WE HAVE BEEN DUPED!

"Bill" Burns, I suspect, was just a tool of the scam artists who are running the place.

I am now paying $165 a night to stay in a place I own.

What happened to the inexpensive vacations I was promised when I bought this time share?

At the rate now charged to me for maintenance my unit is now supposedly costing almost $14000/yr to maintain.

I suspect that we owners are paying for the complete maintenance of the building and those running it are collecting the profits.

Time shares are nothing but a sham where owners have no real say and pay the bills!

We went to a presentation today, to join the club. They now want $5,OOO + another maintenance fee to join the club. So, not only do you have to pay the already ridiculous maintenance fee, but they want you to pay another maintenance fee to be in the club.

Does anyone know if it is true that 75% of the owners have joined the club?

I owned 4 units which have dropped dramatically in value it's really unfortunate.

I believe Bill Burns was genuine and was trying against some very big odds, to achieve some real say-so on the board of directors on behalf of the owners. It is imperative that we work together if we are to every have a voice in the management of our resort. The first step right now is to turn in our proxy ballots by the deadline which is 11:59:59 p.m. EST on Feb. 22, 2010. Ideally we should collectively decide who we want to represent us on the VOA board and the AOAO board. Two positions on each board are up for election. I have a substantial finacial interest in Kaanapali Beach Club as an owner of numerous weeks. I want to protect that interest. The only way we can achieve a voice is to agree on who we want to serve on the board. If we all vote for different candidates, we will accomplish nothing. Losing Bill Burns meant we took a big step backwards. As you have noticed, we have heard nothing from anyone since he resigned due to health reasons. As I read through all of the candidates, two stuck out to me as two who would work hard to see that we have a say on the board. I suggest that we vote for Kristen Kirkpatrick and Lawrence Woodford. I honestly do not know them from Adam, but they sound like two people that would represent my interests. If you have other opinions, feel free to share them. Let's work together and try to equalize the situation. Above all, DO NOT SEND IN YOUR BLANK PROXY!!!! Please fill it out and vote for who you think will do a good job represening us. If you send it in blank, you will no doubt be electing another Diamond Resorts employee.

OK 21 individuals on the ballot unless votes are targeted the Board membership will remain the same as votes will be diluted except those by DRI votes and proxy. Is there any way to contact candidates via email? What happened to Bill's website?

I know of know way to contact other owners by e-mail. Bill Burns resigned due to health reasons and I have not heard from him since. I figured the best thing I could do now is to go on to as many forums as possible and suggest that we all vote for Kristen Kirkpatrick and Lawrence Woodford. At least we know they will be acting in our interests. If you would like to help spread the word, your help would be appreciated. We only have less than a month.

THIS A START. WE NEED MORE REPRESENTATION ON THE BOARD. KEEP SPREADING THE TWO NAMES WITH HOPES THAT THEY CAN BE SEATED ON THE BOARD. KEEP THIS FORUM GOING WITH THE HOPES THAT MORE WILL BE TUNING IN. I HAVE YET TO SEE THE LIST OF NOMINEES.

Did you no t receive a ballot in the mail? The list of nominees is on the ballot. If you did not get one, I would either go to the Diamond Resorts website or call them.

Just received the ballot.

Has anyone tried to contact Bill B. to see if he will share the owner list?

Bill Burns for real and a true advocate for the owners.

Kristen Kirkpatrick and Lawrence Woodford are both owners according to my notes from Bill...That is who I am voting for...

That is great to know; it would be helpful, though, if we could send email to all of the owners on Bill's email list to see if we could get others to vote for the owners.

I knew Bill Burns and spent a good deal of time discussing his efforts at KBC with him. I can tell you that he was very sincere in his efforts at KBC. He spent enormous time and funds trying to help the owners retake the resort. When his website was at its peak he was talking to over 6,000 potential votes. The last time I talked to him he said the most votes he was ever able to gather in any election was just over 3,000. So half of his followers failed him in his efforts.

If you filed any of the many factual reports and emails he sent the KBC owners, go back and read them. He carefully explained the trust point system versus deeded ownership. He NEVER converted his deeds to the trust but did, in the end, purchase some trust points to supplement his deeded points to attain a higher level of ownership. He had over 50,000 deeds/points when he left.

Every year he tried to educate owners as to how to fill out ballots and how the elections were run. His last email on the subject showed that around 70% of the resort was still in the hands of deeded owners. Conversion is a very slow process. For the sales staff to say otherwise is fraud.

Someone had it correct. Bill was forced to resign due to a heart attack. He was carrying a large burdeon of maintaining a job, spending hundreds of hours on KBC issues and dealing with the personal tragedy of a terminally ill wife. And anyone wonders why he had a heart attack.

Bill always spoke highly of Ron Wade and Larry Woodford and worked closely with them to try to make changes. In an annual owners meeting a couple years ago he said he considered them good advocates and good friends. That being said, we need Bill back.

Eddie's initial post that Bill Burns might have been just a tool for scam artists is indicative of the frustration we all experience when a larger centralized powerful entity has the upper hand over less coordinated, less individually powerful people. This is true accross many platforms, not just timeshares. I don't think Bill was a tool, I think he got worn out. I'm worried as to why his website now forwards to DRI but during the time he was with us I feel he worked in our interests very actively.

In regard to collecting contact information, this post has a lot of people sharing e-mail addresses, proxy issues, and suggested names for voting. http://www.redweek.com/forums/messages?thread_id=11211;page=1;query=

In response to sherg2 's question about how many owners are deeded (or points based), I read an e-mail from Bill about a year ago where he felt 70% of the KBC owners were deeded. Since he was on the Board at the time, I'd like to believe that info was fairly accurate. Given my experience with the weeks reservations and points reservation for KBC, I feel strongly there is a much higher quantity of weeks inventory than Club inventory. And due to DRI (as well as Sunterra) policy where units sold on the resale market which are in Club will no longer be in Club I firmly believe a very high (I speculate in the 95-99%) number of resold deeded contracts leave Club and either never return or do not rejoin Club for a long time, if ever. I especially believe this since DRI has made it more expensive to get back into Club. It's my opinion that one critical factor in helping DRI sell more units is to support the resale value of units. But actions like losing Club upon resale, significant increases in maintenance, and steps to make it more expensive to get a resale unit back into Club not only contribute to the damage to resale value, but in my opinion contribute significantly to the decline in direct sale prices since the difference in price between direct and resale are growing larger.

I pit my name this year, and will in the future, my late wife and I had 1 deeded week and points. I'd like to get rid of the points and purchase another deeded week. We never joined the Club. so I'm definately not part of that "75%". Bruce Walker

Yes, We have been duped too. Not much in the sales presentation is true to day. None of the changes from the new owners have occurred except that our fees have more than doubled from the time we joined. It's not the economical vacation they presented. Worst of all, you can't talk to anyone at Diamond Resorts. They aren't available, they don't call you back and they don't respond to emails. They are the worst run Timeshare company I've ever dealt with.

Terry

IF DRI is a Resort management company why is it they have sooo much control over the resort and can do just about anything they want including stacking the board.

According to their Damage control spokes hole Patrick Duffy opps sorry CeO (experience not Exexcutive) deeded owners make up 64% of the current ownership.

Check out http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/sunterra-diamond-resorts-resorts-west-c56127/page/6.html#c806221

Mr. Duffy responds to an inquery and qoutes some interesting figures. Like the 64% owners and a weak 8% owned by DRI, the rest is under the ownership of the hawaii collective (which may be the DRI points system). Regardless, Looks like we owners still have a majority if we can just get organized. I do not care about DRI (not even a little bit), but I do care about KBC and look forward to returning to enjoy the people and places that originally "SOLD" me on owning in Hawaii.

Spending nearly 16K for my deed and being able to spend a week for 7-800 dollars for a nice resort was worth it, but now at nearly 1500 for the week I can book it cheaper on expedia have the salesperson explain that math... Why pay 16K and annual fees when you can just BOOK IT online for cheaper.

Concerned Vacation Owner

Does anyone know how Bill Burns is? I am the Vice- President of the New York Hilton Club which is a timeshare in New York operated by HGVC. I know its too late to put my name in to run for the Board for this Timeshare but will do so next time. I would like to contact Bill to enlist his help in running a strong campaign. It's time to hold Diamond responsible for their actions and to reduce the fees which in my opinion are exorbitant. Thanks for your help Happy Holidays

Jerry

Jerry,

Happy Holidays to you and everybody else as well.

In the real world if you do not like the contracted services like Resort Management you find a new one, unfortunately DRI is not the real world they tend to hide behind their attorneys and stay within legal boundaries.

We have the majority vote, unfortunately most of us (myself included) have been complacent and have let the foxes in to the hen house. Had I known I would need to babysit a bunch of board members that have a hidden agenda, I hope I would have been paying better attention.

It is not too late, we just need to be intelligent and organized to out smart this bunch. These guys are professional resort thieves. Then they grab all the cash they can through their points programs and deed grabs and foreclosures. Then they expect us to thank them for doing a good job.

We are the owners of the Resort, and we need to tell these guys YOUR FIRED, pack up all your cronies and get out of here.

We the owners have the power of numbers, we need to get the word out.

Concerned Vacation Owner