Krystal is a big Fraud!!

What on earth is BBB going to do ? Call Profeco and file a complaint . Don't get sucked into one of those phony attorney scams. NEVER pay anyone money that claims they can get you out of your contract .

humbertog14 wrote:

Hi, I paid latitude 21 975.00 I will call the bbb and report this company , if you know anything else I can do...

You can report this company to the Attorney-General of the state where this company is located. You can easily file a complaint online.

My name is Charles Gattoni. Per your review below, you state you intend ti sue Krystal Resorts, Cancun, MX. Were you able to retain an international law attorney to file suite on your behalf? If so, please contact me at my email address, cgattoni@comcast.net or call me 978-314-7730 with contact information for this attorney. I am looking for help in filing a law suite against Krystal Resorts, Cancun, MX for fraudulent sales practices and contract violations. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide in this matter. On May 17, 2016, my husband and I attended one of the “90-minute” sales presentations hosted by Krystal Resorts, Cancun. We are both educated and intelligent people who have attended such presentations in the past, but when weighing the costs-vs-benefits of time-share ownership, have always opted out of committing to ownership. In this case, however, our salesman German made a very compelling presentation based upon a “vacation package” offered exclusively by Krystal Resorts called the ICE Rewards program. According to German, if we purchased a time share condo with Krystal Resorts, we could also purchase a lifetime membership in the ICE Rewards program for $875. He assured us that this program offers guaranteed lowest rates on airfare (40% off the lowest published rates), cruises (50% off lowest published rates) and hotels ($199 per week if booked one-month or less in advance, and $399 per week if booked three months out from travel). When queried about what hotels this included, we were informed that it included all the international hotels listed on the ICE website (per German this included the Hilton, Hyatt and Radisson). We asked him to show us what hotels specifically were available for $199 in London, England at that particular week and he pulled up a long list of hotels comparable to those listed on Hotels.com. This offer had great appeal to me as I book a great deal of student travel and getting the guaranteed lowest rate would be beneficial to my job. I had no interest in the timeshare contract, however, and indicated this quite clearly to the sales staff.

German informed us that the ICE program was only available if we purchased a time share studio at Krystal resorts for $18,000 for 25 weeks of rental and with an annual maintenance fee of $625. The full contract was for 25 years at one vacation week per year, but we were given the option to rent up to five weeks annually through their rental agency Latitude 21. We were guaranteed that IF the condo rented, we would receive $1,250 per week of rental ($6,250 – the annual maintenance of $625, per German’s math or $5,625). According to German, the cost of the time-share would pay for itself in rental income. I was concerned by the verbiage of our contract (section 8) which indicated that maintenance fees must be paid in advance for each week of rental. When I specifically asked German, what happens to the 20 remaining weeks of maintenance fees if we rent or use all 25 weeks of our timeshare in the first five years, he assured us that “it goes away.” I clarified, “you mean we don’t have to pay it?” and he assented that this was correct. I also asked if we could book up to nine rooms simultaneously in one year, say for a destination wedding and he assured me this would be no problem. After clarifying the muddied sections of the contract verbally with the salesman, we signed in good faith. We were never informed of how we might extricate ourselves if we had a change of heart on the contract. Less than two weeks after signing a contract with Krystal, we were contacted by the listing agent and asked to pay the “listing fee of $675.” To date, there is no evidence that the condo has ever been listed for rental. Our ICE Rewards program did not activate until 51 days after we signed our contract (over a week later than promised).

All aspects of the sales pitch were a lie. The ICE Rewards program can be purchased separately on an annual basis for just a few hundred dollars a year. It does not offer hotel rooms for $199 and $399 per week in major cities across the globe, nor are the rates any cheaper than Hotels.com or Cheapoair.com. It has a handful of bargain hotels (six when I looked in July) that were offered at comparable low rates, in undesirable locations like Grenada and Gatlinburg, TN. In fact, in comparison, the rates at the same hotel for the same period in London, England were $15 per night higher on the ICE web site than at Hotels.com. When I pointed this out to the ICE customer service staff, they made no effort to match the price but did finally acknowledge my right to withdraw from the program since I was within the ten-day trial period.

I was not so lucky with the Krystal Resort customer service staff. When I pointed out the deception involved with their sales tactics they simply said that I “signed a contract.” I then requested to book nine rooms for January 2017 per my contract in order to extricate myself from the time share as soon as possible. I was told that I could only book nine rooms if there was availability and that I only had priority booking for one room. Furthermore, I would have to pay the $625 maintenance fee nine years in advance to reserve the rooms that I could not be guaranteed. So, German’s assurance that using my weeks in advance would cause my maintenance fee to “go away” was also false. After doing my own math given this situation, I determined that I would be paying Krystal Resorts $200 a year to not use the condominium, assuming that I would be able to rent it regularly, which is doubtful. When I requested to quit claim deed the condo back to Krystal and walk away from the $6000 I had already sunk into the down payment and closing costs, they informed me that my contract said I was responsible for 40% of the remaining cost of the time share or an additional $7200.

It is my interpretation that by international law, a contract is only binding if both parties understand the stipulations of the contract and any explanation involves complete disclosure on the part of the contractor. If deception is used to misrepresent the articles of the contract, the contract is no longer binding. I would assert that Krystal Resorts used deception and fraudulent sales tactics to trick me into signing a contract that I did not fully understand. When I asked specifically for clarification, I was given deliberate misinformation. I fully intend to sue the company for its fraudulent business practices and warn anyone considering purchasing a time-share with Krystal of the dangers of working with this company. Certainly, do not purchase a condominium only to join the ICE Rewards program, however, as you would be far better off with the cheap annual membership than committing to a lifetime membership with time-share strings attached.

what is the location of BBB? In USA? Otherwise, BBB cannot do anything. Lily

I have been scammed by Krystal timeshare also and I am trying to determine how to get out of the contract because nothing is as promised. I purchased the timeshare in 2014 and have stopped making payments as of January 2017 this year and hopes it does not affect my credit score. Can you contact me at roxcrich@yahoo.com

can you please tell me, what was happened when you stopped payment. did they take you to court? thanks

Unbelievable how Krystal does this out in the open for all these years and gets away with it. I'll never go back to Mexico ever again. I just want to be done with these crooks. If anyone has a lawsuit going on, please post the attorney's info. I doubt anything can be done. The Mexican authorities look the other way. They probably get paid off by Krystal.

Just walk away .

irenem145 wrote:

I doubt anything can be done.

You are entirely correct. Whatever sorry excuse for "the law" exists in Mexico, it certainly isn't going to help a U.S. gringo. Any efforts at "lawsuits" will just be a completely unproductive and expensive waste of time and money. You cannot realistically compare the legal system here in the U.S. to whatever hot mess passes for a legal system in Mexico.

Sorry, but you've been burned.

The good news is that you can simply turn on your heel and walk away. You will lose whatever you have paid so far, but other than that those Mexican parasites can't do anything to / with / about you simply STOPPING any and all further contact or payment. Chances of recovering ANY money after the contract rescission period has expired (you have only 5 days to cancel a timeshare contract in Mexico) is essentially ZERO.

.

We had a big mess with Welk Resorts (which over all is a very reputable company) and found that Credit Card companies do not cover something such as this. We were very fortunate that the head of the Sale Dept at Welk Resorts listened to our concerns and worked on our behalf to resolve the situation. I can tell ANYONE from experience that buying into a timeshare with the intent to rent out weeks is not a good option. Even with the beautiful resorts owned by Welk and plenty of status in our trading/reserving level, we have trouble getting the weeks rented out that we don't use. Rarely does it come even close to covering the maintenance fees! So don't get suckered in by any Salesman saying you can buy or upgrade, then rent out the weeks to cover your costs. NOPE. It really doesn't work like that unless you want to spend a lot of time and resources to "peddle" your extra points/weeks. Besides if you really need more weeks to use, it is MUCH less costly to buy here on RedWeek than to buy during a Sales Presentation!

FYI....don't bother trying to use TripAdvisor's rental website "FlipKey" or "TripAdvisor Holiday Rentals". It is very confusing and the customer service is awful.

What does the above post about Welk have to do with THIS thread, whose topic is Krystal?

hje wrote:

We had a big mess with Welk Resorts.

I too fell a victim - stupidly did not do any research and signed away almost $30,000 (bought in 2014) and have been paying mortgage every month. Have even paid thousands to Latitude21 and Global Resort Connections (the previous marketer).

I have read a few posts where people have stopped paying their monthly payments - with one user saying their lawyer said if they try to collect, you can sue, and another user saying their credit history god damaged.

Credit history be damned - it will be back after a few years (max 7) - so let's all stop paying!!!

And if any lawyer is willing to sign-up for a class-action suit - and work purely on a percentage return (no upfront fees) basis - I'm willing to sign-up.

.

We were scammed in August 2016. We stopped paying and their collection agency, Concord, calls here all the time. We just don't answer or we hang up. I would love to get a class action lawsuit going. If anyone knows of an attorney who would represent us, please post. I am so disgusted with the Mexican authorities who allow these fraudulent crooks to continue to scam innocent victims all these years. To say this is upsetting is an understatement.

well as you see in the first sentence i was addressing the question of whether or not a person could try to dispute the issue with Krystal Resorts with their credit card company. i used our situation with Welk Resort to say we had tried this tactic and it failed.

irenem145 wrote:

We were scammed in August 2016. We stopped paying and their collection agency, Concord, calls here all the time. We just don't answer or we hang up. I would love to get a class action lawsuit going. If anyone knows of an attorney who would represent us, please post. I am so disgusted with the Mexican authorities who allow these fraudulent crooks to continue to scam innocent victims all these years. To say this is upsetting is an understatement.

Nice that you stopped paying Concord - me too - they also call all the time - so much so - if I see a call from Arizona (480) - I don't answer. Did Concord inform any of the credit rating agencies? If they do, what is our recourse / plan? Can we dispute saying that is a scam? Anyone with some legal experience / knowledge here that can answer?

Web site for the Arizona AG complaint site (the location of Concord Servicing Corp)

https://www.azag.gov/complaints

And this is the BBB web site for Concord Servicing Corp - and they have an A+ Rating! In spite of 2 negative and 0 positive reviews..

https://www.bbb.org/phoenix/business-reviews/loan-servicing/concord-servicing-corporation-in-scottsdale-az-13000580/reviews-and-complaints?section=reviews&reviewtype=negative

Thank you. I will complain.

Krystal and Latitude 21 are both frauds! Latitude 21 had the nerve to call me to renew with them, after I had already paid them $1,800 for their "Professional Service". I have had a total of 4 views of my property over the last year...all 4 were mine! Buyer Beware!