Being Billed by an unauthorized company

[Rich Uncle]

What is the name of your state? CA

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question, but it looked the closest to me.

To keep it short for now. We've owned a nice large timeshare in a resort in Puerto Vallarta for about 16 years.

About a year ago, we were notified in writting by an attorney for the resort, that the resort had new owners, and a new name. No problem there. We were further notified that they were nolonger associated with the California company that had been handling the billing and collection of the annual maintenance fees. He also stated that this billng company had "run off" with the resort's money and that all future maintenance fees were to be send directly to the resort... PAYMENTS SENT TO THE BILLING COMPANY WILL NOT BE HONORED.

Since then we have had e-mail and phone conversations with the resort's timeshare manager in Puerto Vallarta, and have no reason to doubt the situation. We have paid our fee directly to the resort.

Here's the problem- last month we received a bill for the maintenance fee from the old California based billing company (in the name of the old resort). We ignored the bill, and yesterday received a past due bill with warnings of penalities. This is obviously a scam and I intend to call them on Monday to confront them and demand that they stop billing me. I'm looking for advice on how to handle this.

 

[tranquility]

Very carefully. Are you sure there was a valid assignment? Who actually had contractual rights to collect? What does your contract say? The "scam" may be from the people at the resort. You might explain what happened, but especially when you have international law involved, it may be difficult to unravel who has rights to what. I'd take the nice guy approach and play a little stupid. Let the company who says you owe them place their cards on the table so you can get more information to see what your next steps may or may not be.

 

[Paddy Reagan]

Suggest you contact the resort's attorney who informed you of the change and ask him to intervene. After a year, an attempt by the California company to collect money in the name of a property it no longer represents may violate civil and criminal statutes.

If you choose to contact the California company, do so in writing. A paper trail will be much more helpful if further action is required. Move quickly. You may wish to have your local attorney review the issue and write the letter. If a scam is involved this should result in an immediate halt.

 

[Rich Uncle]

Trouble in paradise - follow-up:

I called the management company this morning. I took your advice and played a little dumb. It now looks as if the California management company is really a branch of a company based in Mexico City.

At first I was told that the "transfer" was not yet complete, my contract was with the management company, and I had to pay them. Later in the conversation, I was told that there was a dispute between the timeshare unit and the hotel unit (the resort has a high-rise hotel, with two low-rise wings of timeshare units on either sides of the hotel tower, all facilities are shared).

We wanted to speak to a manager, but was told she was unavailable.

We said we had to pay the resort in order to reserve our week. The person we talked to could only give me an email address of contact in Mexico City (which turned out to be a bad address), and she said she'd put our account on hold so we wouldn't receive any further past due bills (we'll see ).

We forwarded the e-mail we had sent to Mexico City back to San Diego, and asked them to send it to Mexico City. In brief, our email stated, that since we could not get a reservation unless we sent our payment to the resort, we paid the resort, intended to make all future payments to the resort, and requested that the management company stop billing us.

I asked the management company person if they had heard from other owners, and was told that they have been receiving a lot of calls from people that paid the management company, and could not get the resort to give them a reservation. I didn't think to ask what the management company was doing for those people.

So as it stands now, paying the management company = flushing your money down the toilet. I paid the resort, and this morning received confirmation for a reservation request I made yesterday.

If I somehow end up on the wrong side of this dispute, I hope the worst they can do is take away the timeshare. As much as I like it, I like the aggravation less

Lessons learned - NEVER buy a timeshare outside the US, and then only buy a resale; they are a small fraction of the cost of buying a new unit.

 

[tranquility]

This is pretty much what I thought happened. If part of your timeshare agreement gives you rights to this particular resort (and not just to this or equivilent) send a letter to the timeshare company CRRR saying that you believe they are in breach of your timeshare contract. Tell them you have attempted to mitigate your damages for their breech by paying your timeshare fee directly to the resort. Let them know that any reporting to any credit agency or other third party that you owe a debt will be considered to be defamatory and you may take legal action. Give them a reasonable deadline to *prove* that they can perform on their part of the contract and that, if they don't, you will consider the lack of response a repudiation and you will consider all your duties under the contract discharged.

Timeshares are near impossible to get out of. Even though you like yours now, you may have a chance to get out from under--depending on the exact wording of the contract. You decide the course you want to take. Your own goals should rule, but I bet things are not going to get cleared up soon and I wouldn't want the timeshare company to control what I can and can't do for years.