Latest News and A Friday Preview

It is very rare to be able to give some credit to a timeshare company, but on this occasion, it is actually well deserved, as once again one major developer, Marriott, has done the right thing. Unlike many of the cases we have been following over the years, there has been no delay in abiding by the sentence of the court and depositing the funds into the court account.

It is not the fact they have done this, as it has become a regular occurrence, it is the number of cases and the amounts involved that really make it stand out. In an impressive 13 cases found in favour of the clients, the three Courts of First Instance, Marbella (9), Estepona (1) & Mallorca (3), awarded a staggering 585,959.00 Euros in total.

Payment to the court has been confirmed and pending the usual administration process, the clients should be receiving their payments very shortly.

This does make the attempts by other developers to avoid paying by dubious means such as constant appeals to great shame, at least Marriott in Europe are living up to their responsibility and complying fully. Our only thought is why could they have not just complied with the law in the first place?

Although, for Marriott, they also have another major obligation, which is to their shareholders. It is required for them to submit public reports that also include any legal obligations such as the trials in Spain. In one report a few years ago they did acknowledge the fact they had been losing, they also set aside a considerable sum to cover these costs.

So in a way, Marriott are not being the nice guys, they are actually looking after their shareholders, don’t want the price to fall do we?

There is always a twist.

Moving now to our stories on the Financial Ombudsman Service, our reader has finally had a response, one case is favourable the other is not.

The Ombudsman has found in favour of our reader in her case with Barclay Partner Finance, the offer to conclude the case has been made and apart from one major point it is favourable. We are unable to go into detail on the contentious point, but we do think that it is BPF making sure they don’t lose out. We think you know what we mean by that.

In the second case against BPF, the husband’s claim has been rejected, again this does look like spurious reasons from BPF. The documents for this case are being reviewed in order to justify why this decision is being rejected by our couple.

On the surface, it looks like another Silverpoint “fraudulent” attempt at making as much money out of nothing. We will keep you all informed on further developments, but one thing from these stories is certain, you should never give up and throw in the towel, that’s what they want you to do!

This Friday we bring you another article from our US friends, “More on the Feasibility of Renting to Cover Costs and an Upsurge in Boiler Room Timeshare Exit Scams”.

Selling timeshare with the “promise” of being able to rent it out to cover costs and the “promise” of being able to resell at a profit are “pitches” many in Europe have been the victims of, the most notorious of these are the Resort Properties/Silverpoint schemes.

It also covers more information regarding our article on Monday, Class Actions: Are they Viable or Just a Con?

One of our regular readers and also a contributor explains her “cold call” and the purpose of the call, it follows our article to the letter. We now have more information such as a “company name” which for the moment will not be published here, we are currently carrying out some preliminary checks and to be honest it does not look good.

From what our readers have been telling us and also from the coming article, it is clear they hold some very detailed information on their “prospective clients” timeshare interests, information which they should not possess. So this then leaves us with one very important question;

Where have they got it from?

We leave you all to answer that one, but we do believe that our answers are going to be the same.

If you have any comments about any article please post them on the relevant page, if you have any questions or would like information on your timeshare or any business that contacts you, please use our contact page and AIT will get back to you.