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Re: Diamond Resorts raises maintenance fees again!

If DRI has a fault, it's communicating the reasons for MF increase and/or how those increases will be used. Maybe conceptual drawings would help but, that also adds expense. DRI's been at this a long time. I suspect they've come to realize that no matter what they do, people are going to be upset for approx 12 to 24 months, then when they see the improvements, the compaints will die off. Many will complain loudly and threaten to not pay their MF's but, it's a small percentage that follows through on the threat and, bad debt is calculated into current MF's anyway. DRI is VERY good about estimating bad debt. Even if they over estimate the percentage of bad debt it comes out as a good thing. The extra money budgeted buy not needed is used to reduce current or future MF's. It's a system that has proven to work very well for them and at a lower cost than trying to convince everyone that they know what they're doing. In the end, those that stay see the results and are typically happy. Before DRI purchased Sunterra, we refused to stay at Sunterra managed resorts based upon the experiences we had with them. When Sunterra was the management company, everything was cheap and falling apart. DRI has changed that by upgrading to better quality, preforming maintenance that was far behind, maintaining the resort grounds, brining in employee's that CARE about owners and overhauling the way the sales staff approaches owners. Overhauling the sales staff takes time but, it will get done. DRI isn't a high pressure outfit but they can't just fire everyone and start from scratch. They will weed out the bad sales persons, they'll change the way floor managers are trained and they do inspect what they expect. It's a culture change that takes a couple of years but, for those that stick it out, they'll see what I mean. DRI is far from the cheapest timeshare we own but the resorts are well run and comfortable. We've learned to give new additions a couple of years before booking a stay. We use to avoid Sunterra resorts. Now we have no qualms about staying at any of the DRI managed resorts. Quality has been pretty even throughout the system, they have quality employees, they respond to complaints if you're polite, and they read what's in print about them (I can assure you they're reading this thread). DRI is the ONLY timeshare company where the CEO, Stephen Cloobeck, has been know to make personal phone calls to owners. I have been contacted directly by him no less than three times and have exchanged E-mail corespondence with him several times. Not just employee's of his but with the Mr. Cloobeck directly. He is a very involved CEO and he does care about his owners.