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Re: Manhattan Club Lawsuit (by Flavia T.):

This is the letter I sent to Mr Farooq and Ms Heredia from the AG's office:

I bought two weeks (two apartments) of flexible timeshare at the Manhattan Club back in 1998 when my NY based grandmother died and I wanted to own a place in the city. I have always lived abroad and I now live in Rome, Italy. Its hard enough to own a timeshare when you live in the vicinity but managing it from Italy is pretty difficult. I used to pay very low maintenance fees, aroung $400 a week. I was also assured, as it was obviously very important for me, that they were going to offer a rental service that would put my apartment to good use when I was not using it and would not have to pay the yearly maintenance fees. They have been assuring me for the last 19 years that they were working on it! Maintenance fees skyrocketed a few years after I bought the property but until I could use it myself I liked it so much I accepted the high fees. After that, the economic crisis hit. It is way too expensive for us to fly over from Europe and to sustain those kind of fees. I have tried selling it for years but with no success. Also, it is so difficult to find vacancies that I need to plan ahead by at least 9 months at a time--I work in television, this is practically impossible for me. I was summoned in by the sales people during my last stay, December 2013. I came out of that meeting feeling caged and cheated. They were not about to listen to what my problems, but they wanted me to cough up a whopping $6,000 or $9,000 per week to buy back into the RCI system...something I was not about to do. They also pretty much told me I was stuck with the property and the fees. I need to sell it because under the circumstances I cannot pay for the maintenance anymore. In fact, I can't even get myself over there. Renting is an option but I can only make a fraction of the fees as they are so high its much cheaper to stay in a hotel. What I would like to know is if we can just stop paying the fees and what kind of trouble we would run into. Thank you. Flavia M. T.