ask-redweek-hilton-buys-diamond-resorts

Had my owner's update in Feb 22. I'm a gold member in diamond. At the update I was told that I only had 3 choices with the merger. #1, continue as is, but diamond would increase my maintenance fees by $800 per year going forward starting in 2024. #2, request a transition out of ownership, but my cost would be 2 years of maintenance fee ($13K), plus $1K for every contract where we bought extra points (5). So my total to walk away would be $18K. Option 3, was buy an extra 4500 points for $20K to be grandfathered into the unknown HGV plan. The so called plus for option 3 was, if we called into a special diamond department during a specified window of time and booked 20K of our 30K points at a non-diamond resort, then diamond would apply a credit of $6500 towards our maintenance fees. Our current maintenance fees for the gold level our $6500. So option 3 was the only viable option at the time for me. I feel like I was sucker punched during my owner's update. Now my question is, how long will it take HGV to throw the BS diamond told me out the back door, then try to force me to spend more $$$??? I spoke to my buddy tonight and he owns a Wyndham timeshare. He's at their Silver level and his maintenance fees are $2300. Why are diamond fees more than double that? In the near future, I'm guessing that HGV will only drag us diamond owners thru the mud a few more times before it's all said and done!!!

Need to find attorney to represent Diamond clients, Diamond got a billion dollars in the buy out, we are owners, where is our buy out.

HGVC Owner here. To get access to use Diamond properties, they want another $20K membership. I'm thoroughly pissed off at HGVC.

The HGV Max program will fail. No one will buy something they should get for free.

Now I'm selling my HGVC property. Terrible decision makers at HGVC.

What's funny is the crooks running this timeshare want $20K from HGVC owners to use Diamond Properties, but then they also want $20K for Diamond owners to use HGVC properties. This merger should have just expanded the placed you could go, but instead turned into a money grab from the timeshare crooks.

Both Hilton and Diamond are trying to screw the owners out of another $20K.

We are Diamond Gold, Hilton told us last week at the Las Vegas Polo Towers that only 10% of Diamond owners have not upgraded to Max, (I bet not) they offered us $14,900 to upgrade, $1,600 down and $300 a month for 10 years.) and if we did not our $400+ month maintenance fees would increase to $1,000 in January. We told them we'd think about it, and they said the offer was only good for today.

We are going to wait to the beginning of the year and see what they do. I agree with everyone that they are going to try to squeeze us out, but one thing we all have are % deeds in those proprieties, I don't see how they can sell them, if we own them? So if enough of us stand strong they'll have to deal will us to get rid of some of those proprieties in the portfolio.

I think a class action will probably come, but still a little early right now, maybe next year.

I am interested, if those Diamond owners who did upgrade to Max, I wonder if Hilton got them to sign over their deeds in the Diamond properties? Does anyone know?

Thanks for the comments - I just went to the "update meeting about the merger" tonight (9/29/22) - ....it was just a sales pitch like all of you said below. Yep, they first offered me 4500 points and a cost of $16,000, then 2000 points for a cost of $8,300. I turned both of them down. 1. Because that is a lot of additional money - I already own a deeded week and paid that much for 9000 points. 2. My maintenance fees would go up an additional $870 3. I thought this was going to be an awesome thing, for Diamond and Hilton to merger, in no way did my naive brain think they were going to CHARGE ME MORE!!! I told them no as well and asked if I was going to be the trouble child by not paying an additional $16K and joining the HGV program and how would I access trades without the HGV program (you don't do the upgrade, you don't get HGV). The answer was yes, you no longer can bank with interval (even if you have a membership on your own with interval international, Hilton only uses RCI) and you have to use Diamond's crappy Destination Flex program (which I never use because it is not user friendly). My thought is I am going to just sit tight and see what else they offer - this honestly can't be it. If nobody signs up, then they will be forced to go back to the drawing board. This merger doesn't sound like it was in any owner's favor even the Hilton owners.

I got a call from a Diamond person asking me to buy more points so I could opt into HGV max as a premier plus member. I am Gold with Diamond with 39,000 points and he wanted me to purchase up to 54,000. I told him no. Supposedly HGV Max is to launch today (10/5/22). I've been waiting to hear something about opting in. I was told that there would be a fee associated with opting in--more points--who knows? No one gives you any answers. All they want is money. If anyone on this forum hears of a class action, count me in. I'll check back later.

We had the displeasure of attending our owners update yesterday here at Polo Towers so we could learn all the wonderful benefits of the Hilton merger. What a joke! Once again they use scare tactics and carefully worded phrases in their attempts to have you pay again for access that we already purchased. They will promote that it’s a “no pressure” friendly meeting to answer any questions when in fact it’s just their opportunity to squeeze more money out of your wallets! I had truly hoped that Hilton would prove to be a more ethical corporation than we experienced with Diamond but unfortunately we’ve found that the greed just changed names!

Diamond Owners need to get together. We attended the presentation by HGV last night in Chandler AZ to learn how the acquisition would affect our interests - we expected a diminuation of our points but no way did we expect Hilton to expect us to pay $60,000 to bring us into the Hilton family - for our timeshare we have owned for nearly 30 years!!! Also strange how they said we missed the "pre-merger" option which was a cost of only $18,000 to move to the Hilton program. All of this is very strange and seems not quite legal - Hilton buys all of Diamond unsold properties and we as owners no longer have access to them unless we buy in plus pay our annual maintenance fees? How is this sane? Also, we thought the hard timeshare sales tactics of badmouthing the competition and making an offer contingent on your accepting it immediately were a thing of the past.! NOT WiTH HILTON! We took a pass and will seek ways to no get out of our ownership - Hiton can cover our maintenance fees themselves! I'm not sure the properties are even worth the annual maintenance fees let alone the additional buy in $ they want1

We are also DRI silver status members for over 10 yrs. We also recently attended an “update” after being told the same thing - we had to invest another $20K+ to be a part of HGV. The sales presentation was very misleading, and of course a hard sale, that we almost went with. Until check out time, and the woman assigned to this part was very clear and forthcoming when she went over the entire sale, which was NOT how it was presented to us. At which point, we backed out of the deal. But I do recall her saying we would still have access too all of our DRI resorts, as we have in the past. I recently went to the DRI website to make reservations for next year, and NOTHING is available now, no matter which dates I put in within the year timeframe. I will be researching the best way to unload this timeshare! Thank you all for your comments.

I am paying roughly $1,894.12 per year for maintenance. This is equal to $270.59 cents per night based on a seven night stay. Or it is simply equal to $157.85 per monthly to keep my membership. Adding this with my initial investment this is crazy. I am not this one. I think I am paying for Disney Vacation $450 per year. I need to check on this, and wow the resorts are out of this world amazing and I am glad to spend my initial investment plus $450 annually. The maintenance once I am not happy with has means of renting out rooms to collect money and those can be used toward maintenance and utilities etc. Then fractional ownership of condo for example would have to divide say $300 a month for the HOA and here guessing $300 a month on utilities this is $600 a month and $7200 a year. This is $138.46 per week and points start balancing out to a week. If you own more points you own more weeks in theory. Points have to logically work their way back to a fractional ownership. They cannot sell more points than they can occupy. Then if this is the case $138.46 all the way to $1894.12 shows a huge issue. How can the owners unite and take the power back over from them and get the maintenance fee to where it needs to be?

My husband and I owned HGV for more than 10 years. Over the years we upgraded to more points for $$’s. All and all I eventually added it all up and the amount we had invested was astounding! I believe more than $100,000. I wish I had added it up before. My husband started having health problems and we were not able use the HGV! Basically the timeshare although we were always told it’s not a timeshare because you own a part of it! I tried to go through a timeshare selling company which I paid Money for. Nothing. Then I read somewhere that Hilton won’t accept sales made through the timeshare companies and that sales had to go through Hilton resale department. So I decided rather than just giving our HGV property back for $0.00, I would try going through HGV resale. They were nice, and told me they would try to sell it. They do use other sales offices, you just can’t do it. It all has to go through them and then be accepted by HGV. So when January was coming close I decided to lower the $$ amount we would do. Well just before year end an offer came in and it was very low. But at that point I did not want to pay any more maintenance dues. We accepted the offer. We were at silver level. So we took a huge loss basically got $5,000 just to get out of the deed. But it was better than paying to get rid of the money pit! We are so glad that we did. This was this past year. Best wishes to all going through this buyout! 🙏🙏 to all of you! It’s a nightmare!

If you do a Class Action or anything to get our money back please let me know. I was told when we did a small point package for HGVMax there would not be fees to transfer our points to Hilton Honors or to roll our points over from Diamond...now I am told there are cost for everything now. I even have the rep that signed us up on a text (6 months ago) that said she was told there would be no fees for rolling points or transferring to Hilton Honors and yet I am told there are and, she came back yesterday and said well I did not know at the time but there are, sign up anyway. I am not going to sign up.

Let's band together... you cannot operate as a company like this and defraud people. I have been trying to call people and fill out forms to have people call me for more information. A day later or so out of the blue they call and I am on hold first time for an hour and when the person answered they hung up immediately without speaking. A few days later they called again and you automatically go on hold was waiting over 45 minutes and when the person answered they hung up immediately. Try calling any of the other numbers and getting a number for that department...it is non-existent and no one will give it to you or if they do it's an invalid number.

They tell me I must decide by December 6th but cannot reach a dang soul. I am simply not falling for any more lies. They do not have anything listed that tells you all of the fees you will pay for every type of transaction you will make but they want you to agree to it and opt In.

We just spent a week at Beachwoods Resort in Kitty Hawk, NC. We were encouraged to attend a presentation and I was interested in hearing about the acquisition, being Diamond owners. We did our presentation this morning. I’m sad to say that we feel betrayed by Diamond Resorts and Hilton. We were told that, if we didn’t upgrade to HGVC, we’d be left with shrinking inventory and rising maintenance fees. This is no way to transition the loyal Diamond members who have acted in good faith and had no say in the process. It would have been easy to figure out what our Diamond points are worth in HGVC and moved them over. Shameful! I, too, am waiting to join a class action suit.

We also will love to get out of the Diamond Resort, since the merge with Hilton is been a nightmare. We also went to the presentation because nothing in the account said Hilton. Since I arrive i told the sales lady ,we aren't spendding no more money. She keep talking and manipulating the situation. She did good and we feel for it. But today we send the letter of cancelation of that contract. All the paperwork is under Diamond but she keep saying that we where Hilton. Something don't add up. We will love to be part of the class action suit.

So I just found out that the former Diamond Resorts are not available to Hilton Grand Vacation Club owners. They only take Hilton Honors Points and refuse our HGVC owner club points. They tell me we have to upgrade, ( purchase another property) or we will never be eligible, even though we already own 2 properties. I believe Hilton has screwed all of its current club members!!! Sharon

Good Evening,

My name is Mike Schultz, if you would like more information on how to relinquish your rights with the company or at least obtaining a free assesment, or to have more information on how much is your contract worth in todays market give me a call 872-266-2666 ext. 5302. This assesment could help educate you into making the right decision.

Make sure you say that you saw this message via ''Red Week''

I am interested in knowing if anyone is, actually, working on a class action suit that you have mentioned? We are Gold members of Diamond and made the horrible mistake of paying the fees to to include Hilton HGVC. It was more like $35K. What have we gotten from that? Not much. During the trip following, my husband decided to attend another of their "meetings" and they explained that we needed to put in another $10K to ultimately save on maintenance fees. The logic given was incomprehensible, as usual. Is there no one to stop these people? We would like to sell all of this within the next two years but where and how? It is hard to trust anyone now..

Like all of you, I was cohersted into signing the contract. I do not fit the creteria. It is based on double occupancy. I am single. It is based on a 100,000 dollar a year income. i do not fit into that creteria either. I was forced to go to Las Vegas (or else I would have to pay for the room which is 1000 dollars. So I went, and found out that I was actually signing another contract to join Hilton Grand Vacations, I did not know this at the time. My application got rejected because of unpaid maintenance fees. they were pissed!! I have no intention of joining HGV. I have acquired a lung disease that prevents me from traveling, they do not care about debilitating health issues. I need to get out of this contract. I hope i have a chance bases on the fact that I do not fit the creteria. I called it a breach of contract. your thoughts? I would join the class action lawsuit.