Yet another unbiased review on Tripadvisor was posted on 10th May 2016, detailing the pitfalls of accepting a too good to be true offer.
“josephine-public” from Hampshire detailed that she received a phone call offering her a self-catering holiday for £99 to Tenerife, the catch was they needed to give up a morning or afternoon of their stay to attend a presentation. The format of the “Flybuy” holiday is very similar within every other timeshare company in the world.
Unfortunately, by josephine-public’s own admission, they made the impulsive decision there and then, leaving no time to research the company behind the offer – Resort Development Organisation, RDO, and TATOC members, Club La Costa World Resorts & Hotels, otherwise known as CLC.
Once in Tenerife their Club La Costa representative, Paul, collected them at 9am and took them to one of the resort restaurants. They were then subsequently met by their sales representative and handed over to go to the main sales office for the hard sell.
josephine-public notes;
We finally got to the 999 Euros per year maintenance charge, then another £125 to have membership to more variety of resort, then another £75 if you wanted to use their hotel partners (all top notch).
This was without buying anything at all. It was by now 1.30pm and we had had enough. Morning had come and gone and we still had 3 types of accommodation to look at followed by further discussions about costs.
I refused point blank. This was when the threats started coming. I had contracted to the entire presentation, I was informed. I was told it would be a morning only.By my reckoning, morning ended at 12 and I had already given 90 minutes more than I contracted to, but no, the sales bit only started at 11 because we had been at breakfast beforehand and the small print said otherwise but as a favour, because it was so obviously not for us, we only had to look at one type of property, which, after my husband became so concerned that we would be charged full price for the holiday, I reluctantly agreed to do, wasting even more of our time.
If you do a bit of research, despite all the reassurances, it is VERY difficult to get out of one of their contracts although CLC World lost a major court case in October 2015 and had to pay back all the money paid by one client, plus court costs. It also seems very difficult to actually get a holiday with your points and you have to pay yet more money every time.All in all, we had a good time but I wouldn’t go back to this or any other CLC resort even if it was totally free with flights and transfers paid.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk