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Your maintenance fees (by Bob B.):

Boobier, thank you for all the contact info on Guy and Nonna Russell and I hope and pray that the hammer is coming down soon on these crooks. As far as maintenance fees I am in agreement with Boobier. What owners fail to realize sometimes (not that all of you do) is that those that are harmed when someone fails to pay maintenance fees are the other owners and yourself. Resorts go on, either by acquisition from larger chain resorts, or by struggling HOA's. In a situation like this, where the HOA hired a sales organization, and then that organization went out and fraudulently sold their product, the only ones who are MAKING money is the fraudulent company.. They are contracted to make 60%-80%, in most cases, of the original sales price. They use the resort's merchant accounts, the resort's name, RCI's name, and the barclay, or bank of america card, which only resorts can get, and they go out and sell a legitimate product fraudulently. So when you get mad, and charge back your card, or cxl your purchase, the sales team has already walked away with $6-$8000 of your original $10k and the resort now is responsible for covering your $10000 charge back out of the $2-$4k they made. Part of that $2-$4k has been spent on staff, legal, rci dues, merchant fees etc. leaving them 5%-10% of the original money to cover the FULL chargeback.. Point is, everyone was screwed over from Guy and Nonna's organization in the end.

Resorts have a set "hard cost" with taxes, overhead, utilities, etc. When, for example, 30% of owners choose not to pay dues, who will have to make up for it? Yep, the other owners. Non performing intervals create higher dues for the performing ones. Also if that happens, now your resort will not be kept up as well, again harming the owners. If the developer goes belly up, the only difference you will see is who's website is associated with the resort and who you are paying your maintenance fee's to. If a bigger company comes in and acquires the property they are going to try to recoup that cost, again raising maintenance. When you tell them that you felt it was sold to you under false pretenses, their response will be, "you made a financial obligation" and either you will be foreclosed on and your credit will be damaged, or they have the right at that time to pursue you civilly. None of these are good outcomes for anyone involved.

I know its a bad spot for everyone involved, the clients, the h.o.a., and the developer, but the bottom line is that unless you can "legally" get out of it through dispute or cancellation, you will only be hurting yourself and the other owners by not paying.

I am sure this will not be a popular post but it is honest and true.