I think it’s high time that the so-called ‘license to lie’ clause be taken out of contracts. Consumers aren’t given a chance to do any research during a sales pitch, so they must rely on what the salesperson says.
I’ve redacted the name of the resort. Clever readers will no doubt know who is behind this horrendous story.
We were defrauded by NAME OF DEVELOPER for $15,500 on 11/18/2016 in NAME OF CITY, Virginia. What happened is that their salesperson made representations to us which were not in the written contract we signed. We found out later that virtually nothing he represented to us at the sales presentation in order to induce us to buy was true. Details follow.
We only went to the presentation to receive the 'attendance reward'. After a few hours of listening to the usual hard sell spiel trying to get us to buy more anyway even though it made no sense for us because we wanted to "sell" what we already owned (for zero, which I have always known as the industry standard practice) , we made our position clear and started to leave.
At this point our salesman offered us this "great new deal" NAME OF DEVELOPER could offer members who bought more points to become 'silver' members. The deal was that if we became silver members, after three years we would have the option to sell all our points back to NAME OF DEVELOPER for $108,000. He also put this phoney deal in writing (which I have). I was extremely skeptical because I had never heard of a timeshare buying back points. However, after he repeated this 'new deal' for about 5 times we finally decided that he couldn't possibly be flat out lying to our face, (or if he worked for a reputable company they would rescind the contract), so we signed.
When we later (6 months) found out that the deal he had offered us was totally fraudulent, we asked NAME OF DEVELOPER (repeatedly, orally and in writing) to rescind the contract because we had been defrauded.
Their response...."it doesn't matter" what the salesman told us or even wrote down. The only thing they care about is that we signed their written contract. So they don't stand behind whatever the salespeople are claiming. Basiclally, we were told over and over again that "well, you signed the contract", even though the only reason we signed was because of what their salesperson told us which turned out to be a fairy tale. We are talking about major phoney representations, not minor.
Obviously when salespeople know that when their company doesn't care if they make up a pack of lies to elicit a sale, if they are unethical they will say anything to get a commission. These people are totally unethical if not criminal. We want our contract rescinded and our money back!
THE KEY HERE WAS THAT THE OWNER NOT ONLY THOUGHT THE SALESPERSON WAS TELLING THE TRUTH, BUT THAT HE WAS WORKING FOR A REPUTABLE COMPANY. TURNS OUT BOTH WERE FALSE.
