BJ Cooke
You mentioned that those of us who have attended a sales presentation are not commenting on this thread, I beg to differ with you. I attended a sales reprentation on Oct. 23rd, 2012, in Carson City. The sales team was Todd Miller and John McClay with R & R Venture Group. This team was in Carson City and Reno for a period of two weeks. They flew out on Friday Nov. 2nd.
I have the copies of everything they wrote down about how this program was to work and how many points my current timeshare would convert to, along with how many points the timeshare with Vacation Villas was going to be worth. To sweeten the deal they were going to give us 120,000 extra bonus points.
I wasn't keen on having to purchase a "dog" timeshare for $9,987.00 to get 32,500 points. I didn't pay that much for my Gold Crown two bedroom lockup four years ago. I also wasn't keen on having to pay maintenence fees on this "dog" timeshare that wasn't rated at all and from the picture in the RCI book, wasn't at all appealing.
What I was interested in was the ability to sell these points for cash to pay for my maintenence fees and or use that money to pay for other travel expenses ect.
We didn't have a credit card on us to purchase....because the phone call we received to entice us to attend this meeting was misleading. We were told it was RCI contacting us to tell us about some changes. Since we didn't have a credit card on us....Todd Miller offered to try and get us qualified for a RCI credit card. We agreed to try this option, so they entered a credit application on their computer and they told us we we qualified...however....RCI credit card didn't give them a card number.
Todd and John went through the contract quickly with us and we signed some of the forms.....lucky for us not all the forms were filled out properly or signed by us to make this purchase complete. We really didn't know this at the time it wasn't really complete, it was late, everyone wanted to leave.
We get a call from Todd Miller a couple of days later stating that we needed to meet again to finalize the contract. That gave us time to do some research and really mull over the contract. They had failed to put any information on the credit card payment authorization form, no purchase amount, no credit card information at all....however.... they had by husband sign and date the form agreeing to charge the following amount....again...lucky for us...no amount was listed.
As far as Tina stating that her parents agreed to one amount and a much higher amount was charged to the card, could very well have had happened to them. If they signed the credit card Authorization form without it completely being filled out properly, but the credit card information was written in there, I have no doubt the sales person wrote in an amount to save the deal. I would not have put it past these two salesman we dealt with. The question for Tina; does your parents have a copy of the Credit Card Authorization form they signed with the amount written in. If theirs is blank, like ours was....they have something to argue about with the credit card company.
We received our credit card in the mail, and decided not to activiate it and we cancelled it immediately.
In our sales presentation they stated that we would purchase this on our own credit, then within two weeks, we would transfer the balance to their lender, "Chase Discover Citibank" at no interest for 12-18 months, only paying $99.00 per month for six months. Then by selling 150,000 points (we could do this only one time), we would get a check for $12,750 from PRL for those points we sold. We then would use that money to pay off the balance due to Citibank and have money left over to pay our maintenence fees for both timeshares and still have money left over to use for whatever we wanted. In essence, it wouldn't cost us anything to get into this program....if it worked the way it was verbally explained to us in the sales presentation.
That sounded really cool and I liked the idea of VSI, however, I got to thinking....why would they give me 120,000 bonus, just to buy 150,000 points and write me a check for 12,750 in six months. That didn't make any business sense to me at all. Also...the whole idea of having us put this purchase on a credit card then they would have us transfer the balance to a different lender at no interest....made no sense to me either. Once we had signed on the purchase agreement and they had our credit card information, we've bought this timeshare and these sales people will be long gone spending their commission.
I also didn't like that in the contract it is written and I quote; " Oral representations cannot be relied upon as correctly stating the representations of the seller." So a sales person can promise the world, mislead, do whatever they can to seal the deal and walk away with the money. When you read the so called contract, there are many things left out that were promised verbally in the sales presentation, both for PRL and VSI. You can see just from the PRL website, the information verbally stated in the sales presentation didn't match to either the information out on the web or on the contract.
My question to you BJ Cooke, since you are a salesman of this program and also a corporate officer in PRL: What happened to all those people's money that recently purchased into this program within the last two weeks of October, since on November 8th, PRL was disolved? R & R Venture group signed up many elderly couples and took their money just two weeks before this company was disolved. Obviously, the money went into their pockets as commission, the timeshare resort got their cut for their selling a timeshare on their behalf, and PRL got the rest. All those people should get their money back, however, they won't get it back. The sad sicking part is, these people won't even know any of this happened with PRL until six months down the road, when they don't get any pay outs for their points. Why is PRL disolving....um...let me take a guess.... not enough money coming in to cover the checks to people who wish to sell their points. The money that is coming in goes to commissions, salaries of the office staff, rent for office space, and supplies. Now all these sales people are going around promising everyone like us...they can sell these points and get checks....well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out...all these people are requesting checks for points instead of trading out for vacations. So...you have a run on the PRL bank and there is no way to keep up with the payout demands...so you fold and disolve the company. All these people who purchased an extra timeshare that they didn't want or need, are stuck paying for it and the maintence fees that go along with it.
You can say all you want about how we don't understand how PRL works....believe me....we understand it very well and it disgusts me to know end!!
Most people don't find out or use these types of forums like Red Week, until they have a reason to. As far as Jay Jay is concerned...he has every right to voice his opinion as many times as he chooses. If you don't like what he has to write, quit reading it!
