Club La Costa (CLC)

We bring to you the timeshare resort of Club La Costa whose promotional literature includes an endorsement by the Royal correspondent Jennie Bond (see here). We are now receiving complaints of mass mis-selling by this resort, we will summarise the sales presentation below.

The Law on Pre Contractual Information

All of our current cases report that they have been cold called by CLC or one of their tele marketing partners. They are offered a ‘FREE’ one week stay at a CLC resort upon the proviso that the people benefiting from the ‘FREE’ one week holiday attend a ‘TWO HOUR’ presentation. There are no details given as to what the presentation is about either verbally or in writing upon the email confirmation.

CLC are currently selling fractional timeshare and their resorts are timeshare therefore, any presentation must be timeshare. Timeshare, easy to say, hard to sell, impossible to get out of. We think this sums up the timeshare market.

THE LAW: Spanish Timeshare Law, No: 4/12 (Articles 7 to 10) State: Article 7 Advertising. It says that any advertisement or offer, as well as any commercial communication, has to clearly state where the consumers can obtain the pre-contractual information required under this Law. So information has to be upfront from the beginning.

It also says that any invitation to any promotional event or sale must clearly indicate the commercial purpose and nature of that act. The pre-contractual information provided in the Law has to be available to the consumer at any time during the Marketing event.

Article 7 goes further and makes it very clear that any timeshare right or any tourist long-term holiday product cannot be marketed or sold as an investment.

Article 8, regarding the information requirements, says that pre-contractual information has to be in paper or any other durable format and that it has to be provided to the consumer prior to the contract or its formalisation.

The same or similar requirements are laid down in the European Directive 2008/122/EC

The Club La Costa model breaches every one of the pre-contractual information requirements. In every one of the cases we currently have conduct of, on no occasion were the owners told what the nature of the presentation was or for what purpose they would be attending the presentation or sales event. This is a fundamental breach of Spanish law and the European Directive relating to timeshare transactions.

THE CLC SALES PRESENTATION

On the second or third day of the free one week stay a CLC representative attends the prospects apartment at approximately 09:00hrs, introduces themselves and shows the prospects to an awaiting car. They are then taken on a drive around the resort and the resort we are referring to here specifically is the CLC Mijas resort Malaga, Spain. The first stop is breakfast where the representative and the prospect(s) enter into general discussion, a sort of ‘getting to know you’ session. This is finished at approximately 10:00 hrs.

POINT TO BE NOTED ‘NO MENTION OF TIMESHARE OR WHAT THE PRESENTATION IS ABOUT’

The representative then takes the prospect(s) back to the car and the tour of the complex continues, there follows three further stops at three apartments on the CLC complex and the representative requests the prospect(s) to view each property. After each stop the representative asks the opinion of the prospect(s) as to what they think of each apartment. No explanation as to the questioning and by now it is approximately 11:00 hrs and at this stage the prospect(s) have been with the representative for the agreed ‘TWO HOURS’ This must be the end of the presentation? No!

POINT TO BE NOTED ‘NO MENTION OF TIMESHARE OR WHAT THE PRESENTATION IS ABOUT’

Without explanation the prospect(s) are now driven to a large main building and shown to a very large room with tables with large Apple MAC screens on each table. They are invited to sit at the tables and the representative who had been driving the prospect(s) is now sitting face to face with the prospects and the questioning starts.

1. What are your holiday habits?
2. Where do you usually holiday?
3. What type of holidays do you like, Beach or Adventure holidays?
4. Where would you like to holiday in future, dream destinations etc……….?

POINT TO BE NOTED ‘NO MENTION OF TIMESHARE OR WHAT THE PRESENTATION IS ABOUT’

This questioning and discussion on average lasts approximately three to four more hours taking the time to approximately 14:00 hrs to 15:00 hrs. Periodically another representative arrives at the table to listen to the conversation and makes some input. At this stage there is some talk about costs and what CLC can offer and provide by way of Abode at their European and Worldwide resorts. Any resistance to not wanting the product is now countered by pure aggressive hard line selling techniques. Some people have said that they were so overwhelmed by their aggressive and bullying sales representatives they just knew they were not leaving the CLC sales deck without buying.

Some of the selling points:

1. CLC fractional timeshare is a great investment! WARNING: Article 7 makes it very clear that any timeshare right or any tourist long-term holiday product cannot be marketed or sold as an investment.
2. You can sell this at the end of 20 Years and make a profit
3. You cannot think about this as this deal is good it cannot be repeated after today

POINT TO BE NOTED ‘ONLY NOW AND DURING THIS AGGRESSIVE APPROACH DOES IT ALL BEGIN TO COME CLEAR’ THE PROSPECT(S) ARE NOW 5 TO 6 HOURS INTO A 2 HOUR PRESENTATION AND CANNOT THINK STRAIGHT LET ALONE MAKE A REASONED DECISION.

The decision to buy as now been made by CLC, you will be buying our product! So we will just to take you to our FLEECING DEPARTMENT where are the high pressure selling can be smoothed over by yet another smooth talking CLC representative who they (CLC) call their LEGAL DEPARTMENT. This is where they tell you that the finance that they have just bullied you into is very, very expensive (Hitachi Finance) and you need to refinance.

However, don’t be deterred as you will get it cheaper once you get home and have a look around and just to sweeten the deal CLC will agree to pay you back up to 80% of the monthly loan repayment to help you out initially. This is very bad and detrimental advice and like many of our clients they have been unable to refinance and now find themselves many more thousands of pounds in debt as a consequence.

People are walking away after a FREE weeks holiday at CLC with, on average, £ 15,000.00 to £ 20,000.00 worse of financially and tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt they do not want or did not expect to be Loaded with when they were happily packing their suit cases.

WARNING IF THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED TO YOU YET THEN BE WARNED DO NOT BE ENTICED INTO A FREE WEEKS HOLIDAY, IT’S NOT FREE IT GOING TO COST YOU TENS OF THOUSANDS OF POUNDS.

IF IT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU AND YOU WANT US TO ASSIST IN YOU TERMINATING YOUR TIMESHARE AND GETTING YOUR FINANCED AGREEMENT AMOUNT BACK THEN WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU AND PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. WE ARE DETERMINED TO BRING THIS COMPANY (CLUB LA COSTA) TO THE ATTENTION OF THE AUTHORITIES BUT EQUALLY IMPORTANT GET CONSUMERS THEIR MONEY BACK WITH ANY LOSSES.

Club La Costa this is shambolic and please consider our suggestion to change your trading name to >>> CLUB LA COSTYA…….