Complaint Review: Grand Mayan Nuevo Vallarta - Select State/Province

My wife and I traded our Club Intrawest timeshare for a reservation in The Grand Mayan Nuevo Vallarta in early December 2013. Being born in Mexico, I still have family in Mexico and whenever we make a trade to Mexico, we always make time to see them or they come and stay with us. On this particular trip we all decided to meet up in Puerto and Nuevo Vallarta!

Upon checking in at the resort, my wife and I were approached to attend their t/s presentation. We accepted since they said it would only take 90 minutes. We told the seller that we are not beach people and that our visits to mexico was mainly to see family. We told the seller that we like city locations better but that they are hard to exchange to and are very expensive when trying to book suites online with expedia. The seller then proceeded to tell us that we could exchange for city locations with their program at a very low price of 299usd for 7/8 days. In fact, the manager who spoke with us said that he just recently stayed at the W Hotel for 299usd. The sellers even showed us a booklet called Small luxury hotels and said that we could exchange for that too! They said that their concierge would handle everything, all reservations, with the exchange companies. It sounded good but I was a bit supsicious so I asked to keep the sellers paperwork where it shows...Concierge..connected to all exchange companies, even small luxury hotels. The sellers also told us that we could easily rent the t.s. weeks for 2,600 dollars per week, saying that they are not a hotel or timeshare and had companies to assist us. The seller also wrote the rental rates on the sheets of paper that I took with me. At first, the sellers did not want me to take the papers that they had presented the program on, but I told them that I would not buy without taking them. I also asked them why is it a problem? I now see that the papers have information that goes against the contract and the truth of how the program really works.

Everything sounded great but their prices were very high so we said, no gracias. That is when the presentation began to focus in on our Club Intrawest property. They supposedly did an equity research of our t.s. to find out its value. They came back with a document, that I asked for a copy of, that showed our t.s. was worth 42,900 dollars if we were interested in signing it over to them. The price was still to high, so we continued to say, no gracias. A manager then came to speak with us and offered a pre-owned contract for a lot less money and told us that they could resell our Club Intrawest t.s. for us for 19,200 dollars. So basically, the cost would be the differnce between the two which would be less than 7,000 dollars total price.  Being skeptical I asked how my wife and I knew for sure that these numbers were real. The manager then said that he would not bring me anything that was not true, that they Grand Mayan Nuevo Vallara is a reputable company that would be held responsible! He went on to show us that the Nuevo Vallarta International Sales Department Exchange Database was showing that 107 sales occurred in the last 12 months with clients having the same Club Intrawest t.s. He said that it would be very easy to liquidate at the lowest sale price of 19,200 dollars. I also asked him for a copy for our records.

During the signing we found out that Grand Mayan company did not sell our Club Intrawest as they led us to believe earlier and that it would cost 399 dollars to have another company do it. Global golf connections is who they recommended. During the christmas holidays we called global golf connections twice and got two different stories of how they operate. The first time they told me that there is no minimum price and that whatever price we wanted to sell it for, they would list it. The second time I called I told them that the sellers gave us a price quote of 19,200 dollars for the lowest price it could be sold and the story changed to that they would at least sell it for the 19,200 dolars.  We have now gone on Ebay and other resale sites and see that the prices that have been quoted to us and given to us on a print out are not true. My wife is retired now and may be forced to go back to work since we were led to believe that this would only cost us a few thousand dollars. We feel totally scammed now!

We have also done research on the 299 dollars weeks and they cannot be used for hotels that don't offer timeshare and the W Hotel does not offer timeshare. That was a blatant mistruth! 

The sellers also told us that cirq do soleil will be giving entertainment on the property next year. Who knows if that is true either? I am so upset that we trusted them and in the end, should not have, this has become a nightmare and what worse timing than it being the Christmas, new year holidays!