ask-redweek-hilton-buys-diamond-resorts

Hi we just had a sales pitch from HIlton ( we are diamond resort owners since 2005) and they wanted $68k to switch to Hilton max . After I got upset and said it criminal my “sales associate” disappeared, and he manager offered us the same membership for 30k . My husband then got very upset and said, why didn’t they offer this to begin with.? We left without signing anything and I’m very confused on what to do next..

The difficulty lies in finding any attorney or attorneys who will take this on. It is such a convoluted mess. Anyone have a firm who shows interest?

Hello my name is Vazgen. We owned DRI membership for more than10 years now. We started with a "sampler" and throughout the years were coerced and lied to buy more points, to buy "US collection points", to buy "Hawaii Collection " points, and then to convert everything into "Hawaii collection" because it had better value because there were limited amount of properties in Hawaii. Every time it costs us more and more money and in the end we had purchased 51,000 points to become Platinum membership owners and one of the sells reps even went out of his way to give us a "secret" advice, that he could loose his job for telling us about it, that a few years down the road we could sell 25K point to someone as a Gold Membership with the price of the Platinum membership we paid for and still be a Gold Membership owner with $0 cost. Fast forward during the pandemic I reached out the DRI trying to sell 25K of my points because of financial hardship. They told me that it is one account and I can't sell part of it. I tried to work out a deal with them to give 25K points back to them , because the maintenance fees were over 10K a year. They still did not agree because a still have balance on the loan. I could negotiate a deal with them after I pay the $35K balance. And even then I had to forfeit all of the membership. That was the end of the conversation. Today I had a zoom meeting with the HGV rep to go over our benefits and how to maximize our membership. And , of course it turned into a sales presentation and if we want to maximize our benefits we had to buy more points. The amazing part was that we supposedly did not pay our maintenance fees and our membership was downgraded from 51K platinum points to 18,500 Silver membership. And to get to HGV club we had to buy minimum of 2000 points for $12,833 or better to get 3500 point for $20,141 for gold membership, and I had to do it today. I did not agree to anything and I told them "I have to sleep on this". She will call me back tomorrow at noon. I'm just puzzled that how DRI could cancel part of my points but not all for not paying maintenance fees ! When I voiced my concerns , she said that this has foreclosed right before Hilton took over and when I asked her if she could provide me with number that I could speak to someone at DRI, she told me that Dimond does not exist anymore and I can not change anything about a foreclosure that happened two years ago. Now that I read all this comments, I understand that this is as fishy as it gets. They are asking HGV club owners to upgrade their membership to be able to use DRI properties and DRI members to spend more money to upgrade their membership to use Hilton properties. Only a "Class Action Lawsuit" can solve this problem, this is above any individual's abilities to take on a large company on their own.

I bought a deeded lockout timeshare unit in Kitty Hawk from Barrier Island. It has changed hands several times, & is now owned by Hilton. I paid to upgrade from weeks to points, & have dealt successfully with RCI for years. I pay huge maintenance fees yearly, & have also been charged an assessment for upgrades to the property, but since I don't want to pay another huge amount to join Hilton, I am charged the resort fees because they consider me an exchange. Are there any other unhappy owners who are experiencing this, and what can be done?

We just did our “annual review” at Hilton Tuscany Villas, Orlando; we have a deed (paid off years ago) at Cypress Pointe and have found Diamond Resorts has worked very well for us over the last few years. Hilton put on the full hard sell, treated us like idiots, threatened us with all sorts of scare tactics, lies, and misrepresentation. The bottom line is they want $20K or similar for us to give up our deed, essentially keep doing what we are currently doing, and maybe pay a couple of hundred less in fees but with no guarantees they won’t go up. The rep actually got rather angry with us for not wanting to change, and I think we broke him when he realized we were happy to sit for 30 minutes and talk about whatever we wanted. They released us early, then tried to short us $50 on what we had been promised for our “valuable time.” I’m not giving these Hilton bozos a penny. If they want my deed they can pay me for it or put me on their scheme for free; I have my deed, which has SOME value, I don’t want points, which have none; they lied about so many things and were furious we questioned their numbers; they treated us like morons when our position is perfectly defensible: I like what I have, if I keep it I’ve lost nothing - if I change and don’t like it it’ll cost me money, potentially a lot. TBH I’d rather pay my Cypress Pointe fees and not use it than give anything to Hilton as by my rough calculations I can do that for over 40 years and still not have paid as much as joining their points scheme will cost me over the same period but I’m pretty stubborn.

Josephine Y. Time shares selling, what a SCAM and ripoff for consumers. If anyone has successfully gotten out of this nightmare, please enlighten the rest of us !!!!!! We were pressured in buying....Taking advantage of the elderly!!! It's WRONG!!!

I have been a deeded week owner since 1994 at the Powhatan Resort in Williamsburg. Bought into the Sunterra in early 2000's, then becasme Diamond, with the biggest benefit being the conversion rights to use points, and the automatic points reduction for bookings at 50% point value within 60 days of the vacation week, or 50% or bookings within 30 days of scheduled time. Attended HGV presentation, and resisted buying 4000 points for $40,000 (not kidding - that was what they wanted to charge me.) Happy with my 11,000 points. But now they have eliminated the points reduction design, and said it is up to inidividual resorts to decide whether or not they want to discount points. That privilege was what induced me to buy into the Club years ago. I feel like there is a real contract violation here - that is what I paid for when I bought into the Club. 90% of my vacations are booked at my home resort. At no time during any HGV "owner's update" presentations did they ever mention the reduction of points trading, even within my home resort. Outrageous.

1-4-2024 Here's our next step's beginnings: https://www.classaction.org/learn/how-to-start

010424: How can these comments be sorted in reverse chronological order?

Hi Malcom, Your post stood out from all the ones we have read. We also are Diamond HGV owners - home resort Palm Canyon Resort Palm Springs.

Would you mind connecting to share any current updates and compare notes? We are moving in the direction of letting our deed go as well. Note: several years ago I called Wyndham directly and was able to get rid of my dad’s timeshare with one sheet of paper to release the deed. Nothing made on the deal but it cost nothing and only took 2 months.

Hope you see this…connect at sgtdave47@gmail.com

Thanks!

Dave & Nancy McDowell

malcolmc41 wrote:

We just did our “annual review” at Hilton Tuscany Villas, Orlando; we have a deed (paid off years ago) at Cypress Pointe and have found Diamond Resorts has worked very well for us over the last few years. Hilton put on the full hard sell, treated us like idiots, threatened us with all sorts of scare tactics, lies, and misrepresentation. The bottom line is they want $20K or similar for us to give up our deed, essentially keep doing what we are currently doing, and maybe pay a couple of hundred less in fees but with no guarantees they won’t go up. The rep actually got rather angry with us for not wanting to change, and I think we broke him when he realized we were happy to sit for 30 minutes and talk about whatever we wanted. They released us early, then tried to short us $50 on what we had been promised for our “valuable time.” I’m not giving these Hilton bozos a penny. If they want my deed they can pay me for it or put me on their scheme for free; I have my deed, which has SOME value, I don’t want points, which have none; they lied about so many things and were furious we questioned their numbers; they treated us like morons when our position is perfectly defensible: I like what I have, if I keep it I’ve lost nothing - if I change and don’t like it it’ll cost me money, potentially a lot. TBH I’d rather pay my Cypress Pointe fees and not use it than give anything to Hilton as by my rough calculations I can do that for over 40 years and still not have paid as much as joining their points scheme will cost me over the same period but I’m pretty stubborn.