Beware of Westgate Resorts and Hotelscorp.com!

If anyone is surfing the net and looking for discount tickets to attractions or hotels- beware of these two companies. I was doing just that, and found an ad for discounted Dixie Stampede tickets. When I called I knew right away it was a timeshare, but I thought I would give it a try anyway. I had heard that you could get some pretty nice deals for just sitting through some kind of 90 minute presentation. Well, I called up HotelsCorp.com who books for the

Westgate Resort, and after much time spent in negotiation (talk about a used-car shop), we got what we thought was a great deal, 3 tickets to the Dixie Stampede for $25. My wife gave the customer service rep our credit card number with the authorization to charge $25.00 to our account. Now comes the hitch...After we had spent about an hour on the phone, given our credit card number and been charged, a ';verification'; manager comes on the phone to supposedly verify all the information we have exchanged. One of the first questions asked was about our income. My wife, being the honest person that she is, told them our income. The ';verifier'; said that we no longer qualified for the deal and that we were not eligible to receive the discounted tickets. I asked them why it had taken so long (over an hour) before they asked about our income, and they said that that was a mistake, we should have been asked sooner in our phone call about our income. We expressed our anger succintly, but they would not budge on the fact that our income was too low for us to qualify for the discount tickets or presentation tour. They refused to help us. As a matter of interest, my husband called up two more times, giving a phony name, to see if the service rep would ask about our income before getting a credit card number to charge for the discounted attraciton, they did not! Interesting...

The next day we checked our on-line bank account. Sure enough, we had been charged by HotelCorp.com for the ';discount tickets';. Only the charge was $44 dollars instead of the original $25 agreed upon. We called HotelCorp.com and got hung up on twice!

This place is a scam! Do not call them or give them a credit card number. We have yet to see if they will credit our account, they have told us they will in the next five days...but I%26#39;m not holding my breath. A total waste of time and money...Stay away from them and tell your friends and family to stay away from them. I would hate to have bought a time-share from them, can you imagine what a nightmare that would be? Has anyone else had any similar experiences with either HotelCorp.com or others like them?

Are there any reputable places that someone could tell us about that would offer discounts on attractions for attending a timeshare presentation?

Beware of Westgate Resorts and Hotelscorp.com!

Might try Wyndham Resorts. They have tours of their Ocean Blvd location. Think we picked up $75 for our tour last year. After we joined we went in for meeting during our first visit this year and recieved two Aquarium tickets.

Had similar ';bad'; experience here this week. Attended Rib Fesival a few weeks ago. Everybody that entered the festival filled out entry forms. Surprise, surprise.......Ours was selected.

We recieved call saying we had ';won'; free 3-4 day trip to visit resort in Harrisonburg, VA. plus a bonus trip to Orlando. Talked to one person for several minutes before being passed to ';verification'; person. Half the conversations were BS sessions trying to sound like we had something in common.

We also were asked for charge card for $45 fee to ';lock'; our reservation. Refunded when we showed up for tour. We never got around to giving the card number. We figured we would have a say in when we would make the trip. Wrong. Had to be in the next two months and they wanted us to choose right then. Told em to forget it. They weren%26#39;t too happy.

Way I see it I tied them up for close to an hour. That%26#39;s an hour they weren%26#39;t bugging someone else............

Beware of Westgate Resorts and Hotelscorp.com!

Most timeshare companies required that both husband and wife attend sales presentation and have a minium combined income of usually $70,000 (sometimes as low as $50,000). Are you looking for Myrtle Beach or Orlando? I wasn%26#39;t aware that Westgate had any resorts in Myrtle Beach.

Westgate is here in MB. I would call Myrtle Beach Better Business Bureau and write a letter to the chamber, just to let them know you feel you were swcammed.

We own at Sheraton Broadway Plantation Resort here in MB, we purchased 1 wk year before moving here, we give that week to our kids when they come down. We could exchange it, but for now it works doing it that way.

Wyndham is also big timeshare presenter in North MB.

Hart1 - What is the name of the Wesgate timeshare in Myrtle Beach? Thanks.

I agree with Hart 1 don%26#39;t let them get away with taking your money. We own a timeshare and did an exchange in a Westgate resort near Disney World. We told the salesman we weren%26#39;t interested in the 90 min. spiel because we already own a week, but he was very nice and we got free breakfast and what the heck,we had some time. After the BS session we again said no thanks . Well let me tell you the price of the week began to drop from $26,000 to 16,000. ';No thanks'; we said , well, then his manager had to come over just to ';verify ';our ';No';. Well, this guy had some pushy attitude and wouldn%26#39;t take no for an answer. My husband was getting really p-oed and had to get nasty with this guy. The price of the week went down to $6,000 for a week every other year. I could not believe these people. I have since told everyone I know avoid Westgate and if you are a timeshare owner do not sit for their talk. Its not worth the discount or free whatever. They were awful.

Westgate Resorts- I don%26#39;t think it goes by any other name its located at 415 Ocean Blvd South in MB.

I do fully understand your complaint about westgate resorts but if would of read the terms and conditions maybe you would of never called and went thru all this problem... ****PLEASE READ THE TERMS %26amp; CONDITONS** and blame yourselves and not the company... personally if you read the terms and conditons which talks about your income...and all the other questions they ask you about the qualifications about taking the tour.. which every 1 knows that every where there is a discount is a THERE IS A CATCH!!!.. HOPE THIS IS GOOD ADVISE FOR YOU.. BEFORE YOU GO AND TRY TO RUIN A COMPANY%26#39;S REPUTATION..

There%26#39;s a fine line between legal and ethical.

If a company uses smoke and mirrors to draw in customers. Then has to hide behind a bunch of legal language fine print to get by with it. Maybe they%26#39;re not all that ethical.

Thumbs up to anybody warning others of those practices. Maybe now the next person contacted will know not to fall for it.

P.S.........If you go back and read the original post....You%26#39;ll see the transaction was over the phone. Hard to read TERMS AND CONDITIONS over the phone.

Crazibori,

First of all I am not trying to ruin a company%26#39;s reputation I know how valuable reputation is. However when I feel that I was deliberately misled then I feel it is my obligation to at least warn others so they can be aware and not fall into the same trap. As Pop mentioned this was done over the phone so terms and conditions were never mentioned. That is my major complaint. I feel when you are on the phone you should be made aware of this upfront. Don%26#39;t you think this would save them a lot of time and energy as well. I don%26#39;t have a problem with the minimum income, I understand that they are trying to sell something that isn%26#39;t cheap. But to wait to tell you this after they had already taken my credit card number and actually charged my card I believe borders on fraudulent. A manager told me that the employees are trained to ask about income first thing and that the person who helped us had just made a mistake. I called two more times that night and two other people never asked about income before they asked for my credit card. This tells me that this is a pretty standard practice for the company.