Owning a timeshare holiday can be very beneficial, rewarding, but there are many pot holes you can fall into, many people trying to make a quick buck out of people, mostly hiding behind laws and legislation that is not international so cannot be enforced in another country.
Having a timeshare in Spain, for nearly twenty years in the very up market town of Puerto Banús, Marbella (Málaga), and it is called Club Jardines del Puerto. I love the place, to see the many large yachts in the harbour, the expensive cars, which drive round the harbour at night, and the diners at night sitting in the open fronted restaurants.
In the evening, I like to go early for a meal, say 8pm. It means that it is too early for most diners, thus there is the possibility to be seated at a front table, so I can watch people passing by, watching me, watching them. I love it.
In the last couple of months, companies have telephoned to say that they have a buyer for the timeshare if it is to be sold.
I am always careful of cold callers, people offering special deals over the telephone. Offering commission for windows installed ten years previously, (see Weatherseal Windows, do you think I am stupid?), special deals on mobile phones and purporting to be a service provider, Orange or Vodafone.
The latest call was from a company called Alpha Group Resales.
They said they have a purchaser who wishes to buy the timeshare at a very good price, and potential buyer had put a deposit down with the company Alpha Group Resales. Worth considering I think.
There would be a number of contract stages I was told, two I believe, that would be gone through, before the sale would be finalised.
Firstly, could they have my credit card number.
“What for?” I asked.
They would take £995 (UK Pounds Stirling), as a form of guarantee in case I pulled out. It would be paid back upon completion of the sale.
This smells of a scam, a con, of somebody trying to extort money from me. Why should I have to pay up front? Why would they not take commission from the sale?
“How did these people know about the timeshare?” I asked. “Oh they viewed the flat.“
Strange, why didn’t the resident management team of Club Jardines del Puerto contact me? I had not appointed this company to sell the timeshare. How could they sell something or take a deposit when they did not know if the timeshare was for sale in the first place?
I asked for Alpha Group Resales telephone number, and was given
I asked them if they had more details, a web site, references.
They gave me a telephone number of 08712041621 which they said was for the Timeshare Advisory Service. An 0871 number is a national call rate number in the UK, which can be diverted to any phone line in the world.
I asked them to call back.
Yes there was a web site, www.alphagroupresales.com, but the site was not listed in any search engines.
Strange?
I checked on “whois“, a web site which gives details of the registrant of a domain name, dates of registering and who owns the domain name. The domain was first registered or created 8th July 2008, less than a month ago, so not a long standing company, and registry expires 8th July 2009, so they do not intend to trade for long. It has the owner details restricted.
I checked for the Timeshare Advisory Service on the search engines. The only reference I can find to a company with such a name is in Queensland Australia, with no website and no telephone number.
Searching on the web for the telephone number 08712041621 reveals that other people have been given this number, and that the whole set-up is a scam.
There is another resale company mentioned in this type of scam, again asking for £995 payment up front from the seller. This company is Holiday Network Solutions (HNS), with a very nice looking site, but no address or location nor any telephone numbers, the only way of contacting is via the on-site inquiry form.
It seems many people have reported being conned by this company out of £995. The credit card companies refuse to pay back, as there was a freely entered contract between the parties.
It appears that once the £995 is paid, the so called potential buyer will back-out, and another purchaser will be found, offering a substantially lower price. Obviously the seller will say “no deal”, but the £995 will not be repaid, as the seller has broken the contract by refusing to sell, or they will delay supplying the next potential buyer for a year, by which time the company and money has disappeared.
I hope if you are reading this blog, it has reached you before you have parted with your money. This scam is rife.
Oh Katie Bond of Alpha
Group Resales did call me back, but when and I said I would not continue as I had seen the scam on the internet, the telephone went dead.
Intuition can be a powerful tool.