I wrote Ms. Heridia, who quickly responded that she had received my complaint and that it would be filed for review. I am going to share what I wrote, because I have not seen anything in this forum as to the issue of what happens when you inherit. If you have a will or an estate plan, these timeshares have to be included and TMC can continue to collect fees after your death from your estate or your heirs. Here is what I wrote: and I encourage others to write, there is power in numbers.
Dear Ms. Heridia,
I have been keeping up with the forum on Redweek. Many on the forum have strongly advised that members contact you with our story re: the nightmare of a situation with The Manhattan Club. (going forward in this email I will refer to it as TMC)
My mother and sister invested in a timeshare together in the early 2000’s and my mother owned another. She and my sister were smart women and were convinced they were investing in a good real estate transaction where they would have deeded property in New York.
I remember the day they were in the initial sales pitch, my sister, who had just undergone chemotherapy for breast cancer, called me crying, because they had been in the pitch for 3 hours and the sales people literally would not let them leave. I told them to get out of there, and when they attempted to leave they were handed over to this wonderful woman (I know her name) who convinced them to clinch the deal.
It soon became evident that it was difficult to impossible to reserve time at TMC. Each year my mother’s credit card was charged 6 months before the due date of the invoice, without any notice and it always upset her because she was careful about planning her expenses and alloting for them. She was told the only way she could hope to get time at the club, was to pay the fees a year in advance. Often, due to things that came up in life over the years, (mostly illness) my mother and sister had to forfeit their two weeks or give it away. And as many others have shared the fees keep rising. You know all this.
I would like to share what I now face, as my sister passed away in 2008 and my mother passed away in 2013 and I have inherited the two timeshares. I pay almost $ 6,000 in fees, yearly, which I and my husband can’t and don’t want to afford. We can only afford them at the moment, due some money I inherited and I don’t want to deplete my inheritance on these fees when I would rather save it for retirement, which is imminent.
I was not on the deeds, though I was still responsible for the fees as executor of my mother’s estate. I had to hire a NY attorney to go through ancillary probate, file taxes in NY and pay various outrageous fees to have these timeshares deeded in my name and appraised on the advice of my lawyers and accountant, even though I insisted I knew they were worth nothing. I paid thousands of dollars out of my inheritance to deal with this issue, with every kind of fee imaginable.
One timeshare was appraised at $20,000 and the other at $30,000. Last June I gave one back to the club, I was told within 6 months I would get $100 and be free of it, and thought, according to my accountant, that I could write off some sort of loss. Due to the investigation, that commenced last July, this process has been put on hold indefinitely, with no idea of what the outcome will be. I cannot write it off and I cannot use it and I did pay the fees on it for last year. In order to give a unit back you have to be current with the fees.
My husband and I did estate planning this past year and our lawyer advised us to get rid of these timeshares because they would prove to be a nightmare for our heirs (we have no children, but have planned to leave whatever is left after our deaths to my husbands father and brother and my cousins in Iceland).
The real nightmare of this situation is that I cannot give them back, I cannot sell them (no one wants to buy them), and if I quit paying the fees, TMC could ruin my otherwise excellent credit. I don’t want to be forced to have to go to NYC every year. And if I want to go I can find other equivalent accommodations more cheaply and go when I want to. Heck I can reserve whatever time I want much more easily as a non member of TMC, than I can as a member.
This truly is a nightmare from which I and others cannot escape. On the forum, many refer to the Attorney General’s investigation as a lawsuit, which I believe is erroneous, it is an investigation, correct? And it has been stated that even if the Attorney General does find TMC guilty of fraud and other violations that they/Mr. Eichner will just have to pay fines and go on with business as usual. Although it does say something that Mr. Eichner has hired a big guns criminal attorney. Will he just get him off the hook??
Clearly, there is a lot wrong here and the owners of TMC club have been and are being cheated, swindled, conned and scammed and have been for years.
I would think that it is the duty of the State of New York to do something about this beyond fines and help the owners get some sort of resolution/restitution. I know from what many have said, they would just be happy to get out of the ownership legally, stop paying the fees, even if they don’t get reimbursed some or all of their investment. Ideally I would like both, to get some of my money back and be rid of “investment” forever.
Please help.
