Complaint Review: Mayan Resorts - Playa del Carmen Nationwide

No matter what is offered to you, DO NOT go to a timeshare presentation at the Mayan Resorts or Vidanta!!!

Recently, for the first time since we purchased this, we actually attempted to use this vacation program. We were appalled to see that what we had was nothing like what we were offered at the high pressure sales presentation we attended in Riviera Maya, Mexico in October 2015. We have owned a vacation program for 16 years with another resort. We have exchanged our week with RCI and have traveled all over the world. We are savvy purchasers and are not easily misled, but sadly we were scammed. In the sales presentation we asked many questions, and some questions various times. Every question or doubt we had regarding the contract was put to ease by the 2 sales persons who dealt with us, Salvador Sosa and Victor Romero. A matter of fact, Mr. Victor Romero, who said he was an attorney for the company, explained the contract to us and said not to worry and that we could call him personally with any questions or problems

 We have now realized this whole sales presentation was A SCAM and A FRAUD. The sales people will say absolutely anything, with no morals or ethics, to get you to buy at any means, even if it is an absolute lie.

 We found 153 complaints on one website and 432 on another against this merchant and their timeshare sales such as the one we bought. I also found dozens of complaints at other complaints boards, at the better business bureau and dozens of other sites online.  If you search online for Vida Vacations or Vacation Privileges or Mayan resorts you will see endless lists of customers who like us were lied to and scammed. Along with your their company name you will see titles such as "rip off", "scam", "they lied to us", "sleazy liars", "misrepresentation"," horrible experience", "fraud". This is a huge problem and there are so many unhappy customers all over the US. We wish we would of found all this out before making this purchase.

 We have tried contacting them at many different numbers and have sent letter too. We have spoken to Salvador Sosa, Tania, Melina and others. We have been promised that our calls will be returned and they have not.

 Following are some of the things that we were lied about:

1-The cost of the privilege weeks

LIE: We were told repeatedly that privilege weeks were $299 and these figures were used in their calculations of what a bargain this vacation program was.

TRUTH: Privilege weeks ARE NOT $299. They can be as high as $4600.00 and more

 2-Availability

LIE: We were told that Vacation Privileges works with thousands of resorts, they wrote down about a dozen resort companies such as RCI, Interval, etc. and that the availability we would have would be amazing and we would be able to pretty much book anywhere at luxury resorts. We have had a membership with RCI for over 15 years and these 2 sales persons made us feel like what we owned was worthless and with their program we would have real inventory of places that are not available though RCI. We were shown a large book full of luxury resorts worldwide and were told these were the places we could book with your program.

TRUTH: The availability is horrendous. The luxurious resorts we were showed are only in the sales book, and it exists ONLY in the sales room. One example our salesperson used of a place we wanted to go to is Tahiti or Fiji. He said with RCI it was very difficult to find a resort there. Then he showed us the "book" of all the wonderful luxury resorts they have there. This week I tried to book something in Tahiti or Fiji with Vacation Privileges. There were ZERO resorts available for 11 months out of 12 (the max time you can search for) and there was only 1 resort available one month at the end of the year and it is very far from being a luxury resort. In comparison, the program we own with RCI had 5 resorts to choose from the whole year.

 3-Savings Credits

LIE: We were told that this $3000 could be used as cash towards purchasing our vacations or that they could be deposited to their resorts for expenses while we were at the resort

TRUTH: Savings credits are to be used towards the payment of the weeks and their outrageous prices. So this is a bogus offer. The prices are increased so you can "pay them down" with these "savings credits".

 4-Instant weeks

LIE: Again we were told the same endless availability would apply to these instant weeks.

TRUTH: I did a search to see the inventory for these weeks. There were only 41 resorts to choose from at Vacation Privileges. I compared it today with what we own at RCI and they had 729 resorts with 6136 available units.  We were shown a book of resorts that are really not available. That was just a scam a MISREPRESENTATION of what they are indeed selling.

 5-Rescission period

LIE-We asked how many days we had to go over everything and cancel if we were not satisfied. We were told the sale was final as it was an "exit sale" and there WAS NO RESCISSION period. A matter of fact the contract does not have a rescission period clause anywhere.

TRUTH: There is a rescission period both in Mexican and US laws. We were lied to about this so that we would think we had no other option.

 6-Endless weeks

FUTURE LIE?: We were told that every 10 years we would get another 10 Privilege weeks and 30 instant weeks as long as we continued to pay the yearly $99 subscription with Vacation Privileges.

TRUTH: With all these lies we were told, we highly doubt that after this contract ends we will receive another set of vacation weeks as we were promised. I am convinced this is another lie.

Hopefully you will read this before purchasing and save thousands of dollars and a lot of aggravation. It is sad that with these dirty sales tactics these people ruin a nice resort and a nice vacation spot. No one wants to stay in a place full of crooks!