, the other shoe drops, and the scam begins. You are invited to attend 90-minute breakfast or lunch presentations about future vacations with the company. Once you get to those presentations, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a timeshare pitch that can last as long as five hours.
According to reviews by owners and guests, the Capital sales meetings are just as bad as you might expect. There are lots of high-pressure tactics and outright misrepresentations made in the hours that they keep you in the sales office. One guest even complained that he had been signed up for a credit card, which was then charged without his consent.
It’s bad enough that the resort cannibalizes your vacation for overlong and dishonest sales pitches. To add insult to injury, guests often don’t even get the free gifts that induced them to come to the presentation in the first place. The promised gift cards might come with steep fees, or show tickets need to be paid for with the resort deposits they said would be refunded.
The best way to avoid these issues, apart from not vacationing with Capital, is to be very, very firm and clear in your expectations. If you are told that you will receive a gift card at check-in, insist on the resort fulfilling that condition. And a polite but firm “no” will save you from overlong presentations.
Sales staff may try to make you feel guilty for not letting them pitch to you. Keep in mind that if you are paying for a vacation package with Capital, you are a paying guest, and you don’t owe them anything. If you have difficulty saying no with the necessary level of assertiveness, it’s probably just best to stay away altogether.
Maybe you went on a resort tour, listened to a sales presentation, and liked what you saw. So, you paid the money and became a Capital member. If you get to that point, though, you’ll hit another big problem that Capital guests and owners constantly complain about: the lousy customer service.
One such owner says in her review that she bought her Capital timeshare in 2015. She mentions also that she was induced to buy based on two representations that were untrue: one, that she could pull out whenever she wanted with a timeshare resale, and, two, that her maintenance fees would never go up.
But it is her story about the Capital “owner service” experience that is truly upsetting. The owner called the company because she did not have all the points in her account that she paid for. She was hung up on by the first representative she spoke to.
She then spoke to several more, some of whom seemed helpful, but consistently failed to call back or follow up. She details several instances where she left messages with her phone number and other contact information. The company just never followed up.
Another representative did call her in the middle of this, though, to invite her to another “owners’ meeting.” In other words, they wanted her to come to another sales pitch to buy more points.
By the end of her complaint, the owner just said she wanted out of her contract. And according to the BBB reviews and complaints, this experience was not ordinary at all.
If you are like the Capital timeshare owners described above and you want out of your contract, there is good news. Centerstone Group is a timeshare exit company that specializes in helping people as you get out of unfair and oppressive timeshare arrangements. We are A-rated and accredited by the BBB. And most importantly, we have excellent reviews from our customers.
Centerstone Group was founded by people who have collectively worked decades in the timeshare industry. We know the ins and outs, as well as the tricks that timeshare companies use to keep owners in bad situations. We can use that knowledge to help you get a legal, ethical exit from your timeshare contract.
For example, if Capital refuses to talk with you, we can engage in our proprietary pressure campaign, including administrative complaints, to get their attention. And if you have a contract problem or something else that needs legal attention, we work with many lawyers and law firms on behalf of our clients. (We can also get you better rates for those attorney fees.)
Companies like Capital make their money by selling a dream they can’t possibly deliver. And by the time their customers figure that out, it’s so difficult to get out of the contracts that many just stay because they don’t know what else to do.
So you try to make the best of it and enjoy your Capital timeshare in Florida or South Carolina because you feel like you were the one that made a bad decision. But that’s not true: You’re stuck because the company’s design was to get you stuck.
It’s our job to find a way to get you unstuck. We’ve done it before for numerous timeshare owners. Let us work with you to get you the freedom and peace of mind you deserve.
Contact Centerstone Group today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
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