Mike Southby

Hey, great article Mike.
We had a very similar call last week and have been contemplating going to the ‘information evening’ as we were told, it’s about 20 minutes drive over in Leeds for us. I came across your site and others using Google and am glad I did. Something didn’t ring right about all this and you have reinforced my inner common sense, as you say, you don’t get anything for free in this world, certainly not in todays economic climate.
Surely something should be done about companies like this? Misleading – oh yes.
We won’t be going to Leeds. Or any Club La Costa ‘sales holidays’ for that matter, think I’ll just get the wife to check the local travel agents for last minute deals next year – probably cheaper anyway.
Steve

We have read your above comments. We have been taken in by it all completely and feel very angry that we have actually been lied to on various aspects and wish we had never taken up the trial period. It is all a complete and utter con. Looking back, you can’t believe you have been gullible and taken in by it. They do actually lie to you about things and because it’s not in writing you can’t prove it. The “free holiday” is going to have to be taken in December and god knows what airport that will be from or where we will end up. We got hooked into the trial period and have had our prelude holiday in Costa Del Sol where we were subjected to 7 hours of complete hard sell, where we were made to feel stupid because we refused to sign up for the points system, which would mean parting with a lot more money. Nevertheless, we are now stuck with the trial period and because we didn’t sign up for the full thing, they seem to have lost interest in us and we are not getting the service that they promised and not getting the choice of holidays they promised either. Very angry, upset and disillusioned by the whole affair.

My wife, my two young children and myself attended one of these meetings about four years ago. We felt really pressurised and kept saying we did not want to join, but they kept on and on, even saying to our children “how would you like to go to these places every year?” while showing them lovely holiday brochures, making us fell like terrible parents for refusing this “great opportunity”. After continually refusing to join, after about 4 hours, my wife went to the toilet, and the rep left me after a few moments – he had gone to speak to my wife alone, before she came back to the table. We signed to ‘escape’ the meeting, and as our kids were really bored. We want to know how to get out of club la costa and get our money back especially as the maintenance fees are extortionate.

Excellent article Mike. I had a call from this outfit this evening, most interesting thing was when I asked him the name of the company before he hung up he clearly dtated SELECT which are also assosciated with this type of scam.

regards to the post above i have the same problem i purchesed but i have never used it i paid just over a £1000 deposit then signed up then about 3 weeks later lost my job used to get calls from clc to check how it was going have i done this done that then i told them i lost my job and couldnt pay calls stoped now just dont know what to do i have not paid and not used just want out no money back

Good post, thanks. I just signed up to your blog rss feed.

For the last 2 days I have started to get calls from CLC, I asked why would you want to give me a free holiday and is this a scam that I might have seen on Watchdog, they said no but the internet says yes, also many years ago I git caught out by this trollop in Majorca and ended up wasting a whole day of my holiday trapped in one of these presentations. STAY AWAY

I attended the CLC Exhibition on Saturday (6th March 2010), and the holiday Rep who was assigned to us was a gentleman called ‘Chris’. We had to take our passports with us for identification, which we did. As soon as we got there we were given a form to fill out asking us for all our personal details. After completing the form we were introduced to Chris, who sat us around a small table and tried to be friendly by asking us alot of questions about our relationship as if he did not believe us. We felt quiet humiliated. After an hour and a half of showing us all these lovely brochures and videos and other rubbish, he gave us the cost of how much we would have to pay every year for the rest of our lives, but failed to mention how much we would have to pay for the ‘one-off joining fee’, even after I asked we would need to know how much the joining-fee is so that we can weigh up the Pros and Cons before coming to a decision. He called one of his colleagues over and told him that he felt like banging his head again the wall because we were not buying-in to this scheme. He was very pushy and did not want to take no for an answer. It was glaringly obvious that he was on a 100% commission for him to get so worked up about the fact that we were not interested in his stupid scheme. So he carried on showing us more brochures, which made no sense to me, buy hey ho! After another half an hour went by he called his Manager over to say, I’ve tried everything and they just don’t seem interested, so the Manager said that’s fine there’s no obligation, give them their ‘Exclusive Holiday Passport’ and ‘shopping voucher’ and see them out, she handed him a customer feedback form to which he said ‘yeah, just tick the friedly box’, this made me want to tick the ‘pushy’ or ‘rude’ boxes even more. It was outrageous the way we were treated for not wanting to buy in to this scam. On the way home I was reading through the Free ‘Exclusive Holiday Passport’ which we had apparently won, in the Terms and Conditions it stated that we would have to attend a Holiday Tour, which I assume is another CLC Exhibition run session, which put you under pressure to buy. This is just something we don not need on holiday. If we do not attend this Holiday Tour we would be charged £250, which is an absolute joke!!
CLC Exhibition is a joke! KEEP WELL AWAY FROM IT, UNLESS OF COURSE YOU HAVE MILLIONS OF POUNDS TO SPEND ON YOUR HOLIDAYS. IT WAS A WASTE OF MY 2 HOURS. COMPLETE JOKE!!! DO NOT GO THERE!!!

Dont you just love the internet, i received my voucher with my appointment to attend the meeting next saturday 20th march, i am very good at not getting sucked into anything but this one almost had me. I just thought i would look on internet and i am glad i did, i will not be going next week. Thanks for this information, it has saved me and my husband a lot of grief.

I received phone call yesterday telling me I had won holiday for 4 persons and that all we had to pay was the booking fee. I felt something was not quite right as I hadn’t entered any such competition. I am glad I checked the internet and found this to be a scam. It is totally wrong that they be allowed to deceive people like this.

I received a call tonight to say I had requested details on discounted holidays whilst I was at the Ideal Home Exhibition this year. Having just spent the day retrieving my family from a port miles away after they had travelled over land for 2 days following the Volcano / no flights fiasco I asked what they had in Britain. They offered my accomodation in Scotland at a place called Duchally. They said I could go for 4 nights for £39! Sounded fab! I asked if it was time share and was reasured by ‘Alex’ that it wasn’t. I still wasn’t convinced because he said the holidays were so cheap because they were just filling in gaps between regular visitors to Duchally using the accommodation. I actually told him I had no intention of sitting through a long sales pitch and he told me the staff would ‘show me the facilities’ when I arrived ‘just so I would know where every thing is’ and that would be it. Looked it up on the internet and it all looked lovely. Luckily for me I also looked them up on Google. That guy that left that other comment about Google being a mans best friend was dead right! Can’t wait for ‘Alex’ to call back in 30 mins!

OMG! We went a couple of weeks ago, same old story, won a holiday. Who did we get at the presentation, the lovely Chris! Not! He made an interesting statement at the start of the presentation ‘we take the yes’s as well as the no’s’. Acted like he was our best friend, until we said NO! Pouting and sulking like a child, he had to call upon Landice (or whatever her name was) for back up in the hoping we would say yes. But we stuck to our guns…stay away from CLC! We are adament the company you book the holiday with are affiliated to CLC, and if they know you never signed up, chances are the dates you select will all be fully booked. We wont be taking the holiday. Be careful.

Well I can tell you we have had the experience only last weekend

The presentation and persuasion to buy a trial memebership for £3999, which would come of the full memebership if you eventualy join as a full memeber but thatchanged as we discussed using up the trial and the more of the 6 weeks you take the less of the £3995 comes off the full memebership

the salespeson gave us their personal phone number just in case we changed our mind, and we were there 2 1/4 hours.

They suggested they had rushed it and so we would not fully understand the real value, and they were suggesting we could save significantly on annual holidays if we used their exchange company where there are hundreds of resorts!

We were told the free holiday was not at a CLC centre but were purchased through another travel agent and nothing to do with them and in fact they did not allow non memebrs in to a CLC location.

We said no thanks but wanted the free holiday, but the lie was in factthat the “free” holiday is at a CLC event AND we have to endure another presentation as it is part of the terms and conditions of going on the holiday.

So if you want the facilty of trying to get popular dates on the trial for around £810 a week plus food transfers and flights then CLC is good and of cours if you have full memebrship that will decrease a little eventually, but with your £500 per year maintenance costs!!..

So a rip off it certainly it is

Thanks for your comments so far everyone. Clearly, there does seem to be a pattern developing here. This page is indexing well in Google so hopefully others will be able to check and view our experiences and save themselves a lot of grief.

I too have just received a call about a free 7 night holiday, after reading the above posts and other found on the internet I will definitely NOT be taking it any further. The saying ‘if it sounds too good to be true it probably is’ seems to apply well here!

i wonder if you guys can help. Last year i also filled in a questionair on a plane and surprise surprise last week i got a phone call to say i had a chance to take up a holiday for £29.50 each person. me and my husband are aware that this is a time share and are willing to sit for a few hours of pushing this on us for a holiday for our family if we don’t have to buy!!!! my husband is a man that sticks to his guns and will say NO NO NO and not feel bad for saying so. will we be hit with other costs???? as i am willing to go to get my family a holiday plz is there anybody who has taken the holiday???

Heather, in honesty only you can make that call.

My understanding of the whole setup is that even if you have the presence of mind to say no throughout the meetings and any subsequent holiday, you will not be left alone by the sales people and as such would have to question whether it would actually be a holiday for you and your family. I know in my case, I’d need to holiday to get over the ‘holiday’ which surely defeats the point? In terms of monetary issues, again my understanding and the general consensus of others is that there are indeed many hidden costs. In actual fact, I think it would cost a lot more than the initial sales spiel suggest, of course they can get away with this by saying that it is taxes and surcharges etc.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised actually if you could not get a late deal at a local travel agent for near as damn it the final cost of a ‘free’ holiday with CLC. Of course the benefit of this is that you can lie on a beach all day and not be subject to sales talk and coercion.

I wish you well in what you decide, but please, research, research, research before agreeing to anything.

Had a call on Friday 20th June from Club La Costa saying I could have a holiday for only £99 in Tenerife or Costa Del Sol. I was going to take a week in September for £99 for 6 people and told him to ring me back as I had to discuss it. Luckily I looked up this company on the internet and realised it is a scam. Although I have been to quite a few of these for timeshares (but never signed up) I have never had one like this offering a holiday for £99. I suppose they get you there and then do the hard sell. Not sure what the scam is on this but as you all say you can get a late deal for the same as I would have had to get the flights to tie in it would not have been much of a deal if my flights were expensive. This seems to be a new way of getting people to sign up.

Just had a call, from a ‘very nice young man’ who told me I had done a survey and had been picked to win the fabled prize – 4 people, 1 week, spain, portugal or tenerife (no kids under 7 though, due to health and safety (they obviously know about my grandkids!)) and only 29 quid per person for admin. Fabulous, thought I, could do with a holiday…but perhaps there is a catch. Then a lovely lady confirmed my address (from head office) who said I had to go to london with my partner to pick up the tickets. Gave me dates and times. When I said I cannot say when i could go, she got a bit defensive and persued the ‘Well if you don’t come you wont get’ route. She did quote the CLC website though.
I could not be bothered to ask the timeshare question.. I had a holiday in lanzarote ruined by timeshare people years ago which ended with me ‘accidently’ smashing the bottle of cheap cava they had given me in the reception to their complex when they would not organize the taxi back to my resort they had promised..
Perhaps the offer may work if you are an MI5 agent who has been trained in interogation resistant techniques and can sit throught the brow beating you are bound to get… I know I won’t try it.

Guys, we were sucked in to the presentation and after around 3 hours took up the trial membership via GE Money. 2 months later I found out I was expecting and we couldn’t give it up. For the first year we couldn’t go anywhere. Our prelude “free” holiday was finally taken after the birth of my child. We arrived at Duchally, stunning and lovely. We couldn’t fault it, however we weren’t looking forward to our “free breakfast”. It was pouring of rain and the rep came to get us from our apartment with a large brolly. We had 2 children with us, so we were hoping for a quick tour and blether. I had warned my husband to say nothing and give no details out except that there was a chance I could get made redundant and money was becoming tight. After breakfast they took us for a “hard sales pitch”. With 2 children they say going through facts and figures all morning. I told them we couldn’t afford to become members, but they didn’t take no for an answer, not until they applied to GE Money and they said no can do. I now have from now until May 2011 to take 4 weeks holiday. It is going to be impossible and I just feel now we could have used that money better.
It all sounds great, but in the end you have to be able to live within your means. If I could give it up and stop paying the end of the loan I would.

Hello, Just done a presentation bottom line is £13,995 joining fee plus £500 first year maintenance to join until 2057 (40 more years if you live that long but you can will it apparently. There is a taster deal of £3,995 for 34 months (take the finance it is around £128 a month payment) which you get back if you upgrade to the whole thing after a year or so. The maintenance charge will be at around £500 a year it is supposed only to go up with inflation so it will go up! Add wole hog joining fee plus the maintenance charges over 47 years (static at £500) simple arithmetic works it out at £808 (plus admin charge of £30 or so on booking each time)per annum for a 1 week share in their own accommodation if you want to go further afield to Asia etc., or somewhere else they don’t have their own property they have partner organisations which will be an extra £157 or so for a week so you are looking at about £1,000 (todays prices no maintenance charge increases) for a weeks accommodation anywhere else except for their own UK/Europe and maybe Florida places granted the quality is good and it can host up to 4 people I think if you want more people to stay you need to pay extra as a one off on a sliding scale. Bottom line what would you get for £1,000 for a week- don’t forget travel to/from is additional. Only the joining fee stays constant not the maintenance charge so it would be very good if it was still £800 or £1,000 (plus admin of £30 a go for a booking) for a week say in 20 years from now but I’ve worked it out on a constant maintenance charge at £500!! Work it out or yourselves it might be good for your circumstances but I don’t think it is a cheap way of holidaying unless you are a routine 5 star accommodation holidayer which most aren’t! Also note if you get fed up or can’t afford maintenance charges and sell it you will never get back the same amount it does not increase in value as property prices etc., increase so it is NOT an investment product like buying a house!

Thanks Mark, some really useful and helpful facts and figures for those researching.

Thanks to everyone else for your comments also, apologies that I have not had time to respond individually. Please, keep your comments coming…

We have just had a phonecall saying we had been awarded a holiday as a thank for a survey I completed at the beginning of the month(?). It will be £99 for the two of us for a week in Teneriffe and we get our own flights and transfers. I know this is timeshare and have no problem in saying “no” but has anyone been lately to the accommodation and how pushy can the “welcome sales breakfast” get?

Hi Vivienne, the presentations from combined expereinces do seem to be very ‘pushy’, that being said, only you know your own ability to say no and how this would effect your enjoyment of any possible holiday; personally I feel on balence, there are more cons than pros so will continue to stay clear of CLC.

Hope that helps.

We too got sucked in by Club La Costa.a few years ago. We paid for the 3 Year mambership after being told that it would be “no problem taking the holidays in school holidays”. What they omitted to tell us was that the full members could book the accomodation up to 18 months, and longer in some cases, in advance. So everytime I tried to book I couldnt. I even said I did not mind where we went but to no avail. We were very frustrated. Complete liars all of them. HOW DO THESE REPS MANAGE TO SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT??

HAS ANYONE BOTHERED TO TAKE THEM TO COURT FOR MIS-REPRESENTATION UNDER THE CONSUMER CREDIT ACT 1974? I AM INTERESTED TO FIND OUT HOW IT WENT.

Got a call last week from ‘Select Holidays’ saying we had ‘won’ a free holiday. Confirmation of our ‘no timeshare/no sales promotion’ meeting arrived in post and is from ‘Club La Costa’. To get these people off the phone it is easier to say yes and agree to meeting. Just don’t show up, costs them the stamp and paperwork and mantime. As suspected, if something seems too good be true….
Paperwork features Jennie Bond, you’d think she would know better
Thanks Mike for confirming our suspicions.

@ Ann – that’s an interesting question.

@ Maureen – no problem, I’m glad you had all of the facts available to you to help make an informed choice.

I have a invite to a presentation at Duchally House this weekend. I am now not going. We had been going to go as we have had a positive experience of Club La Costa through my wifes parents and had 2 or 3 holidays at various locations in the UK (We have stayed at Duchally and it was excellent), Spain and the Canaries.
We sat through one of these presentations in Spain and it wasn’t too bad, but i know how to say NO and have a thick skin.

I entered a competition to win a Holiday at the Highland Show and then got the call from Selct Holidays saying that I’d won. Woo Hoo one cries. Even the letter through the post still looks like a prize. It skirts around the presentation and highlights the £29 per person etc and has the lovely Jenny bond on the supporting literature from Club La Costa. I’ve now been poring over the various Forums and can not be bothered with time wasters. Free Holiday, not really…

On a plus point we did just win a competition to join Seasons Holidays as well… Low and behold, it turns out to be above board and our first holiday is booked with another free week next year. (Obviously this was also not a competition but a marketing ploy, but we got 2 weeks holiday for very low cost).

Do your research, ask all the silly questions up front, weigh up your pros and cons. ALWAYS SO NO until you see everything in black and white and you are happy, not when you are told to be and occasional there is a good deal to be had.

Thank you everyone for helping me not waste a Saturaday…

Hi, Ive just returned about an hour ago from Duchally Country Estate where i attended a presentation by reps of Club La Costa who basically tried to hard sell me a time share, (and that is exactly what it is) as its mentioned twice in the presentation video by the founder of Club La Costa) who starts by explaining he started out in 1984 by purchasing 10 apartments in Spain all these years ago, and has moved on and owns 1000s of apartments all over the world now, which no doubt he does, and who has given him the money for them !!! I would suggest probably a lot of gullable people who believe what they are listening to, He goes on to say that there were rogue companies out there who misguided the the people who bought time shares, but no longer as they are all regulated through the time share watchdog, which if im right in my asumptions, He is probably the senior regulator, (Well he does have to look after his investments and his company) and he wants more of anyones hard earned money, Why because its easy, we all want lovely holidays for our loved ones and we do need that break after working so hard. so we go along to this presentation because well this might just be real, no hidden catches, no hard sales pitch, maybe there are real honest people out there, after all they told me on the phone… You have won a holiday in either Portugal,Spain, or the Canary Islands and its yours to take for up to four people for only £29.99 per person, All they require is you attend their presentation and if its not for you then you still have the free holiday, Oh and £50 worth of vouchers if you confirm you will attend. (Simples I say) so my partner and I attend. We ended up with five different sales reps trying to convince us that this is what we have been waiting for, For £13995 we have holidays until 2057, great we think, but hey ho im 56 and my partner is 52 so thats fantastic I would be 103 and my partner 99 and we can still enjoy the night life in Sunny Spain, Well ok we might be using zimmers by then, but not to worry we can pass it on to our family or leave it in our will, yeh that sounds great, we can leave our Grandaughter the management fees to pay until 2057, God knows what the cost will be in years to come, but im sure it will be plenty, but hey is this guy who founded the company clever or what, while we are leaving our family and loved ones with bills he is leaving his loved ones millions, (Think about that before signing anything) Oh you can take the 34 month deal and recieve 7 weeks holidays for a nice little round figure of £3995 with the option of paying the other £10000 if this deal is for you, and i just bet that these 7 weeks holidays will be the worse you ever take with a rep at every holiday you take of these 7 weeks hounding you to go for the big one, Oh i just bet once you take the trial for £3995 and decide to then pay the other £10000 they will leave you in peace. Just great. But what happens if you lose your job, become ill, or are no longer with us, who pays the yearly bills to Club La Costa, what if you dont pay, well i can tell you what happens, you break the contract, you no longer have holidays, your family doesnt have holidays, they sell it to someone else, they might even take you to court. We all Know if you default the chances are you end up with nothing, This Company know this to and my partner said today she did not want to commit because of the financial situation and other commitments at the present time, did it bother the Club La Costa Reps, No it did not, they tried hard to sell it to us, even to the point of trying to embarras us by insinuating we could not afford this and we could pay it up. I do hope that someday soon someone somewhere will look at what this company are actually doing and speak to the ombudsman about their practice and the way they feel they have the right to steal hard working peoples money. Trust me you will find great holidays on the internet for a fraction of the price. Try Onthebeach.com/cancellations Your sincerely James.

I feel I have to come to Club La Costa’s defense (to a point. My wife and I signed up some years ago, went through the same experiance as detailed in yor comments, the only difference was that they told us they would try and sell it to us and the free holiday did require us to spend most of one whole day being sold to, we bought (yes presured to buy) and have some fantastic holidays over the last 8 years, I still get invited to attend sessions when they will try and up-sell, however, I am not made to feel under any obligation to attend, we are left to enjoy a quality holiday with fantastic and consistant accomodation, it is expensive and you could probably get more holidays per year for the same invetsment, but CLC takes the risk out of the holiday, its great every time and you are made to feel you belong to a club, the people are very helpful and the service is excellent. You can also let anyone else use the points, so my children and thier young children have been able to enjoy holidays that they would not probably be able to afford.

Pete, thanks for your comments. I don’t understand the logic though (and please, do correct me if I am wrong), you say that ‘it is expensive‘ and that ‘you could probably get more holidays per year for the investment‘ elsewhere. Surely if that is the case – irrespective of any sales presentation – you’d be better off doing that and not having the ongoing, long term commitment?

OMG i nearly got sucked in today for 4 people to tenerife thank god my bank account did not have the funds or i mite have signed up. This site has woke me up thank you

We went to the presentation at Duchally estate knowing full well it was a time share sales pitch. After 2 and a half hours of saying no we were given our “free” holiday.
I can accept the dates, and the resort and the aiports being at their descretion but am very unsure about the constant sales pitching we might have to endure on holiday.
Is it worth it?

Hi Paul, thanks for your comments. As for whether it’s worth it, only you can make that call. Personally, I stand by my original comment; just how much of a holiday would it be if you were not left alone and being given the hard sell almost every day…

We have had timeshare for 20 years, the last 8 with Club La Costa. Through their Vacation Club we can get away for multiple weeks (usually 10-12) mainly in winter when we want to holiday to get away from the cold. This is far more time away than when we just owned weeks and could take 5 weeks holiday a year. Because we joined by trading some of our weeks in we have paid far less than someone who bought from CLC direct. Our holiday accommodation averages out at about £210 per week including our intial outlay for the weeks bought years ago and annual maintenance. We think this is good value as the resorts we go to are generally Gold Crown standard with either two or three bedrooms and lots of space with first class service and amenities. Anyone who was interested in being a member would be best to look at resale memberships as it works out at a fraction of CLC’s costs. Go on a trial promotional visit but do not succumb to the sales patter, see what is on offer and then scour the internet for resale to compare the prices.

Thanks everyone,

I just took a call an hour ago and everything mentioned rings true, my suspicions where alerted when the lady(Pat)kept highlighting the word “Awarded Not Won”. I asked her to call me back tomorrow once I had a chance to look at my diary, I am temped to let her know I am recording the conversation and ask questions on some of the points mention above but probably will not….

Hi,have just returned from £99 holiday in costa del sol clc resort,luckily was able to get cheap flights one way and have rail discount for way home as flights home would have cost over 600!Still paid about 200 for accomodation etc.on way home so in total holiday cost about £450.Not bad really but unlesss you can get cheap return flights be better to use travel agents or online to book holiday.Presentation at resort was long but rep not too pushy although managers a bit more so,at end we said holiday club not for us and they did query loads as to why,we were polite but firm and in the end they gave up and signed us out:so whole experience not too bad really,dont be tempted to buy into clc ,the cost really is too high and if your circumstances change as nearly everyones do ,you are stuck with huge debt.But £99 holiday was fab for us as we would probably not have gone abroad this year otherwise!

My wife was suckered into a “help me with this short survey & you could win a holiday” scam recently at East Midlands Airport. Sure enough we soon had a phone call saying that we had won. My suspicions already aroused, I asked for details to be sent in the post – this they couldn’t do but would send information by e-mail…hmmmm!
Ending the call I then dialed 1471 – guess what? Callers number withheld. Say no more!

hi, I am a Club La Costa Vacation Club Member and own 2502 points, had some very good holidays with them and really don’t have any gripes as all our holidays and money we have saved has been justified (3adults & 2 KIds) so package holidays for some 5* resorts can be just as pricey. We’v also managed to pay off our financial agreement with GE so we have no monthly outgoings but I do agree that even in the last 2 1/2 yrs of our membership our fees have risen considerably!!! As I said we have no major gripes but we want to sell our membership and have tried researching to get the best answers or advice and are finding it very difficult to find some sound info or advice!!!!…….so if anyone can help this would be really appreciated.

Thanks for your comment Joan. I’m slightly confused though, and please, this is a genuine question and I am not disputing what you have said. If you have no gripes with CLC and the whole ethos behind the ‘deals’ and ‘memberships’ they offer, why are you looking to sell your membership? unless I am missing something, happy customers remain customers, people only sell if they either have had issues with the product or they no longer view it as cost effective.

Perhaps you have had some great holidays so far, but the whole point of CLC as far as I can tell is that it is a long term commitment, therefore if the reason for wanting to sell is the increasing in price then surely you too have fallen foul of the ‘con’, i.e. spread out over the entire duration of membership, it is way too expensive…

Be interested to hear your thoughts or the thoughts of others about this.

Al, this sounds so typical of the type of marketing employed by the likes of CLC and others. My view is that if they actually need to ‘pounce’ on you in public they can’t be getting many word of mouth referrals which itself, says a lot…

Paula, thanks for your comment. As you said yourself, the lure of a cheap or ‘free’ holiday tempts a lot of people into giving CLC a try, or course they are counting on the fact that you will sign up at some point during the experience. I’m pleased that you were able to resist this though and maintain your ‘no’ attitude towards the reps; good on you. Interesting though that you also mention that ultimately, it cost a lot overall and you could have probably found a holiday or packaged one together yourself for the same cost – but of course without any sales reps! Point proven perhaps.. ;- )

Shaun, did they call back? Often they don’t if they don’t get firm interest on the initial contact as they can’t be sure of their commission and move on to the next number! If they did call, did you manage to get a recording? Would make interesting listening…

Message for Jim Brown (or anyone else who has been to the Scotland resort with CLC) …did you manage to enjoy your stay at Duchally Country Estate despite the sales pitch, or did it ruin your holiday? Are there any hidden costs (apart from travel to & from the hotel and meals) eg surcharges, taxes etc or is this just for the overseas holidays?
Thanks

Just got off the phone with a very persistant guy from CLC, the usual story, I’d filled out a survey form in a Spanish airport and I’d been “awarded” a £99 luxury holiday in Tenerife.
I was given a 15 minute telephone presentation and at the insistance of “Gary” logged onto the CLC website at the same time, unfortunately for Gary I’d also Googled CLC.
Being a brought up properly and having manners I resisted my initial urge to tell Gary to p*ss off, I told him of my practice of not giving my card details over the phone to a complete stranger representing a company I’d never heard of, he assured me that CLC was ABTA bonded as indicated on the website, my reply of “Anyone can cut and paste that on a website”, didn’t dissuade him, “Your credit card will insure you against fraud” he counterd, “You saying that doesn’t instill me with confidence Gary” I parried.
After 10 minutes of verbal swordplay he conceeded defeat, strangely his bouyant, polite and friendly manner had deserted him, his final comment of “You’ve just talked yourself out of a holiday mate” really summed it up.
I’m still smiling at the thought of his frustration of wasting the bestpart of half an hour trying to winkle my credit card details to no avail when he could have been tucking up a more gullable person.

I mean, who gives their card details to a stranger??!!!

Hey John, that’s quite funny. Sounds to me that he was more upset as he didn’t earn any commission off of your 30 minute conversation and not – as he suggested – concerned about you giving up the chance of a holiday.

Legalities aside, I really wonder about the mentality of the people on the other end of the phone who think we are all stupid and going to fall into their trap.

Nice one John.

Hi Mike
Just to answer your query about my previous posting…..was inquiring about selling up not because we are unhappy with anything but more of a personal financial situation I am now in that I don’t need to disclose, and selling would definitely help this. I just thought this forum may be able to help with any suggestions or advice.

Hey Joan, sure, I wasn’t trying to pry and I hope that someone may have the information that will help you. I guess the point I was trying to make – albeit unsuccessfully – is that even if time-share ‘works’ for you (read: potential people contacted by CLC), it’s important to try and factor in 3, 5 or 10 years down the line; whether that be inflation or other factors. I guess I’d relate it to Gas or Electricity prices, how many of us have been offered a great deal, only to find a year later it is no longer competitive and yet we are tied into a contract so are unable to do anything about it, ultimately of course this means the deal was not so great in the first place.

Once again, I hope that someone may have some information that may be of help :)

So I’m glad I’ve found this post. My wife has had the same experience – won a holiday etc…. Meeting in Duchally in a few weeks. It’s just up the road from where we live so not a long trek. I absolutely have no desire to attend especially after reading this post – however my wife though aware it is a complete sales pitch intends to go to take 2 hours of Bulls*** to get a free holiday. We couldn’t afford the deals anyway so no chance of them being taken up. Perhaps from reading the posts enduring one day on holiday of sales patter I could live with if the remaining few days are left to us – it’s free after all – and as nothing in life is free counting one day off the freebie holiday should be expected no? So if I’m reading right as long as you do say NO a free holiday does exist and is legit – with the condition that it’s not at an airport of your choice – peak school holiday dates may not be available and on holiday you have a day out of being sold to again?

On balance I’m now thinking as long as the expectation is ‘time will be taken’ as the currency and a thick neck required to take some abuse a ‘cheap’ holiday will still be had at the end of the day? Be interested if anyone thinks I have completely missed something here in my thought process…

Thanks Mike for starting this superb posting!!

2 x adult / 1 x 5 year old / 1 x baby

Hi Sanjay

In response to your post, I just want to give you our experience of our ‘day’ at Duchally. We were greeted by a lovely lady who showed us the Duchally resort, chatted about CLC quite briefly, treated us to lunch and drinks whilst yes! continuously selling us the CLC lifestyle…we are a family of 3 adults, 1 child, 1 baby on way so 2 yrs ago the deals sounded fab. Not at anytime were we given a hard sale, pushed into anything and given plenty opportunities to reflect and make decision…all in all Duchally is a lovely place and we now go there twice a yr for long wkends as its just up the road but far enough for a short break with the kids, plus doesn’t cost anything apart from points, no flights etc involved……..as for the free holiday!!!! we had ours in tenerife…absolutely gorgeous!!! we got to book our own flights from edinburgh, gave CLC the details….they done the rest, tranfers etc and we had a week of bliss in a 5* resort all for £600, that was admin we paid £39 and flights!!!!! so for my family size that certainly was a bargin and a holiday we normally would not have been able to afford….so yip I agree with your wife go along for the patter, politely say no and enjoy your holiday. We are now CLC members and have enjoyed EVERY holiday we have been on, service is 2nd to known, but have to look at selling due to personal financial matters, not because we are unhappy with it. We’re back to Duchally in Feb and Spain in July and still have plenty of points to even offer our parents a guest holiday to Malta. Hope this helps.

Hi i am in the same boat as ann reid, we bought our 3 year trial last year.The prelude in malaga was good, but since than we have been to tenerife and the accomodation was barely 2*. We took the trial because they lied about availability whenever but have since found out that you need to book atleast a year in advance and still no gaurantee to get it. We tried booking places in Uk which was supposed to be unlimited but got told that it is fully booked for 2010. We haved since been to see Citizens advice beareau but they said that what we got promised is not in writing so we cannot
do anything. IT IS THE BIGGEST SCAM GOING PLEASE BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE

Thank goodness I read this. I even asked on the phone is it time share because if it was I was not interested. Told no. How can you afford to give away holidays? They have the accommodation so if it’s available it costs them nothing – flights – we block book on charter flights so the admin charge covers. I was sooooo nearly sucked in. Will now go and shred the stuff sent as I do not wish to pay out for a holiday and have it ruined by sales people. This should not be allowed to continue as they are so plausible on the telephone. Hey Great salespeople!

Hi, have returned from Club la Costa’s site in cornwall (trenython manor). Great place, staff friendly, lodge ok but then was a very cheap price. My problem is that we liked what the sales rep offered, however i insisted we have time to consider and would likley get back to them. They insisted that we could only sign on the day and with their legal team on site. I would like to know who in their right mind would sign such a legal contract without being able to consult your own solictor. Yes, CLC say you can cancel with 14 days, however i must question why the need to sign on the day. They must be hiding something.????

I’ll tell you what CLC are hiding…that you have to pay over £600 a year maintenance fee once you have signed up and handed over thousands of pounds for your ‘points’. It’s the biggest marketing scam going…think about this they can ‘sell’ a bunch of ‘points’ to as many people as they like. There is no legislation to stop them but there are only 52 weeks in a year that can be ‘booked’ for each of the units…thats why you can never get what you choose…you are at their mercy as to when and where they wish to offer you! Steer clear they are robbing b……!

@ Missbhaven, thanks for clarifying the situation regarding maintenance fees. I know there will be a few who disagree – and everyone is entitled to their opinion – but I am with you 100%. The way in which CLC operate is fundamentaly wrong.

Just a few thoughts, I don’t & never have worked for Club la Costa but have been an “owner” for 12 years now.
Yes, it’s time share & no, it’s not cheap but the flexibility suits us, maybe that’s why we’ve never had a real problem booking up where we want unless it’s at very short notice.
Club la Costa is a business & its business is to make money! We play them at their own game & book short notice or discount weeks so manage at least 2 or 3 weeks in Spain along with a “proper holiday” but I do understand that not everyone can be that flexible.
We have always had good service there & any problems have been delt with very efficiently; a washing machine that wouldn’t work properly was replaced with a brand new one by the time we returned from dinner. An apartment smelling of cigarette smoke was changed along with our entire luggage moved by the time we retuned from the supermarket. A family (noisy) apartment overlooking the family pool area was changed on request for a much quieter one elsewhere on the resort so on the whole I can only report good things.
We do have to put up with them phoning the apartment every time we stay offering to give us resort updates over breakfast, they only phone once and we usually decline because yes it’s going to be a sales pitch for an upgrade but if you say no, that’s it, your left alone for the rest of the week. That said, playing them at their own game, if it’s a quiet day or the weather isn’t too good why not have a free breakfast, just say “thanks but what with the economy etc.” and walk away and get on with your holiday.
So to summarise, it’s painful having to go through the hard sell, your “free” holiday wont be, it’s not cheap, it’s not for everyone but it can be a positive experience.

My wife received a call on Tuesday evening from Club la Costa informing her that we had “won” a holiday for 7 days at an exclusive 5 star resort in Southern Spain. It sounded good. However, the offer was in my name and they asked to speak to me.

I spoke to one of the representatives, who informed me that I’d been entered into a prize draw (ooh lucky me), as had I filled out a questionnaire and I’ve been lucky to win a holiday. I thought this was very odd, as I rarely complete questionnaires unless they are anonymous (Due to your details being sold to all and sundry. I must have had a moment of weakness). However, I decided to be polite and hear him out (I tend to hang up on these people but my wife has told me off for being rude for doing this, so I thought I’d better hear him out :)). He then transferred me to one of his sales colleagues to tell me a bit more about it. I was inherently suspicious of the whole process as I adhere to the adage of if someone seems too good to be true, it invariably is.

The sales rep. then said he understood that I was interested in booking a holiday from them. Erm no, you contacted me and said I had won a holiday, remember? I was feeling more uneasy about this by the second. He then backtracked a little and told me I had won the right to buy a holiday at 85% discount for 4 people at £99, but I needed to book it there and then, otherwise someone else might win it and I’d lose out. They only had 12 left and 3 had just gone in the last 5 minutes. Ooh the panic! Well I haven’t won anything then really, have I?

I asked if I would have to give any card details over the phone (This was never going to happen, but I wanted to see what his response would be). He then tried to reassure me of the company’s authenticity and good reputation by pointing me to the Club la Costa website and informing me of their BSI Kite marks and how they’d be operating 20 years. If they’re been around for so long, they couldn’t possibly by dodgy, could they? He then kept pushing me for dates and I told him that I couldn’t make a snap decision and could he call me back in 10-15 minutes. He said he’d wait on the phone, so I put him on hold (I thought I’d waste a bit of his time now).

I then told me wife that this sounded dodgy in the extreme (she was a tad disappointed, as we didn’t have a free holiday, but agreed it sounded dodgy). I then hung up on the guy when he was on hold (This is what I should have done in the first instance). He tried to call back three times in succession after this. I think he finally got the hint.

If there’s one thing that I hate (It also makes he very suspicious), it’s being hard sold and overly familiar sales people. He was asking about my family and what I do for a living and what I was up to this weekend. Look Sir, I don’t know you and you’re not my friend and you have no genuine interest in my life. This is obviously your sales patter. Tell me, is there a checklist for such sales patter?

I then did a bit of Google searching and lo and behold, it turned out to be a timeshare, where I’d have to attend a presentation. I then came across the plethora of complaints and horror stories. Maybe the next time these people phone (and if I’m bored), I’ll string them along on the phone for a bit to waste a bit of their time to stop them hassling someone else. All hail the power of the Google search.

The scary thing is that it could be so easy for anyone to be suckered into this sort of deal. I may be ultra sceptical about such things now (and a great deal more besides), but I nearly got stung when on holiday in the Dominican with an ex, who wanted a free jet ski ride – all we had to do was to talk to a sales guy for 10 minutes with no obligation.

Three hours later, we managed to escape. I was lucky I didn’t have my credit card on me. I initially resisted their pressure, then a succession of very charming senior people were wheeled out to try and persuade me. I then said I’d have to go and get my credit card (excuse to escape) at which point they offered to drive us back to our apartment to get it and come back. Eek. I didn’t really think that one though too well. I then had to tell them there is no way I can commit to this today, at which point they became very surly and accused me of wasting their time!

I think the key thing is not to be afraid to be rude to the people and just get up and leave. We are way too polite in the UK when it comes to this sort of thing and these people prey upon this.

Stories like these continually happen. Not only that, you have to stay smart and remain on guard. These companies evolve as technology evolves.

We have been members for some time now and pay something like £2800 maintenance and membership per year. For this we usually take 12 weeks minimum holiday each year, sometimes as many as 15 weeks. For how we use it this works out at £234 per week maximum in good quality accommodation, at least two bedrooms and bathrooms each time. yes it costa quite a lot but we get a lot in return!

well well i have just received a call from clc telling me i`ve won a holiday to southern spain costing only £99 I listened to the spiel of the salesman and said I had to consult my husband,to be honest it sounds good but then again im`e thinking too good to be true as a result he`s calling back at 6.30. I am so glad i googled this company as my husband would have went nuts if we were misled on this “free” holiday.

Thank you so much for your article on Club La Costa, I was actually on the phone to them and decided to do a search on the company, I asked on several occasions, was this supposable “free” holiday tied into any form of timeshare.
I was only told that Club La Cost was a large travel organization and provided many holiday types from self catering to luxury cruses. I was told that I would have to collect my tickets from a hotel about 1 hour’s drive from my home, but at no point was I told that I would have to attend a seminar.
I was lucky enough to find your article and ended my call immediately.
Surely there must be some kind of legislation on a on a company deliberately misleading people.

Thank you so much for this article.
Like many of your readers, I too had a gut feeling that this holiday was too good to be true but wanted to wait until I had receievd all of the information in writing before making my mind up.
At the beginning of the week I had 7 missed calls from what I now know was club la costa – lets just say they are persistent!
I initially fell for the suggestion that I had ‘won’ a holiday to one of 3 destinations but when I asked the lady how many people who gave their details at the Yoga Show had won a holiday she was quick to tell me that this wasn’t a win but a promotional holiday – cue alarm bells that this really was too good to be true.
As a direct result of your article confirming my suspicions that this is a time share scam – I will not be attending the meeting in london in the next few weeks !
Thank you. Hopefully this will be enough to stop them calling.

[...] Mike Southby, october 22nd, 2009 [...]

Many thanks to all on here for your stories which have caused me to go from a state of sceptical-excitement to disappointed-reassurance.

When I started reading the comments (and seeing the many other listings on Google about this company with its dubious morals), I started to wonder if I could play them at their own game in some way. I considered going along to the sales meeting with my ipod and laptop, sitting there to tick the “I was there for 2+ hours” box, but getting on with some much needed email clearing…

I then also wondered if I could handle going to the sales meeting in the Costa Del Sol with a bottle of scotch, a slab of beer, 3 mates and a poker table – surely they wouldn’t mind? Just as long as I didn’t sign on the dotted line, I could afford to lose all my money to my mates through the medium of cards instead.

But sense kicked in as the pros start to get more and more outweighed by the cons:

Pros
- ‘Free’ return flights
- Free accommodation
- Up to 7 days ‘holiday’

Cons
- 2+ hours plus travel time for initial sales meeting
- £120 admin fee for total of 4 people
- £??? airport taxes depending on airports used, almost certainly over £100 each, total at least £400
- Losing at least a full day to a sales pitch meeting on the holiday
- Getting ‘dropped in on’ by the rep for a good ‘chat’ every day

Not worth it on reflection. Buy a £200 holiday to the Costa instead, rather trying to blag a free one (with £30 admin + £100 airport taxes + neverending sales pitches).

I hope ‘Sue’ rings me back. I can’t wait to tell her that I’ve reconsidered, and I don’t want a holiday. No doubt she will ask me why. I will reply “Like you confirmed last time Sue, I’m 25-42, I’m married, I’m a homeowner, and I earn over £30,000 a year: the world’s my oyster! Now tell me about you…”

Pete

Once again. I received a phone call today from Elaine claiming I have ‘won’ a holiday and congratulations. I needed to be between 18-42, be a home owner etc etc…The exact same shhpeal was presented to me. The holiday I had won was for 4 people, I had 18 months to take the holiday, I only had to pay £29.50pp Admin fee + Airfair taxes. The holiday plus all flights were included costing £1,800. I had to bring ID and book a meeting in at Tottenham Court road to pick up my vouchers. I then had to give them me email address and here is the confirmation email…

Following our recent telephone conversation, we are delighted to confirm that you and your partner have been selected to receive an Exclusive Lifestyle Passport which contains £25 of high street shopping vouchers and a selection of superb promotional holidays to popular destinations.

Your award is part of CLC Exhibitions 2010 Promotion and the choices on offer are 7 nights in southern Spain, Portugal or the Canary Islands for up to 4 people including flights or a luxury 3 or 4 night UK short break, all for just £29.50 per person*. All we ask for in return is just two hours of your valuable time.

You are guaranteed to be offered one of your choices of dates and departure from one of your local airports and you will receive confirmation no less than two months prior to your departure date.

Already over 25,000 people have enjoyed a promotional holiday sponsored by Club La Costa and over £1.5million of High Street shopping vouchers have been awarded in the last eighteen months. For more information on this fantastic offer and to see just some of the many testimonials, visit our website http://www.clcexhibitions.com.

Like you all have said it is a SCAM, DO NOT ATTEND THE MEETING! After reading all these helpful messages online it has really helped me.

Hi just got back from long weekend at Duchally with CLC.Had a lovely time ther even after a 300 mile drive the place is great and the staff very friendly.
I new wot to expect from the sales pitch from a very friendly and experienced salesman named Peter whitch lasted three hours instead of the 90 minuites quoted.
The only sad part was at the end when we said no as we had just bought a villa in Turkey and would not have time to use there deal.
I could not get the joining fee out of him after that so could not work out the overall cost of this venture glad to have found your site to put my mind at ease that we walked away.
We only attended as I wonted to have a weekend driving around the highlans so it worked for us.
I must add if you you do attend a CLC presentation you need to be strong willed as tyey are verry good at wot they do

I have been with Club La Costa for a number of years now and always found them to be top notch.
Unlike some other timeshare companies whenever you feel the need to give up your timeshare you can either sell it or forfeit it by informing CLC and using there simple helpful procedure.

We are a Norwegian family and we were fooled first time in november 2006, but then we unfortunately did not see we were fooled. After a “press” form CLC we upgraded our membership in november 2007. The upgrade was a big mistake! Now we are having a case trying to get back our membership payment. I say: Never sign any contract with Club La Costa! Their salesmen lies, and the memberservice is a mess! They never give you answer/feedback at any case.

There are a lot of negatives on this site— i may be thick but if you go to car salesroom you expect to be sold a car, if you go to aestate agents you expect to sold a house so if you go to a time share presentation what else do you expect them to try and sell you???? Do you expect to get holidays for free? I am a member and have been for 10 years and yes it can be frustrating to get short notice holidays at peak time but you cannot knock the accomodation qulity or service. For my points allocation ( 1537 ) i can get 4 weeks holiday for 8 people for less than a single week package holiday to god knows where ( yearly maintenace fees not initial outlay). It may not be for everybody but make up your own mind ** DO YOUR RESEARCH PRIOR TO GOING ** BUT DON’T EXPECT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING IN THIS WORLD.

As you see Jim White comment my “warning” about CLC. I know CLC got a lot of nice apartements and they also normaly give you a good service, of course. But: Our problem started already in the begining (2006). The salesmen showed us before we signed any contract an apartement at Monterey Tenerife, and we were told all the apartements got the same standard as this one: = lie #1. The salesman said we were garanteded an apartement like this at least one week a year. = lie #2. After an upgrade at a price of £12.000 we almost got there… The salesman said we at anytime could sell our “part” in CLC if we wanted to doo. It was just to take contact with an agent at their office. = lie #3.
I know you always must read all in “small letters” before you sign any contract. Unfortunately we did not read this close enough this time. After a long day (that only should take 90 minutes…) at CLC’s office with our children you will go back home as soon as possible. (they did even have any food for the children all the day…, but they got a coke…)
I know you never got anything for free, but we feel we have paied our membership in CLC 3 times…
Now we see it would be better and cheaper buying our holidays at a travellers shop here in Trondheim.Or at web-site, you got better offers there.
Last summer before our last upgrade I said to the salesman I feel like I bought a brand new Mercedes, but got an old Skoda… He answered he undrestood this statement. There we are!
We also got a lot of unsolved “small” cases, and the memberservice and further people in CLC never give a exact answer.
As you see we are very disaponted about our invest in CLC. Therefore we will share our case with other people.

I live close to the club la costa resort in Mijas Costa and all I can say is that its beautiful I’d love to go there for a holiday discounted or not. So you have to endure a sales pitch for a couple of hours – well thats why its a discounted holiday and you have the option of saying no

Just got a call confirming that I had won the proverbial…. so did what i normally do to these sorts of calls, which is to very nice to person on the phone , agree to go along and then forget about it.
Anyway we have friends who have a villa to which we can go almost any time….

Just recieved my confirmation e-mail telling me about my appointment at 15:30 on Saturday. I will ring tomorrow to confirm as requested and then do a no-show on Saturday. At least that will be one less family they won’t be able to ply with their sales pitch.
I once went to a time share “promotion” whilst on holiday in Portugal and because we would not sign up, were left at the sales resort for hours for a taxi back. It never arrived and we had to walk 3 miles back to our hotel.

All, many thanks for the ongoing comments. I have not had much time to comment personally on each on every comment of late; but your comments are appreciated.

Thank you for these comments, you have just confirmed what I suspected. I received a phonecall from CLC Exhibitions yesterday offering all the usual. The alarm bells started to ring when they asked for marital status and earnings (which I queried) They are supposed to be ringing back tonight as I would not commit, that is one call that will go unanswered. Interestingly I told ‘Lisa’ to leave a message if she could not get hold of me and she told me it was against their policy to do this, now why would that be if they are offering a legitimate ‘win’ which is how it was described to me?!

Thank goodness for Google and sites like this so you can do checks on these ‘Scammers’! Just had the call and ended up talking to the lovely friendly ‘Lisa’, who’s now waiting for me to call her back later today to confirm what date we’ll be attending ‘meeting’ – she’ll have a long wait! I’m always suspicious of calls like this but even so, they still manage to get you to confirm the info, or at least some of the info they have on you. I was particularly wary when she asked me to confirm that I had stated in the survey (I don’t remember completing) that ‘our income was over £30,000′. That depends on whether or not you include working tax credits I explained and she put me on hold while she ‘checked’. When she came back she told me that it doens’t matter where your income comes from, as long as it’s over that amount! I def won’t be calling her or CLC back, but I won’t be surprised if we get a lot more ‘cold calling’ and ‘silent calls’ from now on.
Thanks everyone.

I am so glad I read this- thank you! I got the phonecall today, saying ” congratulations! You have won a holiday, and told to attend the exhibition to produce ID. I have a 5 month old baby, and times are hard- I was so happy to hear I had won a holiday – even though I would have to find a babysitter and travel up to London at short notice to provide ID- which the woman on the phone knew, and continued to talk about my babies first holiday- what a joke. I will not be attending this con after reading your article, thank you very much!

Thanks door this website – we were just about to travel to London to go to the meeting. We won’t now! That goodness we checked it out.

Hi Mike, Great write up.
I’ve been to a couple of theses presentations now and the first time I felt as you point out that I was “Too poor” to get in on this great opportunity and that I ought to sign up to prove something to the sales guy even though I’d never met him and never would again.
I managed then to turn table on him by mentioning that we already own a property in Malaga and that we were selling as we’d become bored with the area suddenly I was in the driving seat and kept him from targeting anyone else for another3 hours and walked away with £50 of M&S vouchers.Not sure about anyone else but I quite enjoyed a bit of salesman baiting and a free christmas dinner from marks.
I have recently (this week) had another call telling me “You won a free holiday” all I need to do is prove that I’m me by attending a presentation so with a smile on my face I might just go a take the vouchers again after a couple of hours of making a smarmy sales guy regret picking me!
So if anyone else fancies this and has a small amount of knowledge of somewhere in Spain my advice is get your own back and have fun with a poor sales guy!

Owen

As much as I’m going to get shot for this I work for a marketing company for CLC. It pays an ok wage (been paid better lol) and it tides me over. We have been told not to tell people they’ve “won” anything cause that would be unfair and misrepresentation and when I phone people up I do tell them they will have to attend a presentation explaining about who CLC are and all that spiel. I can understand people’s annoyance at these things but we only work with data that people have filled in; it’s not like the dark ages when companies were ripping pages out the phone book. Although I apologise for the reps at exhibition, had no idea they were that bad.

Thanks all for your continued comments, I appreciate the feedback.

Amy, no need to worry no-one is going to shoot you down! Everyone needs to pay the bills and in fairness for every CLC representative that seeks to mislead I’m sure that there are an equal number of ‘normal’ people who are fair and upfront about how the process works.

just got back from a clc (free holiday) yesterday. to be honest we were contacted back in october after filling in a survey in alicante airport the week before. to be fair the guy on the phone offered us accommodation at a reduced rate (£38) to be taken before the end of February, he was open and honest about the flights (we had to pay for them) and said if we needed help in finding flights he would be happy to oblige. He also told us about the meeting we would be required to attend whilst there. We decided to go anyway, and we booked for Tenerife. We were offered Playe de Las Americas or Golf del Sur, we chose Las Americas as we have been before. We were booked into a one bedroomed apartment in Monteray,and there were 4 of us. A week before going we were contacted and offered a 2 bedroom apartment in Golf del Sur for no extra money as there was maintenance going on at Monteray, but I insisted on goinganyway. the apartment was lovely, and the staff were brilliant. We were met halfway through our break by their rep who showed us around the complex at Golf del Sur, and to be honest the 2 bedroom one we had turned down was fantastic. He also showed us a 2 bedroom apartment at Monteray (with the permission of the people staying there)which again was fantastic. We were taken to the offices and given the sales pitch, which I must confess was not at all overbearing. We asked for time to make up our minds and were told that it was not normal procedure to do this,but anyway he said he would phone us the next day. When he phoned us we said we still weren’t sure, so he said “ok, I’ll take that as a no then. Enjoy the rest of your stay with us and maybe in the future you might change your minds.”I must say that I didn’t feel at all pressured at anytime to sign anything. All in all a cheap holiday in great accommodation. I’ll just add that I don’t work for or know anybody who works for CLC.

I’ve just been reading through all these posts as my boyfriend and I attended a CLC presetation last week. It was a farce. The sales rep (who admittedly had only been doing the job for 2 weeks) in her desperate attempt to make smalltalk, asked us where we had travelled from for the presentation. Can you believe it – She didn’t even know what or where Buckinghamshire was – ??? Later on, prompted by my desire to holiday in Venice, she asked what country that was in! I think CLC must be running out of sales people if they have to get youngsters like her off the street to do the job. She was very sweet – but hopeless. So perhaps we got off quite lightly. On the other hand, the `managers’ (and I use the term loosely), who were called over to us at regular intervals were quite quite bolshy especially the last one who just couldn’t accept that we weren’t interested in forking out £13,995 for something we’d only had 2 hours to think about. She implied that we were either stupid not jumping at this opportunity or too poor to be there in the first place! My advice is to attend the presentation, only if you’ve got a few empty hours to fill, take the shopping vouchers, give them a hard time and DON’T sign anything. By the way, was anyone told that they had to spend the shopping vouchers on the same day?

We fell for the spiel and now regret it, once we were captured all the promises made were broken i.e. as many holidays as you want at only £29.00. ours is a Destinations High which means we can go anywhere at any time, sounds great does it not, not! Have found out you have to book at least a year in advance to secure a destination, a bit difficult if you fancy a quick holiday next month. Also management fees have risen 20% for this year, no recession there then, oh sorry that was their excuse. If you try to get in touch with anyone by E-Mail it takes at the minimum 5 weeks for a speedy reply, pathetic!! My advice is as recent blogs,
Go to the meeting, sit through the presentation, look interested then say NOOOOOOO at the end and keep on saying no, get your vouchers and go, simples.

14 Feb CLC phoned to inform my wife and i that we had won a holiday as we had completed a survey months ago….Yea OK !! Play along see what they got to say! The conversation continued and we could hear all the other Telesales conversations in the background informing all the other lucky winners !! Attend a presentation in London to collect your £1600 holiday vouchers was the instructions. Yea OK big daubts now, got to be a Time share scam, they even emailed me my special number within in seconds to attend. Being the sceptic and pessimist it was time to check the company out online before attending the presentation. So here we are reading this and confirming all our initial thoughts. London will not be geting a visit neither will CLC Exhibitions.

I have just had “the Phone call ” the sales girl quickly told me she had other call waiting when i stated that i wouldn’t agree to anything without doing internet research first…it seems my instincts were credible… lucky escape !

Have the invite in front of me for my appointment at Tonbridge next Sunday. Will I and Hubby be going? I don’t think so! Keep up the good work, expose these con artists and stop other people falling under there nasty spells!

Very interesting programme on BBC radio 4 NOW regarding new legislation covering time share & holiday clubs – woth a listen, especially as one of the spokespeople is from CLC!!

Lol, just got a call from someone to say that we were eligible for a free holiday, I had to disappoint them as I’ve been a club la costa member for some 12 years now! Perhaps I should have pushed for the free holiday anyway!!
Also on a more serious note; how can CLC be a “scam”?
You freely go to the presentation, you look at the product for sale and you decide to buy it or not.
How is this any different to walking into a car showroom and handing over £30,000 for a car. You would do your research and go for a test drive first before writing out the cheque, surely you would do the same with a time share?
You’re shown the product, you decide to buy, that’s not a scam!

I think you’re missing the point, Velcro. I’m in the process of buying a new car and not once have I been pressured into making the buying decision “TODAY or miss out”. Sufficient information should be provided at the presentation for you to take away to consider. Unfortunately, that isn’t done. For example, The DVD at the presentation is full of fast moving pictures of the holiday apartments, but quite frankly they could be ANYWHERE! That sort of information is just what a serious buyer NEEDS to know before making any commitment. Get real!

“Get real” I agree, why would you hand over tens of thousands of pounds for something you were not sure of?
Sorry, I stand by my last comment; starry eyed people prepared to hand over a years income to a stranger, stupid but not a scam.

I just got a call from clc, saying that i have just @Won@ (she pecifically said)a holifay to southern spain or the canary islands for four people. she told me on the phone we would have to pay airport tax and 29.50 per person, all we had to do was go to a presentation award thing in London. my two kids are really excited i told tham about it before i found it was a scam. my husband did say it was probably timeshare. my two kids really want to go, we cant afford a fully paid holiday rght now would it be worth it to go to this presentation and say no to everything and get the free holiday? would the sales person pester you all day everyday honestly? and if you get the free holidY and then not go would you be charged?

I rec’d a call yesterday saying I’d won a holiday for upto four people and was very excited, (I never win anything)but something just didn’t sit right with me on this. I have proved myself right to be suspicious. Thanks to you Mike, My husband and I are going to save a fortune by NOT going to the meeting arranged in Southampton. I can’t thank you enough. Like you say, nobody gives anything away for nothing. Anyone who is so gullable to believe this scam, needs their bumps feeling. I admit I can be abit gullable at times, but thankfully am realistic too. Something should be done about this company, its so unfair praying on innocent people and their dreams.

Wow, I just got a call from them telling me about the holidays..
But reading all the comments here, i think i am going to give it a miss. Thanks for saving us guys..

Have just got back from promotional break with clc. Signed up to three year trial and now regretting it! I undersatand that i have 14 days to cancel. Does anyone have any experiance of this? Is this as easy as calling them/writing to them?!

We signed up for a trial and it was the worst decision we ever made nobody to blame but our selves The concept is good if it was true but CLC just cannot be trusted and all we have had is problem after problem and broken pronises and we will never have the dream holidays we were promised.
The latest problem is the membership fees for this year. Thye have decide to inform everyon email but all of our email address from 2009 have changed and we never go onto the web site so we were not aware of any fees been required and were waiting for the bill. We happened to go onto to the site in Feb as we were taliking about holidays and it said we over due in paying membership fees and as such had to pay nealy £200 in late fees. I got in touch via emeail to say I wont pay late fees as it was not our fault and they got back in touch but would mot accept that they were in the wrong and there policy was to send emails to everyone, I explained if I would of received anything I would of paid it but why didnt they call or write to us ( they are always calling for referrals and offers ). They have now sent me a letter by recorded delivery ( why didnt they send the membership invoice by post?)from their debt recovery saying our membership will be cancelled if we dont pay the late fees as well as the membership.
We have had enough we have not had any holidays and never look like getting any but we are still paying a finance agreement and I will be contacting them to see how and what I can do to stop paying it as CLC just lied on every level and there is a total lack of service. Mis represesnatation is that a possibility ? has anyone had any success in this area.
Thinking about CLC ADVICE PLEASE DON’T GO OR SIGN UP .

I am really surprised at all the people saying I think I will give it a miss. Yes its timeshare, yes its more than likely going to be a hard sell. So what do you not know. If you go with the idea of just saying “No” what have you got to lose. Has anyone actually gone, said “No”, got their free holiday and can report back on this site what it was like and roughly how much the airport taxes and additional charges were. At least that way it might give others an insight into what you are letting yourself in for. Seems to me too many people are jumping on the bandwaggon of saying its a con and they havent truly experienced the whole thing.

We were accosted at B’ham airport early on this month at 6.15am!!! got phonecall today 29 march usual blurp won holiday, are you excited on winning holiday, carried on for a while then put me on to someone else who went on again about winning ‘holiday’ usual fees as reported in other comments. They could only give me a midweek apptment told them I couldn’t go due to work commitments surprise surprise they oould do a w/e in Stratford. W/e’s are only for teachers etc as they work week-days, do normal people not work week-days then. Won’t be going.

First ALL calls at CLC are recorded and listened to and at no point does anyone say WON. There is a script
Second YOU ARE GUARANTEED your holiday and any bonus gift awarded to you. All the negatives above are from people who have not experienced the holiday.
CLC has over 60000 member families and I can guarantee not even 1% will have anything bad to say about the resorts or company.
All travel companies are strictly monitored.
Just grow up go along to the exhibition find out for yourself rather than rely on second hand info.
IF YOU CHECKED OUT EVERY COMPANY ONLINE YOU WOULD NEVER BUY ANYTHING. SO MUCH RUBBISH ABOUT EVERY COMPANY.
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF AS I DID AND ENJOY A REALLY LOVELY HOLIDAY WHETHER YOU JOIN THE CLUB OR NOT. I AM NOT A MEMBER OF CLC.

Oh yes, I’m sure it’s very “SCRIPTED” including the bit when they make you feel like 2nd class citizens for NOT signing up at the end of the presentation!

At last, a voice of reason. Thanks JP.
Sorry Jane, I can’t remember if you went on the “free” holiday or not. Granted it’s nt entirely free but it does give you a chance to see CLC up close!
Again, yes I am a member & have been for 12 happy years and quite honestly am glad most of you “unhappy” people aren’t on holiday at the same time as me!

We too have been members for some time now and enjoy may weeks away. We feel that we have had and are getting our money’s worth
The truth:
yes, the resorts are excellent and well kept
yes, you can get a lot of time away for your money if you holiday outwith school holiday times.
yes, the initial cost of membership is prohibitive which is probably why CLC are now selling holidays through outside agencies
Yes, they have sales techniques which are at times dubious
Yes, you will get precious little, if anything back when you wish to terminate your membership.

To conclude, I would not recommend CLC to anyone who has to take their holidays at peak times. As CLC are selling individual weeks away through several holiday companies, it is far cheaper to go that way. Their accommodation is hard to beat and frankly some time away in a first class resort on an inexpensive trial is well worth it as long as you can resist their sales patter. If anyone wants membership the easiest and cheapest way is to buy from the members who wish to sell their memberships direct as CLC do not have a resale set-up. For example, a membership that would cost approx £18k with them can be sourced for £4.5k plus a transfer fee on e-bay just now. Sometimes these can be even cheaper when sourced from the members website that is independent from CLC.

Thanks Chris, couldn’t agree more with your comments.
People, please speak to existing members before making up your minds.

My wife has just had a telephone call from a female to the effect we have just ‘won’ a holiday, thanks to all who have put comments down. Needless to say we will not be going, she even told my wife this was not a time share company, and she didn’t know where Northamptonshire was.

has anybody ever gettin out of a club la costa membership? i am at the end of my rope we got sucked in four year ago and just today got a bill for four years management fees witch i refuse to pay as we were lied to and miss sold,the whole thing, we have tried reselling but thats a mine field if you can direct me to any company or person i can get real help from i would be greatful i dont want any money back just to get out of it thanks

I would like to say what has happened to human decency we went to the first meeting ok it sounded good we signed uo the second was such a hard sell we said no but they came back again and the third sell they used all the things we humans love money free holidays etc . When we signed on again i realised that we werent in far enough they wanted more money from us and the management rates what a joke wen u havent even had a holiday and u have to pay money well if club la costa is so good why will they not buy it back from you even car buyers do that so jp i may be talking out of my a**e but im ten thousand pound out of pocket for something i have never used and never will because its a serious rip off if u have to get a loan for it . You must be lucky and only hqve to pay the fees so good luck to you why dont you buy us poor suckers out then and thenit will be all yours

have people forgotten how to read!!!!!!!!! I repeat I am not a member but like many thousands of others I really enjoyed my holiday which is why I went to the exhibition. Why pay for something you dont use and how can you dismiss something you have never tried????????? Enough said

Received a phone call last week saying I had won a holiday for 4 to Spain having filled in a competition form at the home renovations show in early 2009! had to speak to an initial lady who told me we had won a holiday for four to costa del sol or Tenerife, she the out me through to another lady who kept me on the phone for 20 minutes going through my details and asking us to attend a meeting Thursday 7th April in Stratford upon Avon to collect the vouchers they are awarding for going to the meeting £50 m and s vouchers and to be given our holiday tickets to be taken within 18 months, she then asked me to confirm if my husband would attend as well as they needed us both to attend!? And then told me that I couldn’t take my baby as children under 7 are not insured to be inside the building!? In other words they will disturb the hard sell of time shares where as if they are over 7 they can too be drawn into the brochures and catalogue photos. Today they have rang again to confirm we are going and my husband spoke to them. He asked if it was time share and if you have to attend a meeting on the holiday and the lady he spoke to got shirty with him, unhappy with is questions.
We won’t be attending o Thursday and urge others to read this google page prior to spending their hard earned money. You can get a last minute holiday nowadays for a few hundred pounds anyway and not be tied into a lifetime of costly payments

Received a phone call last week saying I had won a holiday for 4 to Spain having filled in a competition form at the home renovations show in early 2009! had to speak to an initial lady who told me we had won a holiday for four to costa del sol or Tenerife, she the out me through to another lady who kept me on the phone for 20 minutes going through my details and asking us to attend a meeting Thursday 7th April in Stratford upon Avon to collect the vouchers they are awarding for going to the meeting £50 m and s vouchers and to be given our holiday tickets to be taken within 18 months, she then asked me to confirm if my husband would attend as well as they needed us both to attend!? And then told me that I couldn’t take my baby as children under 7 are not insured to be inside the building!? In other words they will disturb the hard sell of time shares where as if they are over 7 they can too be drawn into the brochures and catalogue photos. Today they have rang again to confirm we are going and my husband spoke to them. He asked if it was time share and if you have to attend a meeting on the holiday and the lady he spoke to got shirty with him, unhappy with is questions.
We won’t be attending o Thursday and urge others to read this google page prior to spending their hard earned money. You can get a last minute holiday nowadays for a few hundred pounds anyway and not be tied into a lifetime of costly payments. Beware as nothing is free in this life!

I wish I could go again but apparently you can only get one promo hol per year at the companys discretion. I have no desire at present to buy any of clc products (if I could afford it I would) but it doesnt stop me going on their promotional hols. The £50 M&S vouchers really went down a treat as well Thanks CLC.
If the rest of you sheep dont want the holiday maybe they will phone me again. I hope so

Came here after being approached by a rep a couple of weeks ago in Alicante airport, will wait for the phone call and send them away

I love 5* holidays, love paying less and am able to say no to the best of them but quite simply the sums dont add up, once you factor the costs (membership, admin, maintenance and booking (even at discounts) then divide this by the number of years the deal is for)you can still get better for less on the internet.

I have 5 different weekly E mails sent to me showing the best of the best deals available.

dealchecker.co.uk
travelzoo.co.uk
voyage prive (5*)
travesse (5*)
the finest of the web (5*)

to be honest they are queing up to get your money, many include flights, there are plenty all inclusive UK hotel deals for £79 per room per night, (dinner lunch bed abd breakfast with a free bar each evening for 2 people!) I have done a few of these bargains.

And you choose what you want with no pressure knowing that it is easy to to do as all are ABTA , ATOL bonded.

I dont represent or work for any of the above but like to share good deals with like minded people.

Go with CLC, the coice is yours but to me it’s a no brainer, in fact I was returning from a 5* Spanish holiday through Tompson late deals where I saved 39% on the normal price.

Good luck all

Fdave

i got the phonecall, very convincing but i was very wary. i will NOT be attending the exhibition after reading all these comments.

My experience is much the same as others, with my wife I was lured to Tenerife, on a ” holiday ” that I would not dream of repeating, kept captive for hours until in desperation I paid over three and a half grand just to get away. I was not told that I had a right to withdraw until it was too late. Subsequently I went with my wife to ” Hotel California ” in Spain and this was a total nightmare with poor facilites and service. The place is in the middle of nowhere and could not be less suitable for holidays. The thing is we are out of pocket, Club La Costa, Or one of the numerous companies that they trade as, does not care, they are just ignoring us and carrying on enrolling more mug punters to their worthless scheme. We need to get organised and get ourselves in fronf of them, disrupt their activites and make them listen to us and act on our complaints. This outfit is rotten and should be stopped. Whingeing on the internet will not get you your money back, but going to their sites and protesting might. Anybody interested ? Anybody prepared to something ? Let me know what you think.

what I really think about you Gerald Lloyd I cant legally write so I will bite my tongue and…. CLC trades as CLC they are a reputable holiday company (ATOL and ABTA bonded) check them out properly with the correct governing bodies instead of reading mostly complete C*** Do you shop at TESCO check out the complaints about them. Do proper research before parting with any money.

JP get a life, loooks like Gerald Lloyd has touched a nerve with you.
Also Tesco dont con people into going into their stores with bullchit promises then keep them there for hours until in desperation they spend thousands they can ill afford.

Anyone with an ounce of commen sense can see the value is not there, most posters say it is value for money out of embarrasment, the remainder are strong enough to admit to making a mistake (under duress) when companies like CLC operate on the fringe of the law

to add, looking back, through the posts, as we say in other forums JP is a troll—-a stooge determined to decieve others into thinking he / she is correct and all the hundreds of others are wrong.

the weight of opinion will always rule……. one troll vs hundreds of independant people………..it’s a no brainer!

ONE ….? 70000 member families over 250000 people sent on holiday every year with clc against how many? It wasnt less than 0.5% was it? You get a life

TROLL !!!

In response to jp…why do you make such personal remarks ? It seems to me that you have some sort of connection to Club Ls Costa…70,000 members ? CLC claims range from 25,000 up to 50,000 where does 70,000 come from ? you are better at exagerating than they are. This apart, there are a very large number of people who have been treated badly by this shower, there a large number of people who have been taken for money by this lot. It is not beyond belief that some are going to be satisfied, but a hell of a lot people aren’t. So jp it is your right to be a mouthpiece for Club La Costa if you want to, but read about other peoples experiences, This company is rotten to it’s core.

Just received a call about an hour ago which seemed too good to be true – and you know what they say!

My wife entered a competition at the Vitality Show at Earls Court and was telephoned in exactly the manner that Mike describes in his thread. Just seems that these competition entries are a way of these types of company getting their hands on your information.

My wife asked three times whether this was connected with timeshare sales and on each occasion was told NO.

Glad that I had my doubts and searched for information on CLC and Club La Costa. Suffice it to say we will not b e taking them up on their offer.

now….now…..don’t go upsetting JP, after all CLC operates like Tesco……….well in his world it does, wonder what the colour is the sky in his world…mmmmm

I think that the best way to deal with these scoudrels if they contact you is to go along with them, take everything that they offer for free, go on the “free holiday ” but don’t buy anything !!! If you are abroad and you have to go to a presentation, take the whole family and have a free breakfast on Club La Costa. Don’t take your cards or cheque book with you and especially don’t buy anything if you don’t want vacation club membership, because that is what it all about. Don’t buy trial membership is this absolutely hopeless on it’s own and Club La Costa regard it as a deposit for full membership. On your ” free holiday ” and prelude week you are treated as Club La Costa’s property without any rights. As far as trial membership is concerned…How are you going to get value for money ? It works out at around £850 a week for apartments that may be extremely basic and worth in reality between £50 and £120 a week.
So go ahead, have a free holiday, don’t expect 5 star and don’t buy anything !!!

well done Gerald Lloyd. that is exactly what you should do.
all I said in the first place.

In 2009 I was contacted by clc stating the same I’d won a holiday but had to go to a no obligation presentation!! And here I am today feeling scammed big time. They sold us this so called fantastic trial membership which would allow us great holidays whenever & wherever we wanted to go including term-time as I have childrn but in this time we have managed to use only 3 weeks out of 6. As they phoned me nearly every week to take the prelude holiday untill we did last year. I was 7 months pregnant & they gave us breakfast & then a hard sell from 12pm till 6pm without anything to eat or drink & my 6 year old day had to endure this untill I had to ask the guy for some food for my daughter or somewhere I could buy it from. After this its been a nightmare trying to book anywhere other than spain or tenerife. So we went to tenerife for 2 weeks via rci because they didnt have anything available on their restorts. Whilst in tenerife we went to their sales head office in hope of getting a week in august but they were mean & werent interested in what we were saying but trying to sell us the whole membership instead. I dont want to keep going to these destinations but they are the only places on offer in the whole of europe. I phoned today to book for easter next year but they dont have anything available now & feel they are penalizing us for the visit we made in tenerife. My husband says he doesnt want the stress of it & has decided to forfeit the 3 weeks we have left but I want to do something about it rather than forfeit. Can anyone advise me please?

Hi Dee

I am expecting my call fom these people very soon, so in order to be more knowledgeable I have read every post in this forum and explored other areas in the internet.

I am sorry to say but my belief is you will struggle to get any further that you are currently, they seem masters of getting your money and giving very little back, even if you are foolish enough to pay for more than the trial. I suggest you get what little you can from the rest of the trial and put the whole debarcle down to bad experience in the knowledge they wont get a penny of your hard earned cash (tell every one you know) ever aggain.

You can get decent bargains on the internet so dont need these shysters.

I have no problems dealing with this type of organisation and am looking forward to my call from them.

All, unfortunately I have not been spending much time of late keeping on top of my blog owing to work commitments, but I’ll be putting that right soon. I’ve only just noticed how many comments have been added to this thread recently.

I wrote this article based on my own personal experiences, not that of others. The comments were left open so everyone could have their say, both positive and negative, all I ask is that everyone respects the viewpoint of others. I haven’t had time to read down through all of the comments yet but it seems to me that some of the comments have become a little ‘personal’ towards other commenters; this I’m not so keen on. By all means if your opinion and viewpoint differs have your say, but do so in a way that does not cause offence. A little jovial banter is fine, but we all know there is a fine line. I will moderate comments if I have to.

One comment I will single out from what I have read so far, JP, you clearly state that all phone calls made by CLC are monitored and listened back to and at no point will the word ‘won’ have been used. Well, rolling this right back to the beginning, this post is based on my own experience and the word won was clearly used.

Guys, CLC or any other such company will undoubtably have some people for whom it ‘works’, but as with any direct marketing campaign, do your research and make your minds up for yourselves but personally, I’d still run a mile.

I welcome continued comments and thoughts :)

Thank you Dave you are right we will just cut our losses, there is nothing we can do. I wish we hadnt been so stupid if I could only go back!!!! Thanks again!

Dee, you are not stupid, just fell for a well rehearsed clever plan designed to relieve people of their money. you are one of a few who have tried to do something, for every one of you hundreds stay quite, this helps the plan to propogate, need more to speak out.

I feel slightly let down by CLC, they made first conact but have not followed up, I let them believe I was excited by the thought of a free holiday, was chatty and now I am slightly miffed they have not rang me back. Patience I think.

I have just had a call from these people and accepted an invitation to the exhibition purely on the basis to prove that there was a catch despite me keep asking during the phone call and to be told “no catch”. However, thanks to googling the name and pulling up this site as a result, my suspicions have now been confirmed and I have called back the company to confirm I will “not” be attending the exhibition. I quite enjoyed making that phone call I have to admit. Once again thankyou for the warning.

They’re still at it. My wife got scammed this morning. We were busy planning our “free” holiday for 4 until I Googled the company name and came across this blog. Shame on Thomas Cook for selling our details to a nefarious business.

In my case it wasn’t Thomas Cook, I was approached at Bham airport for the opportunity of a “free Holiday for 4″ at the time I was lead to believe it was a competition, I was bored so decided what the heck I’ll have a go. I fly regularly from there and hope to come across the woman again….watch this space :)

i have just booked for next sunday to claim my £25 voucher and claim my 7 days holiday to spain at £29.95 per person. i just want to enquire if anyone has gone on the 7 day holidays without signing up for membership and how much money they had to pay for other taxes and surcharges. i will still be attending the sales pitch as i am very good at saying no sweetly and also wasting peoples time. looking forward to it actually. its just 21 minutes drive from my house. will keep you informed how the meeting goes

Good Luck Mary, please note the comments at the very top from a “former employee” your holiday could be ruined by the heavy sales people, who as stated above can embarrass you and imply you’re inferior, apparently they are on you form the minute you wake to the minute you sleep. You can see what the taxes are by going onto the flight websites, however these prices can vary between flight companies and airports and times of year. Once you known from the exhibition dates and apirports and flight companies you should be able to get an idea online. Hope that helps.

well finally got a return call, and recorded the full conversation.
no local seminar, even offered a discount of 33% on their holiday.
promised the only condition was to attend a breakfast chat for “at least” 90 minutes and if I was not interested could walk away with no further disturbance, wanted the money for the booking there and then, had no card so they agreed to call me back later in the evening.

no call tonight, suspect they know it’s me posting here, well let’s see.

will post the recording link later if anyone is interested

Was at presentation yesterday and had read up on all the posts before I went so I was clued up.
The two hour presentation was actually 3 hours 20 minutes. We had a wonderful older woman who had only been “selling” for 5 weeks. She says that they never tell the customer what the actual length of the presentation really is.
They are very professional in a but to be honest having read through the threads here there was nothing new to be learned at the presentation itself.
We collected our £25 gift voucher and will probably try to go on their holiday. So this is not a con as they do actually give you what they say, albeit they are trying to sell. Just keep saying no. To be honest it was not difficult to say no, and from what I could see of the 30 or so people there no one seemed to be getting out the chequebook to buy.
We actually want to purchase a property in Spain, not timeshare, and thought that getting a cheap holiday to the Costa Del Sol might give us another chance to look for something.
When we told the Senior Consultant who was the one in possession of all the cost information that we holidayed in Andalucia quite often she asked us where that was. Considering that their flagship resort is on the Costa Del Sol, Andalucia, Spain I found this quite amusing.
I have today emailed their help desk looking for some information on their “free holiday” that is not contained in the literature or on the website. Like other posts here we were categorically told that the free holiday was not to a Club La Costa resort as their clients had complained about the number of visitors using the promotion. We were also told that we would not have to attend another promotion though the booking conditions on the holiday application form state that we do. These are a few of the questions I have asked to be answered.
I am not confident that my questions will ellicit a response but heh, I have my £25 voucher, been entertained for a few hours and we only live a 10 minute car journey from where the presentation was held!
If you can say no and have some spare time why not go along. I will post again if I ever get a reply from Club La Costa.

Well I stand corrected.
Within an hour of emailing Club La Costa I get a reply!
The £29.50 you have to send off is non refundable even if you do not take the holiday.
They state that the current charge for airport tax and security is £49.55 per person.
I asked if luggage in the hold was extra – they say 1 bag per person is included in the flight booked and there is no extra cost.
They confirmed that the accommodation is Club La Costa or an affiliate, so why state at the presentation that this is not the case.
They have confirmed that you must attend another presentation for a morning or afternoon – so again at presentation one why say this was not the case. If you refuse the second presentation at the resort they will charge you £250. They have said in their email ” Once you have attended the presentation you will not be required to attend anything further during your stay”
So, if I get a week for £29.50 plus £49.55 = £79.05 and attend another presentation and say no again I have definately got a cheap holiday.
Hope this helps others.

Hi Stewart,
I first wrote on this thread back on 30th Sept 2010. We enjoyed our short stay in Cornwall and wish we had had the opportunity to stay abroad. I say go for it but be very strong on saying no if that’s what you wish. Of course they will try every tactic of selling, that’s their job.
I still stand by my original comment of liking the concept, but fail to see why you are not allowed to study or seek representation for signing a legal document.
Hope you enjoy your trip.

I wish I had done my usual research & found this before accepting the offer of a ‘free holiday ‘ from CLC earlier this year. My husband took the call & alady went through the offer before he put me on. I stated very firmly many times i was very sceptical. about this & was reassured yes it was free bar the £90 admin fee….. after going over this as I said many times we did go ahead….then it transpired we had to book our own flights…so we did, after objecting…. now a week before we go it transpires they do not do airport transfers, you book your own taxi!!!! The journey is 1hr from Bodrum airport to Apollonia resort,& I have just found it costs about £128.We were definately not told transport was not provided & in fact were told they needed our flight details FOR the transport.They certainly have not been honest & upfront in their dealings with us so far.We are now very reluctant to go especially after an extremely maddening phone call 2 hours ago. DO NOT ACCEPT A FREE HOLIDAY FROM CLC!!!!

hi ,mike just been offered a reed holiday and my husband (very tech savvy ) found your thread. depressing reading especially in these times of wanting some relieve from the economic climate but as they say nothing in life is free except good family and friends and health. so will be sticking to a week in wales raining or otherwise.
thanks

PS like the bike at the top of this forum!

I too this morning received my letter of confirmation for next Sunday in Statford upon Avon to attend a seminar on this so called free holiday
Thanks everyone.
We will not be going now

We went to the Stratford presentation. We were told there is no no further presentation on the ‘free’ holiday at the meeting. We were told it would last 2hrs. It lasted 3.5hrs. We were told the meeting was to be shown the holiday we had WON and confirm our details. The free holiday wasn’t mentioned, we just got our pack thrown at us at the end. We got exactly the same conflicting information as Stewart.

Count the lies above and you haven’t even booked with them, not a sign of a trustworthy group of people or company! We did not take up the holiday, the vouchers did not compensate for the time we lost. We would advise you not to bother with any of it.

Well I think you can quite clearly tell when they call if you listen carefully (and are somewhat cynical of such scams) that the “29.50″ is a no obligation fee to buy. For me that says that you still have further fees on top of the “£ 29.50″ in order to win a so called free holiday. I pity older folk less well of hearing who miss this as this is said even before you go to the preso. I gave them 2 dodgy id’s and a dodgy address as I thought would play them at their own game. After my sister nearly became bankrupt through such scams I am very dubious! Yes nothing in this life is ever free!

nice post Lozzie, you are quite right, nothing in life is free and the oldest saying is “if it sounds to good to be true, then it usually is”

well ,thought would update you a bit. after being soundly congratulated on winning a holiday 3 times on the phone and being assured that i would recieve said holiday details in the post “we will ensure they are posted before 6 o clock tonight”. that was 2 weeks ago and still waiting !! say no more total scam and rip off

i also received a call from clc this week, fortunately i have experienced this before, in 1995 myself and my husband attended a presention in manchester. I knew from the onset i didnt want to sign up for this time share we just wanted the “free” holiday. i remember the sales person she didnt like me very much as i kept telling her not to waste her time with all the banter about how great it would be to have a holiday every year ect… my hubby was nearly tempted but being a true jock! i stood my ground and again informed her we were only there for the “free” holiday.I remember at the time looking around at all the people there and seeing how nervous and uncomfortable they were with this hard sell, we were there for about 2.5 hours and never even got a drink never mind when they tell you, you may get lunch!! the sales woman was really annoyed with me and kept looking at my hubbie trying to get me to change my mind “i dont think”!!. We paid about £45 at the time and choose a holiday in spain, we are still waiting for this holiday to materialize 16 years later. What a con! never again there is no such thing as a “FREE HOLIDAY” as i told the sales assistant this week.

dear vanessa
call them back
How can it be a rip off/scam if you havent heard from them.
by the way their no. is 08009880334 if you can sit through a couple of hours of tea and coffee and films of the resorts (very good actually) then you get your holiday. And by the way Lennie you dont pay anything at the exhibition.
More info on the clc owners site. As Ive said before Im not an owner.
There seems to be more people from other firms on this site though.

Is your deal better than clc??
Let me know

Hi JP (defender of the CLC dudes)

Your statement “there seems to be more people from other firms though” easy said , hard proved, please quantify.
the whole issue surrounds CLC’s business case model, get people into a controlled environment and sell hard, if they seem to be reluctant to buy go for the emotive angle and say you are only resisting because you cannot afford to buy, in essence you are “poor” (put in very simple terms)when sales people only earn money if they sell and they control the environment they use well established pressure tactics to embarress/coearse peole to take the easy option and sign up for the lesser amount (around £4k) just to get out with though of cancelling straight after only to find out their deposit/money is gone. CLC then use debt collectors to tyu get the remainder, even though debt collectors have no power at all to do this (if anyone is going through this let me know, I can help, all for free)
If the holiday club was so good why resort to these options, hell I would be the first to buy, however I have done the maths and it is a very expensive way to holiday, and pay lots of commissions / wages to CLC sales people

Have just had a call today offering holiday for 4 in luxury acommodation in Tenerlire/Costa del Sol. They said I had completed a questionnaire at Malaga airport and that mine had been pulled from a hat!. We have v recently flown in and out of Malaga but could not remember completing any questionnaire- but it was late & maybe we were tired & forgot!!. So how did they get my details – do EASYJET sell their passenger information!?!? Makes you wonder – doesnt it and gives us one more reason why never to fly with them again!! Thanks for you website and comments, We also will NOT be attending meeting in London.

I’ve just had a call from them too. Thanks for all the comments, I won’t be attending, can’t beleive I nearly fell for it!!

Hi, just found your site after receiving a recorded delivery letter this morning saying that I had won a prize holiday worth £4000 from CLC after I had apparently entered a competion on activeyou.com website (which i am not a member of!)and to ring their freephone number and ask for rachel(whats the betting all their staff are called rachel?) first of all my reaction was it must be a con then as i looked at the letter and the fact that it came registered post I started to doubt my instincts – so did a search on the company and as soon as I saw the words time share the letter went in the bin! I can only guess I was sent a letter as I never put my telephone details on applications, questionaires etc on websites as I dont want sales calls
What surprises me most is the effort and cost they go to to hook you in – it must really be worth their while.

I have full membership with CLC, my problem is I want to get out of it, but I took out a loan everyone says just stop payments to them, CLC arranged this loan over the phone, I am now unemployed and cannot afford any payments to them, I want my loan provider to contact CLC and pressure them for answers as I am getting nowhere and sinking fast, we did have a couple of great hols with them accommodation was excellent, but am now not in a position to continue using their product, any feedback much appreciated.

Hi Mick, sorry you are now struggling due to your job loss, however this raised and interesting point, who is the loan company? just wondered if it is Spannish.

To just stop making the repaymnets is asking for trouble, write to them explaining your current circumstances and advise them you are unable to make the repayments, see what they say.

As a general rule of thumb there is a guide as to what you should pay first, food / mortgage / utilities / council tax etc, the items that could cause you the greatest inconvenience.

unsecured loans go way down the list (was it unsecured?)

I asked if the loan company was spannish as in so far as I understand this the only valid spannish contracts etc have to be written in Spanish not english.

Strongly advise you to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau or try http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/ loads free advice to download.

One note, now CLC have your money from the loan company they will not be interested in you or your circumstances, so dont waste your time or effort with them

Thanks for your reply Dave, loan is with Barclays I have spoken to them several times explaining my situation a couple of their operators have asked me who was it I was dealing with i.e CLC.they knew nothing about the company or what they did, I would have thought when they handed over 18 grand some checks would have been done and noted in my file, I just hate to think I am stuck paying loan back and no chance of ever using what I originally paid for. Have been on to citizens advice we sent of to fin.ombudsman Barclays rang cit.advice said we did have a cooling off period great in hindsight now have to write to Barclays with my problems relating to CLC.do not know if loan is secured or not might apply for legal aid and get solicitor to deal with it.

Hi Mike
The loan is between you and Barclays, forget CLC regarding this, the moneies may have been paid to a CLC parent/holding company with a totally different name. You need to get good indipendant unbiased advice here thats why I suggested CAB and the national debt line (have you rang the latter, you can do without giving your name.

They may be able to help you finding who the monies where paid to but CLC is the least of your worries, you need to get Barclays to come to the party and help with the repayments that are sinking you

the fact you have already taken a couple of holidays suggest the loan has been running for several months so your priority is to get Barclays to reduce the repayments. If you had not lost your job would you still want to “get out of this” as you had already said, This is no different to most loans people are struggling to repay.

If the loan is secured your problems will get worse if you default, check the agreement

Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear but you need to get a handle on this very quickly

Dave

Well we went on the holiday to Apollonia Resort Turkey.( see May 23rd post)I was really cross before we went after gradually finding out what the ‘free’ holiday we had ‘won’ did NOT include.They did not inform us of the extra costs until it was too late to do anything about it, and only fed us with information at intervals as we completed various steps eg pay £99 pounds admin charge, book dates,then later find out about flight payment, etc.
The accomodation was very good & of a high standard,however the resort is very very isolated, particularly if you do not hire a car as we did. We did not want to spend any other money with club la costa so we either ate in our appartment or went out.
We attended the welcome meeting on our first night when they put forward their best side, serving drink & a few nibbles.We did have a rep sit down & talk to us but we limited what we said to mainly yes & no & she soon went away.
Then 2 days in we had our very own presentation.This started with a free breakfast & a Turkish Rep we got on quite well with.We were introduced to a rep called Diane who dropped by briefly.Then we were taken upstairs to a room where we were the only ones apart from the two reps.The Turkish guy continued with the presentation…by the way we were told the reps will come round but you can just say you are not interested & they will go away…no mention of any obligation to attend at that stage.We had had a welcome pack when we got there though containing a letter saying if we did NOT attend we might be liable for the cost of the holiday!
After being in the Turkish guys company for 2 1/2hrs we could see the presentation still had some way to go & I was getting a migraine so I told him this & asked him to hurry up which he did a bit.Then Diane came over.She ignored the fact I was getting a headache & although saying ‘we can take a ‘no’ ignored us saying that 20 times.We said we had to go as I was ill & at that point she threatened us with the letter saying she would hate for us to have to pay.We finally got away after 3 1/4 hours with Diane saying we had to go back later to finish.Needless to say we didn’t! we later spoke to our neighbours (members)who were appalled at the way she had treated us & said they would take this further.Diane seemed so desperate I did wonder whether CLC were in financial trouble.Membership starts around £20,000, there are fees of £600 pa & other costs on top.There are different classes of membership at different prices & you are signed up til 2067! We want to travel widely & it simply isn’t worth it when you can book better things cheaper & in more countries than CLC offer.Their methods are extremely morally questionable & you can’t beleive what they tell you.Don’t get sucked in!

Unfortunately CLC are not alone in using the sales tactics highlighted here. They are now advertising one off holidays with no presentation at resorts their members have paid a lot of money for, having been sold it as having exclusivity. Even buying membership secondhand, which used to be a good way in, is not really worth it when you can pick one of their resorts for a one of holiday without paying buy in costs, annual membership and maintenance fees. The only way to get any value for money is to be a member for many years and take your holidays off peak. Our average for a week in a two bed or three bed apartment, including initial outlay, membership and maintenance costs works out at about £310 per week by making full use of special member benefits.

I’ve just returned from the CLC site at Mijas Costa, and I have to say it’s a mixed bag. The holiday itself was fantastic, as we got what we expected. For £40 we had a 2 bed apartment, which was something like 3+ star, and in a quiet part of the resort. We paid our own flights and went with 2 friends and their baby. The place itself was fine, nice bars abnd some great events (flamenco night was 3 course meal, 2 jugs of sangria and the show for 20 euros each, a bargain). The apartment had a huge patio and was next to the pool so easy to get to, and we cooked our own meals mainly so we made full use of it every evening. As a base (we hired a car seperately), it was brilliant for the beaches, malaga, marbella and ronda/nerja, all of which we visited.

Now for the down side. The wednesday mid week presentation was awful- met the rep at 930 and got a full english breakfast out of it. Then into presentations, 2 flat visits and a hard sell fromm 5 managers, some of which I had no idea what they were doing/selling. At the end of 6 hours of this, my wife had cracked and thought it a great idea. When we went through the trial period (all the figures here are pretty accurate), we were looking at a monthly fee of £200. How that worked out at £3995 which was what was quoted I don’t know. Our friends worked it out at £7200 for the life of the deal. I stuck to my guns and said we don’t make decisions on the spur of the moment, at which point our now surly sales rep drove us back to the apartment. As it was my wedding anniversary a couple of days later, she left with ‘what a great wedding present for you!’ to my wife as she roared off!

We were laughing about it that evening (after some serious red wine), and enjoyed the rest of the holiday. I’d say it’s fine for a cheap week as long as you see it for what it is, and DON’T sign anything. The sales process is a case study in slick presentation, just say you can’t make decisions the same day and the door will opwen to release you to the rest of your holiday!

My wife and I have just returned from a ‘free’ holiday to the Club la costa resort near Fuengirola on the costa del sol. We were fortunately strong enough to say No throughout but what shocked me was the sheer number of lies from this company. I list below from just our own experience to give you a picture of the type of people running this thing:

1. You have completed a survey and ‘won a free holiday’! We never completed any survey and clearly the words ‘won a free holiday’ are completely misleading.
2. You will be put in a luxury apartment for a week. Our apartment was bog standard, with dated decor and a view of, err, the rubbish tip on the resort. The sales rep who met us at the sales presentation said he hears this tale a thousand times and they had outsourced their sales team in the UK?! My 4year old son received first degree burns from an uncovered halogen light bulb on the first night for which club la costa showed no concerns. Reception were useless at the resort, failing to give basic first aid advice or treatment. Club la costa showed no concern.
3. The presentation lasts 90minutes on your holiday. If you are not strong enough the sales rep will stay with you all day until you are literally worn down. Our children (4 and 6) were siphened into a ‘kids club’ which was just a room with crayons and a TV. Our sales person had no concern when we stated we wanted to leave the presentation to check they were okay. Our children told us later they were given biscuits but no water or drinks.
4. We spoke to many other families in the ‘marketing departments’ who had been told totally differing figures for the cost of the timeshares. Clearly your respective sales person will do whatever they can to push your buttons.

Oh my, there are so many more lies but I just do not have time to go on. It is frightening that a British company is able to operate like this and that sales people still exist that operate in this way.

Question – is this company breaking any laws?
Why is such a shambolic scam not featured more regularly on Watchdog? I find it incredible the company is able to go on operating in this disgusting manner.

No harm done to me but I am sure plenty of financial harm is being done to others by these sharks who are nothing short of shameless. It has just made me feel that little more cynical about human nature which is a shame in itself.

Received my first letter (recorded delivery had to collect my letter from the post office) this seemed very genuine, the letter states I had “won” a £4000 holiday and to call the freephone number , which I did . I spoke to a lovely lady , who was asking me about the weather in the uk , she was in Spain where of course it was “lovely” when I told her what I did for a living she was like” oh my daughter wants to do that ” yeah yeah whatever ! I was advised that some paperwork would be coming and I could have a free holiday every year for the next 50 or so years. I would only have to pay £199 a year for the first 3 years , I received all the details a few days later and then “googled” this company along with my husband saying stay away . Today I have just received another recorded delivery letter saying the same thing. I have decided to put a line through the letter send it back and say “no thanks do not send me anything ever again and remove my details from their data base” I hope this stops more letters from them.
I hope they don’t call me but I will just tell them that I won’t be joining them . A big fat SCAM

“A big fat SCAM”

Not really, you’re told the cost, you either pay or you don’t. You get what you pay for, that’s not a “scam”.
Go down there and look at the site I’m sure there is better quality accommodation but I’m also sure it will cost you even more & I know there is a lot worse…
The agents used here in the UK are contracted by Club la Costa and have to produce leads to make their money and I agree with people about their tactics but you don’t have to sign a cheque or credit agreement for thousands of pounds if you don’t want to…
Not cheap, not for every one but not a scam.

Velcro…….

if it’s not a scam, then why do they resort to high pressure sales tactics?

If it was a quality product then it would sell itself, always wonder why they take people out of the UK, away from the british consumer protection laws to sell “the dream”, what a load of bollox!

High pressure sales tactics doesn’t mean it’s a scam…

What do you all need protection from? You can’t legislate for stupid people, if you don’t like it don’t buy it!

Personally I’m glad most of the people here aren’t buying in as I really wouldn’t to have to listen to all the whining whilst relaxing in the sun!

It seems most of the “bollox!” appears here, not from the satisfied people whom I talk to in Spain, Austrailia, Bali, Africa, USA etc.

It works very well for me; if you don’t like it don’t buy it

velcro
so sorry you fell for the scam and are now trying to justify your actions, never mind keep saying it’s no scam and you will evetually believe it
£14,000 to £18,000 to join the club, £1,000 to £1,500 per annum maintenance fees and you still have to buy your flights, pay for transfers etc. now do the maths even if you take 2 or 3 holidays per year it will take 20+ years to break even.

what a bargain and you think others are stupid!

Oh my god, I feel so stupid and in denial! Having had our timeshare and clc membership over a period of 21 years (yes we did go into it for the long haul intentionally) we are now in a position where with an allocated portion of our initial investments, annual maintenance and membership costs, our average cost for each week we have taken in the last 5 years is working out at about a massive £290 in a two bed or three bed luxury apartment of our choice. I feel so gullible! (NOT!!!)

chris

Does that include flights and tranfers? (NOT!!!)

Er, do not need flights and transfers if I take accomodation in UK!
Also if, as usual 4 of us go abroad, that works out at only £72.50 per person for the accomodation. Last holiday to Costa del Sol, flights were £109 each and we went for 4 weeks so 4 weeks holiday cost each of us approx £399. As I said, this cost does of course reflect the fact that we have had been in timeshare for 21 years and that has contributed significantly to the value we are seeing.

This thread is all about CLC, I suspect your time share is with someone else, however makes no difference, 99% of people posting say different to you also with CLC if you dont go on holiday you still get stung for maintenence charges, (people have posted that this varies between £600 to £1500 pa) all the costs mount up and no matter what you say I can always get better value holidays with last minute deals on the internet and without any tie ins, my last one was 3 weeks in Australia with business class flights and hotels for £3995 total for 2 people

Off the mark again I am afraid David. We are in fact diamond CLC vacation members. Yes we are tied in but with a fair choice of venues and for £3995 per annum we are getting 10-11 weeks in the sun which is what we want.

never mind, I go for quality over quantity, still like I said 99% of people think they are a rip off so you although you are in the minority sounds like you where lucky (how much is a diamond CLC membership nowadays along with maintenance fees per annum, please enlighten us)

Just had an E mail and asked to look here
http://www.thetimesharemart.com/search.php?tim_type=FOR+SALE&loc=88&resort=831&bed=&sleep=&ava_st=&ava_en=&search_kw=Keyword+Search…&price=&tm+search=Search&page=2&page=3&page=1

the timeshare mart sells second hand CLC membership point, Diamond starts at £24,000 and says it’s a lot cheaper than buying from CLC so add maintenance fees per annum and wow it’s dam expensive

Thanks for the heads up with that link.
CLC points are going for as little as £1 a point, I’ll be getting my cheque book out to top up my portfolio….

Rest assured Dave that there is no way that seller will get £24k for that particular diamond membership. As velcro points out there are other sales on your link showing £1 per point so at that rate a diamond membership might be achievable at £4001. Maintenance and membership on a 4001 point membership works out at about £2150 per year so if it can bring ten weeks/year that would work out at annual running costs of £215 per week (a bit better than our costs). Keep the membership for ten year and divide the £4001 to give an apportioned £400 per year divided by ten weeks holiday per year = £255 per week which figure reduces for each year membership is kept. The quality of our holidays is excellent by the way so quality and quantity.

hi Guys (Chris and Velcro)

After a bit of research on CLC I can get all you have described at the same cost but with no management fees or membership fees.
One example is here
http://www.holidayauctions.org.uk/for-rent/for-rent/rental-search-results/detail/80-florida-holiday-club-week-for-rent-2011-11-05.html
I have joined a forum detailing loads of rentals for 4 adults and 2 children at the top CLC resorst from only £100 per week.
Already knew about the £2150 per annum maintenence charge but wont need to pay it via the link above.

Are you members of http://www.clcmembers.co.uk, looks interesting.

Happy holidays folks looks like I can have my cake and eat it without giving CLC anything.

I have received a recorded delivery letter today saying I have won a valuable timeshare membership worth £4k from Club La Costa. I only have to pay a reduced maintnence of £199 pa. After reading all the info on Club la Costa here and online I feel my letter is a scam but I can’t understand why they sent it Recorded? and why a letter. It is all very strange – anyone ele had this approach?

first, did you enter the competition to win a time share? 2nd if not ask yourself why did you get it.
If not and they want to drag you in then £ 3 to £4 for recorded delivery is peanuts if they win the big prize, “your money”

alway remember… if it sounds to good to be true, it usually is!

Thank you Google…sat on the phone blah blah blah sales pitch whilst tapping away at the laptop…then I dropped a bomb! ‘Is this timeshare?’ Boom! GAME OVER!!!

jenna, who signed the recorded delivery letter? This must be a new selling ploy or a new product!

Hi, just popped by to see what one of my members at http://www.clcmembers.co.uk had referred to on this site. Looks like its from JENNA who received a Recorded Delivery Letter. We actually interface directly with the Management of Club La Costa, and I wondered if we could have more information on who is behind this letter. Is there any names, company or personal, contact info etc.
I would be happy to follow it up and expose these people. We are dead against Scammers and hold records of 60+ companies who do this sort of thing. Sharing info like that helps prevent these people getting any success. I’m happy to receive an email about it at webmaster@clcmembers.co.uk, although perhaps Mike Southby or a Mod may remove this. We have helped hundreds of people save hundreds of thousands of pounds since our inception in 2003, and we continue to do so. Many thanks.

Hi, I’ve been a CLC trial member for the 34 months up to 18 month ago and firstly, yes the accomodation was very good.After the trial had expired I decided not to take the full membership.Within the past 6 months I have received a call informing me of some competition I had entered and that I had won and in order to claim my prize I had to attend Duchally Country House.I think CLC must have their wires crossed as I informed them that I had previously had the trial membership and was happy to book my hols through the internet. The girl on the phone seemed a bit confused as to whether a previous trial member could go through the same routine again. Anyway seemingly you can after a year has lapsed.Now to the start of this week, a recorded delivery to be signed for was received by me on Monday from CLC stating that I had won (yes Won)a £4000 timeshare holiday that I had entered through http://www.activeyou.co.uk On this occasion I did enter a competition so I decide to call.An 0800 No in the Costa Del Sol and spoke with Jackie (Nice Girl) At the start she had said that the initial holiday would have to be in Spain but I have had this changed to Duchally.I found that when I was a trial member the difficulties with dates, unit type and even choice of country was geared for full time members (Informed by CLC rep)so I was at a disadvantage.I now understand that this new procedure of notification involves management fees but these can be cancelled without penalty.Does anyone have experience this or have any knowledge of what the fees are? http://www.azuredestinations.com is the brochure I received.Anyway Duchally awaites in the New Year.Thanks.

Got a call from them today. Nice sounding people, and I can see why many get sucked in. I thought this typ of thing had been outlawed! Why can’t this inciduous marketing be banned? We will not be going.

Hi, we just got the ‘call’ today of our holiday ‘prize’. The sales pitch went a bit flat when I disclosed that we had previously attended a meeting but didn’t take the holiday. Was tempted to go along just for the cheap holiday, but if you check out the internet theres loads of cheapies about and no hassle to endure. Definately going to give this one a miss.

Hello, got the ‘call’ yesterday from Club La Costa saying I had ‘won’ a free holiday. Thought you don’t get anything for free these days and thankfully Googled their name and found this site. Will steer well clear of them. Thanks for all the input on this blog.

Recently back from clc promotional holiday, the presentation was unpleasant last over 3 hours , there were two staff involved the first a young local collects you from your apartment and takes you for a complimentary breakfast in our case. He is very friendly , part of ploy talks to you for over a hour about everything makes you feel relaxed, then you are taken to another room for sales staff asked to fill in questionnaire about how often you go on holiday, desired locations. Then you are bombarded with information and eventually offered a time share until 2067 with £ 14,000 deposit and £559 annual charge, which is eventually brought down to trail
membership for 3 Years and approx 6-7 holidays for £3000+ .

I know people who have gone for this option and made the most of it if you have the time it’s great and bearing in mind total costs including flights etc, if you turn this down and by now there is a senior sales lady from uk who appears to be working in the room buy conveniently and pre planned joins in the hard sales tatic.Yes if you say no they do make you feel inferior and guilty for coming on the
promotional holiday which will ruin that day and effect you impression , but if you
are strong minded won’t effect your holiday. They still shook our hands , as we left
the room we heard then aggressively ripping the notes with numerous calculations
they had produced for us.

Hello
had a call today saying I had won a free holiday for 4 people but only had to pay £29 per person taxes. SO I asked if it is free, why do I have to pay anything? I was asked my age and if I was married and own my own home. It all sounded fake to me. I was then put through to another lady and hung up before the connection was made. They then called back saying sorry we were dissconnected. I replied no we were not I actually hung up as I do not want a time share. I then put phone down before they could reply.

I just knew something was not right with this so called free holiday from the start. I googled the company name straight after and found this page. I would never pay for holidays years in advance as things change and circumstances change and due to the internet you can pick up bargain holidays now and shop around with ease and keep your savings in your bank until you want a holiday. You can get some lovely good quality hotels and flights now online at great prices. I do not want to be tied down with timeshare.

Same thing happen with me.I got call and i need to attend exibition on sunday. I googled on internet,found this page.For sure I am not going.
The different thing happend about me is that they called me last year as well but some how we managed to avoide but this year same people came .so we desided ..ok lets try this year.but after reading this article…..no way..Thanks Mike

I had a call yesterday and was very excited to hear I had ‘won’ a free holiday for 4 to either Southern Spain or The Canary Islands. When I asked why I had won, the caller said I had completed a questionnaire in Alicante airport. (It didn’t register until a while later that I last visited Alicante airport in 2009!)Anyway, having verified that I was a UK homeowner with a partner, aged between 30 and 65 and had a joint income of more that £30k, the caller proceeded to chat to me about my prize for over 20 minutes. And all I had to do was go along to a presentation at a local hotel for a couple of hours. All sounded fine. Came off the phone and thought about the offer rationally, chatted it over with my husband and then Googled Club La Costa and ended up here. Have always had the opinion that you don’t get anything for nothing in this life and if it sounds to good to be true….it is. Needless to say, even though CLC think I fit the criteria of someone who would buy into a holiday cub….they are very very wrong. So thanks to the postings on here, I will not be attending the presentation. You live and learn!

Ditto, ditto, ditto.

I like to think I’m a sensible person and always just put the phone down and say I don’t have time with things like this. But for some reason I listened to the whole lot when they called me with news of my ‘free luxury holiday’ 20 minutes ago.

I don’t think I would have gone to the presentation on Sunday, but a quick Google and now I definitely won’t.

Thanks for sharing your stories about CLC. Very helpful in making me listen to the sensible voice in my head which temporarily got drowned out by the desire for some winter sun!

John’s experience (Aug 5th) is a carbon copy of ours (June 28th) friendly young local at first for the breakfast, then when you get to the room for the questionnaire the woman ‘working’ in the background who soon becomes involved & is the senior sales figure.Ours came over saying ‘is there a problem?’ at the first sign of a raised voice.Obviously this & the inability to hear the word NO are standard working practise.How desperate must they be for sales though to keep operating this way.Maybe there’s trouble in paradise?

well apart from the current world credit crisis and the screwed up euro, CLC have alway practiced like this, ploy is to embarras / shame you into signing on the dotted line. takes willpower to refuse so well done you, if anyone wanted to join you can buy points on the internet for a fraction of the cost they try to sell you at boot camp, the only draw back is the maintenance fees are still daylight robbery!!!

best bet is to give it all a miss and book last minute jollies, no commitment there.

[...] seems only yesterday (almost 2 years in reality) that I wrote an article detailing my experiences with Club La Costa, the company who ring you up to tell you that you have [...]

Amazing, after almost 2 years I have again received the phone call telling me that I have won a free holiday! You’d have thought they would have got the hint the last time, new voice but the same old patter.

Needless to say, I turned them down on their offer!

Hi – We filled a questionaire in at teh airport a few weeks ago and then got a call to say congratualtions you have WON a holiday (definelty won) they invited us to some preesntaion to collect our tickets and it was a neighbour who told me it was probably a time share company which is what got me on google. So i will spend my own £400 on a cheap package deal where i can relax and not have to deal with uptight sales people all week! It is really bad though – suprosed some one hasnt taken them to court over it – if i was their compeition i would have done that by now!!

Just returned from club costa turkey – booked it on the internet about 3 weeks ago and paid £3300 B&B for 2 weeks 3 adults + 1 child in August, we had no idea it was a timeshare resort, nice enough place but as we only paid £600 per week for the accomodation (2bed 1 bath) cant see why anyone would bother to sign up. Didnt get hassled at all by the staff, only got some astounded looks from other geust when we said we wernt members and what we paid for the holiday, dont buy points just book your holiday direct save you 14k

Living the dream
What a great page and found it while totally p&*(&d off at Club La Costa on the costa del sol.
Friends of ours very kindly gave our phone number to club la costa after they had bought last year , needless to say we were totally bombarded with calls and after speaking to our friends who had told us of there luxury accommodation and fantastic facilities we went for it and am there now.
First impressions on arrival this is not five star the reception area was not very nice then room allocation 539 Marina del ray horrible apartment over looking a busy road. We were given wait for it key access to two pools but once inside the pool area the pool was horrible small and dated. The facilities we are in are three star at best and no better than any apartments you may get on a package holiday. Back to the start we I agreed to come I was assured we would be in the best accommodation club la costa have with facilities second to none well that was a joke as for facilities it had none.
I first complained to reception for a room change to the accommodation I was promised and they phone the office were I was passed on to a lady who point blank told us there was no better accommodation at club la costa when I asked about the jacuzzi on the balcony I was told no accommodation had that facility.
I was not happy with the response and asked to meet a club rep for a face to face meeting and was told no one was available on Site.
I emailed the sales rep Judy who said she would move us and this still has not happened after three days. I asked her to play back her tapes of our phone call and refer to living the dream.
I am complaining on a daily basis and emailing Judy who is getting as peed of as me and have sent her this link.
We are going for our long awaited tour in the morning , what poor rep will want us!
Will update you on the tour and presentation in due course
Thanks for this page don’t believe a word these con artists say
John

Thanks for your comment’s John, you’re the first commenter to be posting while actually at one of the CLC resorts; I look forward to hearing your thoughts as your ‘holiday’ continues…

Hi Mike
Went for our presentation Thursday and were picked up by our rep at our room at 9.30 prompt and taken for breakfast.
I explained my problem with the accommodation and lack of response I was given when showing my disapproval at the level of accommodation to our rep Julie who said she would get answers.
On arrival at breakfast we were met by one of her managers who came and sat down to gauge our actuall interest in making a decision on the spot , so she was bluntly told that unless all my questions were answered then the chance of any purchase was nill the manager said she would seek answers but I was not holding my breath as thisblot tell you what they think you want to hear.
From breakfast we were taken to the exhibition centre for the start of our presentation and on sitting down with Julie were joined by yet another manager to guess what log us on to the computer something Julie must not have been capable of doing, again I had a go at the new manager who assured me that NIgel head of sales had asked to listen to the tapes at the time we were promised the best accommodation club la costa had to offer.
So the presentation goes like this we fill out our holiday plans for the next ten years they then gauge how much they can save you if you buy in to them looks great for them on paper they then show you all there resorts at least four times and they think you enjoy it I told her aftrer looking at the Scotland venue I had had enough looking fourth time.
Using test closes all the time they then moved on to R C I and the benefits of that all in all we had now spent four and a half hours and not seen the accommodation
On offer. They the took us to the Santa cruise suites and some very nice apartments it was a bit like well this is what you could have had if you were a member..
We then moved back to the exhibition centre for the big hard close met by yet another manager Julie needed more help with the figures
The deal on offer was temporary membership for three years at £3995 for six holidays the first that was to be taken back here I wonder why well it’s for yet another six hours to upgrade you to gold membership. I asked if I bought would I have to attend a presentation and the manager said no! Lie as you do have to.
The deal was offered by barclays finance at 199 for 24months.
I was asked to buy and refused when asked why I said no one has answerednmy questions or earlier complaints.
Yet another manager came across and tried to close the deal at this time I told him I wanted an appology from the company and left the room with my wife.
One hour later Julie came to our room and tried to save the deal she was clutching some emails in her hand and tried to convince me they were taking my complaints seriously but she had not read the emails.
The first one was from MIchelle who I had spoken to on the Monday at the resort and made my initial complaint to her, in her response she had mentioned that if we were not upgraded we may move out.
She said it’s a pity Mr Kilmartin is not checking out as he has already started talking to other customers !
I will send you the emails Mike so you can publish them direct.
All the best
And remember buyer be ware at club la costa
Jk

Why are these people still allowed to operate in departure lounges at airports? The scam begins just as you are about to embark. Do not do their silly survey, put up with their rudeness when you refuse to give them your details. If only this could be stamped out at source it would stop the misery later on down the line.

CLC manager to airport manager, “can my reps talk to your passengers If we pay you £200 per day

Airport manager “when can you start?”

Dave, what can I respond with, aside from I think you have hit the nail on the head; it’s not just the likes of CLC who should be accountable for this kind of behaviour but also the people who provide them with the mechanism to do what they wish…

Greed needs feeding, the more greed the more feeding, unfortunatley we are viewed as food for this animal, we need to sour the milk by claiming we have no money, so they move on to the next meal.

Have just returned from threnython manor had a lovely trip although the lodge we were put into the first night was very dated we complained and were put into a members lodge the next day .survived the presentation and decided to buy the trial membership .now that we have read your comment we are a bit nervous that after we have booked our prelude week we may not have a good choice of dates to choose from , as my husband needs to book holidays last minute due to business commitments.having second thoughts still have time to cancel confused can someone help thank you

the CLC scheme does not work with last minute booking unless you are not fussy, suggest if you can cancel you do immediatley. only rooms left last minute are the ones no one wants so would be a waste of money…good luck.

If you take time to read all the posts you will now realise this investment is at the bottom of the league, get out if you can.

I am now a little worried. We have just come back from CLC in Costa Del Sol where we had won the cheap holiday. This was after a very late flight back from Alicante earlier in the year when I was accosted by some rep from CLC who filled the form in for me (as I told him I couldn’t be bothered doing it). Obviously this cheap holiday came at a cost as we had to attend a presentation. In fact we had to attend 2 presentations. We have two kids 7 and 5 and the youngest was sick whilst we attended our first presentation (all over their reception floor!) Reluctantly they “allowed” us to leave early but we had to come back later in the week to attend again. So on attempt two, 3+ hours later we were shown around a lovely apartment with a Jacuzzi on the balcony and were assured that this is the type of accomodation we would be guaranteed every time we came away from now on. I admit I was taken in by this and we signed up for the £3995 trial membership. This is a good trick they use as the full price was £15995 and there was no way that we would have paid that at this point. We have a finance deal with Hitachi at 0% over 1 year but I am now thinking of cancelling, we have 14 days cooling off period so we can cancel without getting into any legal difficulties. We have had great holidays with the kids for 7 years without having any CLC involvement and I’m guessing there will now be many more!

the £3995 trial is for 3 years? thats £1000 per annum, what do you get for this? one, two four six weeks per year? then flights and tranfers on top I think the vast majority of advice on the internet is stay clear, better deals with no tie ins are a plenty on the internet, your call.

All cancelled with no issues and no phone calls asking why (so far), thus no out of pocket expense. Cheers for this blog Mike, saved this naive chap from wasting a small fortune

fantastic, lets hope all goes well. so now you can consider future options without any pressure, see how you feel about your experience in say 3 months, see if you would do it again

You are doing some great work here, it is wonderful to see the ‘narrow escapes’ safe and sound, a good website indeed, thank you.

More good news, I have just arrived back from Alicante and not a Club La Costa tout in sight. Could be that the French air traffic controllers are on strike and they decided not to bother. I hope it is because I wrote a letter exposing them to the Costa Blanca News. I live in hope!

just seen this on the CLC member forum http://www.clcmembers.co.uk, these are current owners

bob_barrows : (21 October 2011 – 07:44 PM) Martini look here…..http://forum.holidaywatchdog.com/itra-t105819-Page-5.html. if it smells like one it probably is one.a fish I mean

Martini : (21 October 2011 – 05:02 PM) While I’m here I have just recieved my maintenence for next year £1400, getting a bit expensive so if anyone is looking to increase or you know someone who wants to join the club cheap get in touch please as i think i will be walking away next year

Martini : (21 October 2011 – 04:57 PM) Hi all, last week I had a guy from International Timeshare Refund Action ringing me about gatting back some of the fees but checkuing on various websites seems to be a way of extracting more money from us. I didn;t go to the meeting in Chester and wondered if anyone else has heard of these.

now I have no axe to grind, none CLC owner, never been scammed by them so how come when I google CLC I have never found a positive comment about them?

Say’s quite a lot

I was pressurised into signing the points system whilst on the 3 year trial membership. What a mistake. I Nearly died in April 2011 and we had to cancel our week to Malaga with Club La Costa. My wife phoned them 2 days after I had died and been recovered by heart specialist to be told I was very poorley and would not be going abroad for a number of years. Insult 1. My wife when cancelling our booked holiday was told quite bluntly ” cancelling at this late notice means you lose your points” Insult 2 . I was made to pay 2 years maintenance af around 2K for the pleasure of keeping some gardens and apartments in Spain very pretty for some lucky family but not me due to my medical condition and travel restrictions. Insult 3. the “Only” holiday available to my family was a canal boat in Derby. We had to pay £150.00 for servicing and running of the barge on top of my 1,000.00 points. so in effect in the last year for the cost of maintenance and finance payments We got a week in Derby for 3.5K “Great value, family fun” !!!!! I have stopped my finance payments I have received a bill for next years maintenance for another 900 Euros and I am not going to pay. I will go to court and prison possibly but will they care then no way. I recently visited the reps who sold us the trial membership at trevenson Manor in Cornwall, they said and I quote ” this is very upsetting and we are embarrassed. We take these things personally and we will help look into this”. I received a call from one of the senior team telling me they will try to help with future bookings for me and my family, but have I tried the cash for introduction scheme ?

Oh yes I will tell all my friends what a great deal this is ?? you have got to be joking. Who is with me in bringing this sham of a company to account for what they have and are doing ?

Good Hunting and in future I will just say no to all cold calls regarding anything.

Let me tell you a different side to it all…. have just spent 4 lovely days at Treyton Manor Cornwall, attended the presentation and chose not to join. However all was not a happy ending, by accident I left behind a bag of camping equipment worth £300. I rang within hours of arriving home and was disappointed with CLC response. My room was cleaned by two maids who cannot remember finding a ten kilo bag of brand new camping equip, can’t even remember throwing said bag of brand new equip away. However luckily for me the police weren’t as disinterested and are now investigating it as a burglary. See if they get the same disinterested response as I did…… I think not.

just back from a pleasant weekend at Trenyton Manor in Cornwall for our presentation weekend. Whilst we had a lovely weekend i do feel a little robbed of the 6hrs plus that where spent at our presentation as i was led to beleive that it would only be a couple of hours!!
We had a very difficult presentation, while i think the concept is a good idea and holidays until 2067 at a very reasonable price, in real terms its just not an option, who realistically will be able to holiday for the next 55 years? My partner was certainly impressed and was ready to sign up, i on the other hand had a bad feeling and wasnt prepared too. Our rep have kindly written down all the benefits in big letters on paper and underlined all the key points ( his key points) my valid questions, while being pointed out as valid, had been quickly dismissed and the conversation had moved on….our rep was even kind enough to point out how much a month he paid for his membershiip and the great holidays his family enjoyed. Then the hard sell began, i felt like a hunted animal, singled out for the kill and worked on by the pack, if my partner could see the benefits why couldnt i? i concedeed and said its his money so if he wants to sign then thats fine. Smiles and all friends again!! For this signature we where lucky to be upgraded to one of the lodges for the rest of our stay and a bottle of champagne to celebrate. The lodge was beautiful, although a little shabby in places and the extra space allowed me to sit up till 3am in the morning ( whilst my partner slept)with our paperwork and read the small print that had been quickly glossed over and to actually work out the costs for our holidays over the next 3 years. This morning our rep popped over to wish us a safe journey and hopes of seeing us again in the future CONCLUSION…… membership cancelled…………..how i wished to tell the smary little toad that this morning i had managed to talk some sense into my partner and that his large comission bonus from us would not be appearing in his pay packet this month!!! It may have been a niggling doubt but by the time i’d worked out the figures i definately knew that there is no such thing as a free holiday or as CLC point out a free week every year till 2057
DO NOT BE SUCKED IN

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