Complaint Review: Wyndham Resorts - San Antonio TX

On the night of August 5, 2019, my wife and 2 sons were on the first night of a 3-day stay in San Antonio.  As we were about to purchase tickets for the River Walk boat tour, we were approached by a young man asking if we were there on vacation and if we were planning on visiting Sea World during our stay. 

I told him that we weren’t sure. He offered us an opportunity to get 4 tickets for only $80 if we were willing to sit in on a 90-minute presentation.  We explained that we were unsure if we’d make it back to San Antonio anytime soon in order to use them. He then mentioned that there was no deadline on using the tickets.  We accepted the offer and signed up for an appointment the next morning at 10:30am.

The next morning, August 6, 2019, we arrived for our appointment at the Wyndham Resort 111 E Pecan St.  After driving around for about 10 minutes trying to find a paid parking space, we entered the building and waited for our appointment to begin.  We were greeted by, our salesperson. Joseph Samudio, at 10:30am and brought back into an open area with several other tables.

After a brief discussion, he showed us on a nearby television, some of the resorts around the world that we’d have access to.  He also took us to see a couple of rooms at the resort that we were visiting.

We returned from visiting the rooms and sat back down at the table.  He began to give us more information about how great it would be to take the family to all of these wonderful locations. 

One of the locations that stood out for us was the one that’s located on the Disney property in Orlando. We thought that, if nothing else, we’d get a ton of use out of the program by going there.

He then went and talked to a second person, who came back to the table with him. I believe it was a manager, and his name is David Salas.  They came back with a sheet of paper that had an offer to purchase 84,000 points.  My drawback was that even if we were to gain access to the resorts, my concern was traveling to them. He explained that airfare was included in the program.

We were also told that only owners were allowed to stay at any of the resorts.  This was a huge selling point for my wife and I.  He mentioned that all of the resorts were very secure because of this, and we could feel comfortable allowing our children to explore the resort unsupervised and know that they we safe.  However, I recently discovered by going to www.hotels.com, that anyone could book a room. The price of a single room at the time that I checked was $159 per night.

In addition, the manager that was with him told us that we were buying the points with built in equity.  He mentioned that this would be a good investment and that it would appreciate in value.  The points we were purchasing were worth $21,000.  But, we were purchasing them for only $16,000.  I would later find out by searching the hundreds of timeshares for sale online for pennies on the dollar, that this is far from a good investment that would appreciate in value.

My wife and I agreed to become owners. I gave him a credit card in order to pay the $209 required down payment.  We had agreed to finance $1,500 for the remaining portion of the down payment through some other 3-party creditor.  I did not know at the time who the creditor was because we were never given a credit application to complete.  We were simply told that we had been approved.  Therefore, there was never actually any written authorization to run our credit.

After which, Joseph instructed us to wait about 20 minutes, and we’d be able to go and sign the documents.  To this point, my two sons ages 10 and 7, had been with us during the presentation the entire time.  My concern was that they were getting tired and frustrated.  We had promised them that we would go to the waterpark that day.  At this point, we had been at the resort nearly 4 hours.

We entered the room and was introduced to Taylor Barbee.  He let us know that he would be video recording while we were signing our documents.  He even had us waive to the camera.  As we sat down, Joseph came back into the room and handed me a piece of paper with various resorts and their locations. 

While he spent almost 4 hours showing us extravagant resorts around the world, he waited until the point when we were focused on signing documents to show us the resorts that were within our 84,000-point range.  Because he had brought it took us so late in the day, we did not have much time to look it over.  I discovered later that our 84,000 points would not be sufficient to book an Orlando visit as we had hoped.  Nor would it be adequate to visit anywhere we’d like to go.

Before we started going over the documents, I asked Taylor once again if there would be equity in the investment when we purchased.  He said, without a doubt, yes. (This should be on the recording taken in his office.)  He began to go through the documents on the monitor of his computer.  He never mentioned that there was a period in which we had the right to cancel.  He led us through obtaining signatures, boxed up the thumb drive which contained our documents, and sent us on our way.

The experience was a high pressure sales presentation that lasted over 4 hours when it was supposed to last 90 minutes.

We were told things that were certainly not true.  Here is a summary of facts that result in my demand for cancellation of the contract due to fraudulent and deceptive trade practices:

• The information provided to us by your frontman in order to schedule an appointment at the resort was deceitful.
• We were told that the resorts were exclusive and only owners could book reservations. However, we found reservations available online at hotels.com that were open to anyone.
• We were told that there was built in equity with our purchase.
• We were told that this was a good investment that would appreciate in value over time.
• We were provided a credit card for part of our down payment. No application for any credit card was included in my paperwork, nor did we sign any such paperwork.  So I can only assume that someone on your staff processed a credit card application without my knowledge.
• The sales staff purposely subjected us to a 4-hour presentation that was initially only to last 90 minutes. This is a tactic that does not follow good business practices, because it intentionally wears down the prospect’s mental faculties.