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Re: Vida Vacations & Grand Mayan lies (by Michelle M.):

Yes, I understand you. The case with us is that the product is "not as described". We bought the contract because the sales lady told us we can "earn" Vida Dollars (which is equivalent in value to US dollars) each time we vacation with them and use the Vida Dollars to redeem for other travel and merchandise such as cruises which we were very interested in. That was why we bought the contract.

Although the document we signed had mentioned we can use the Vida Dollars to "as a partial payment to buy down the purchase price of travel and lifestyle purchases, it did not give any specific detail. We only knew from the examples in the sales lady's presentation that if we spent $1000 to stay at the resort, we will earn $1000 in Vida Dollars and we can spend that towards the price of our cruise. This did not sound like a "discount program" to us, it sounded like a earn and redemption kind of program.

Since we did not receive our login information to this members only website for Vida Lifestyle until after the rescission date, we didn't know that "Vida Dollars are a form of payment that you can use to buy down the price you're spending on vacations and merchandise, by eliminating the markup other retailers place on these products." This verbiage is viewable on the website only after you have logged into your account.

Here is an example to clarify the issue: If there is a cruise that costs $2000 and I have $1000 in Vida Dollars to use in my account, the program will not allow me to use that $1000 "as a partial payment to buy down the purchase price” of the $2000 cruise. In the program as it actually exists, the buy down is not necessarily a set percentage, it can be any amount the company sets based on a variety of factors. In other words, you might only be allowed to buy down $150 on your $2000 cruise. This is materially different from the contract.

If the above had been disclosed appropriately in time and not in a misleading way, we would not have signed the contract in the first place. Or if we have had access to log in to the account to see how the program actually works before the rescission date, we would have cancelled. We were not given access to the account until after the rescission date. It is a huge difference in the value received from the contract by many orders of magnitude. If it was made clear to us that the amount of buy down is an arbitrary number which the company sets based on a variety of factors, (in other words, complete unknown), why would I pay them so much for the rights to spend more money with them?

By the way, we were with the sales people for 12 hours (from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm), in the afternoon I felt I was about to passed out, finally we were allowed to leave to grab some food and then return to their office. I think what they did should be illegal.