Complaint Review: Festiva Management Group / Festiva Resorts / Festiva Adventure Club

We have had some similar experiences in dealing with Festiva Resorts, the most recent meeting took place  on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at their resort in Myrtle Beach, SC.  The person we met with referred to himself as a consumer advocate with some affiliation with the management/corporate structure.

So many problem issues and statements were made in this meeting making it difficult to recall all of them, but I have tried to hit some of the high points below.  Overall the discussion was conducted in a manner that came across as unprofessional, deceitful, disrespectful, and intimidating/threatening.

First, we were led to believe that their objective here was to recover the old deeds secured by Peppertree so that they would have control and could proceed to rebuild or do whatever they wanted with the property.  This was to be accomplished by bringing owners into a new vacation club arrangement which appeared to be nothing more than paying more money for what you already have.  I suggested that we could just transfer the deed back to them since we are not really interested in the new plan and arrangement.  Surprisingly, they were not willing to do this without a commitment to the new plan.

Intimidation and threatening tactics were used such as the statement made that this would be our last opportunity to change over since increases in maintenance costs would eventually force us to anyway.  Also, he indicated that if the place was destroyed by a hurricane that those who did not convert over to the new vacation club would incur huge assessments to rebuild.   Further, they more or less indicated that too much time and money had already been spent trying to persuade us to come to their way of thinking.

Furthermore, the discussion was disrespectful in that any question that we raised that he did not like was referred to as negative thinking, getting off track, not listening or understanding properly, etc.  Also we had to ask for the meeting to end; the meeting was supposed to be only forty five minutes and was disguised as an owners update meeting.  The meeting lasted for almost two and one half hours.

Finally, the presentation was also confusing in that many/most of the resorts available in the new plan were referred to in terms that suggested they were of inferior quality with difficulty in availability and other issues raised in using them.