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Re: Vida Vacations & Grand Mayan lies

Hi, I read your post with interest as it has many of the same elements that happened to my wife and I. We live in Mexico. Mexico contracts do not have an annual fee. We only pay when we use the resort. Maybe you can ask them to change that. We were told by our salesman that they stopped the annual fees for international members some time ago. This change may be applying to you and you don't know it yet. Just passing along what I heard. Like you, our information was sold or given to one of their favorite scammers who was impersonating as a Vidanta rep. He called us with all of our personal data. He knew our phone number, name, unit size, maintenance fee, etc. Even with that I decided we should check him out. So I called Vidanta and they confirmed that this scammer was their employee. He was offering a bogus 2 x 1 offer which they also confirmed as real. So we bought into it. Now it is all our fault that we got scammed according to their genius lawyers, while they deny any responsibility. It would be impossible for an outsider to have the knowledge about us and Vidanta details that this scammer had. I think they reward some of their key people by passing out the information of likely "marks" who proceed to sell us a scam while presenting themselves as a "realistic" resort employee using our information against us. They are criminals and things are finally getting some sunshine. So then we take our case to PROFECO, Mexico's consumer protection agency. PROFECO has decided in our favor. They are going to levy a fine, some $16,600, against Vidanta soon. This amount could double when the PROFECO internal write-ups are done, but I am not sure. More victims will certainly help here. The fine doesn't matter since PROFECO keeps that money. What we get is a public document that Vidanta scammed us that we can use in civil court. Also there is INAI who can levy much bigger fines for violation of Privacy laws. Like maybe $2 million USD. This would really get their attention. INAI is the Institute that enforces the Mexican privacy law. So first we get a decision out of PROFECO, they fine Vidanta. Then we get that decision as a public Mexican document to use in civil court and at INAI for the next step. The civil court could void the contract and make Vidaanta return all of our money. This is my hope but I am not sure on this point as yet. I will know soon about this. PROFECO says that if we can get a couple more victims who can show they lost money because of privacy law or consumer law violations in the next month or so they might increase our case against Vidanta where they will close the sales of Vidanta until their illegal practices are stopped. This appears to be the first PROFECO case against Vidanta in all of Mexico, which is very surprising. Vidanta has been doing this for years, but only recently with an expanded domestic sales department. For some reason, Americans and Canadians don't think to use PROFECO. For us PROFECO has been very straight forward and business like. They want to clean up Mexico's image and the Timeshare sector. Imagine if they stop the sales at Vidanta until Vidanta cleans up their act. What poetic justice this would be if that happens. I want to make sure your case meets PROFECO's standards of the victim losing real money resulting from Vidanta's violation of the privacy law by passing out your information to scammers. As you know, Vidanta is careful to separate the lies of the salesmen from the written contract at the end of the sales process, but maybe we can defeat that practice too. Time will tell. [Q=celsal] Unfortunately we became members 7 years ago, and have never use the Grand Mayan Palace or Vida Vacation resort. We had been scammed not once, but three times and the scam is still keep on going by paying this yearly maintenance fee. These company has brought us so much grief that my husband and I almost got a divorce from all the arguments we had over the years. When we got scammed the third time it was a big a mount of money in the $10,000. Until now we are being slave to pay the yearly maintenance fee that keeps on going up in price, it's started up at $400 and now its in the $700's. I feel we are wasting our money since we've never use their resort anyway. Four years after we signed up, somebody called us and said, they re going sell or rent it for us, we paid them $1500, and nothing came out of it; and then the second time somebody called us again, the deal sounded too good to be true, my husband took a chance and did it any way, sure enough it was one the big scam; they said there is a buyer /renter, we just to have pay $10,000 for the closing and we will be getting $30,000 dollars for the so many weeks they are going to rent it. It was my husband who did the dealing, he was instructed to wire the money to Mexican bank, but after my husband wired the $10,000 to their bank, they did not answer our phone calls anymore. Evidently they sold our information to a bunch of scammers,..we don't know if these scammers are a part their circle because they used the same tactics and manipulation when we first signed up, they try to sweetened the deal they are very cunning and skillful, as if they went to school and have Masters Degree on fooling people, they are equipped with answers for every leery question you may have. We been fed up and frustrated with their lies,... I want to cut our ties with Mayan Palace, or at least get the money we paid for the time share. I'm so mad at these people, until now we are continually being screwed over by Mayan Palace because we don't want to ruin our credit, so every year we reluctantly pay $600 for nothing, this years bill is now is almost $700. We have never use the Mayan Palace Resorts but yet we pay every year for the maintenance fee. They have never stood up of what they promised, this could mean breach of contract, they were supposed to have it rented for us and we should be receiving rent money every time it supposed to be rented!,..bunch of liars!! Now I'm about ready to hire a lawyer and maybe start another Class Action Law Suit! I want to talk to their customers service first. And if I don't get the result I want this is what I'm going to do! Our story is similar to those who made some complains about this resorts, they use high pressure sales tactics, then lied to you about getting it rented, they said a part of that maintenance fee is to pay for somebody to help manage and get it rented, but until now we haven't received any amount money from any renters. I remember I went to the bathroom before we signed the contract, and the sales person waited and trapped me at the door, I told him I want to speak to my husband first before we make our decision, but he was so skillful at trickery and before we knew it, we managed to signed the contract with out having a chance to discuss about it first. We want to at least get our money back we paid for the time share, and get what we paid every year for the maintenance, and apart from this amount, we already been scammed $11,500. I think this company should be band from operating their business!! Or should be off limits to all Americans!! " I'd like to know what other's are saying about you don't pay unless you used?" cause I pay every year whether I use it or not and now I just received a bill it's almost $700!!! I just so had it with these company Mayan Palace!![/Q]