Timeshare Scams and Fraud

I am a retired nurse with Multiple Sclerosis and a disabled child. My husband and I bought a timeshare with Embassy Resorts in 2001 and we had some difficulties at first but for the most part it was OK. In 2004, Embassy was bought out by Diamond Resorts and that is when everything went from bad to worse as we could never book a vacation due to lack of availability.
Over the next 15 years, they kept calling us for owner’s updates, which they proceeded to upgrade our contracts to fix our availability issues and give us higher status, so we had priority bookings. One time they took our drivers licenses and held us hostage until we upgraded again! Our last upgrade in 2016 was done so we could have an “exit plan” so our disabled child wouldn’t inherit the financial burden. Our... Read More

In 2010, we purchased a timeshare with a company called Island One while visiting one of their properties in Florida. When they were purchased by Diamond Resorts, we were immediately hit with a 70% increase in maintenance fees! ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!! For the next 8 years, we were continually asked to attend Diamond’s “member updates”. It didn’t take long to realize that these were just additional sales presentations where we were continuously pressured to purchase more and more points. Every time we declined and left these meetings, we were rudely dismissed. On one particular occasion, we were FORCED TO WALK BACK to a totally different resort because they had sent a car to pick us up earlier in the day. What kind of company treats people this way???
When we start... Read More

We were asked to attend a meeting with Diamond Resorts in late August 2020. As Monarch owners, we were told that we needed to upgrade into the Diamond system in order to keep the equity that we had with our prior purchase, that we would never pay maintenance fees and that we would never be called to attend another meeting. There appeared to be no downside! It was not until a month later that we started to see the lies that had been told to us. We never received any paperwork or billing information and when we called no one knew anything about it. In November, we drove to Las Vegas to try and figure out what was going on. When we met with the finance department, they claimed they had no paperwork from August and had us sign new paperwork, again reiterating that there would b... Read More

After booking a stay at one of the Diamond Resorts properties, we received a call to “confirm” our stay. The rep offered us a discount on our stay if we were to attend one of their 90-minute presentations. At the presentation, we met with a salesperson that was very rude and pushy from the beginning.

He told us that this was a real estate investment that would increase in value, that we could sell our unit at any time for a profit, there was no fees for utilizing other in-network resorts, and the maintenance fees would increase at a nominal rate. The main reason we purchased was because they told us there is a robust rental market and we could make extra income by renting it out to pay down the mortgage debt. It didn’t take long to figure out these were all LIES! We... Read More

The use of the Diamond membership has left us very disappointed due to the lack of consistent and truthful information that Diamond Resort employee gives us. Each time we reserved a Diamond stay, it came with a required “60-minute” presentation which ends up being a full day! This takes time away from our Vacation that we would very much enjoy instead of being faced with lies and inconsistent information that the MANY salespersons would give at these LONG presentations. One of the lies was that we no longer needed interval International membership because Diamond would “pay for it”. We were then notified that Diamond no longer covered that fee and we would have to pay it along with a myriad of other undisclosed fees. On our last stay, they told us that we are a gold memb... Read More