Capital Vacations / Capital Resorts Group review: Membership

My husband and I were pressured into buying a Capital Vacations membership last November. We attended the presentation because it was a required part of a discounted stay at the Calypso Cay resort

in Orlando, FL, which I "won" off Groupon.

We never intended to purchase anything. We were told we'd be able to rent out essentially the lodging options available to us to others to make money off the timeshare. This was a huge selling point for us. We didn't think that the ability to earn income off a timeshare existed.

The salesman literally said to us that he has clients that allow family and friends to use their timeshare, any location, and make "a bunch of money" (quote). This just cannot be true. Upon getting home, and after finally doing our research on the BBB website and seeing how many people were complaining about the lack of availability, we made some test bookings, and the availability was all over the place and seriously inadequate. As a 2-person family, we struggled to find availability within a reasonable time frame at multiple US and European locations.

Also, you can only book in 3-5-7 day increments. It would be pretty much impossible to "rent" this out. We did not realize that a credit card was being opened in my name, nor that my credit would be so negatively impacted because we were told MULTIPLE times that the credit check was just a soft check

and that it was just to ensure approval for the $5K down that we didn't owe that day (it was NOT clear to me that a credit card was being opened). I asked multiple times and was very uncomfortable with my credit being checked at all.

I would not have agreed had I known that a credit card was being opened and that it would be a hard check against my credit. My credit ended up dropping about 45 points. It was absolutely terrible. We were led to believe this ownership would be more cost-effective and allow us to travel more

frequently than if we were just traveling on our own without it.

The salesman spent more than an hour breaking down how much $ we had spent on travel over the past few years and really sold it to us that this would be a good financial decision, including that we'd be building equity as owners. That's all lies. We literally cannot afford for this to increase in price at all, and we've since learned that the annual maintenance fee will go up every year, likely by more than 1%. That's really scary for us because we cannot afford it now without being able to earn income off it, and we have a baby on the way.

More than one salesperson pressured us. We had a primary salesperson, Arthur Grimes, and then we had the Sales Manager, Andris Vasquez, come over to push the sale harder - and mainly push me harder because I was really digging in my heels about the credit situation, which Arthur went and checked with Andris about, then they both came back and reassured me it would just be a soft check (LIE). Andris kept pushing this 9/11 story on us about how he almost died, just so happened not to be there that day, etc., and basically how that gave him the epiphany that you can't take life for granted. We were pressured to stay, even though I kept saying I was very hungry and wanted to leave.

We were there for four hours when prior to attending, we were told it would only take at most two hours. To assuage me, they kept pushing food on us that I kept saying I didn't want. Andris, as a final push, offered us a $250 gift card, which we accepted, as we had already been through all the previous points I made, were exhausted, and unfortunately chose to believe what the salesperson, Arthur, told us. We were completely taken advantage of and have been stonewalled at every attempt to get out of this sham of a contract.

The company will not take any accountability for any of the lies, and they continue to try to bleed money from us at every turn. Every person we've talked to has been rude and blamed us for the situation.

This has been so stressful, especially going through it pregnant and during one of the worst economies we've had in decades. What we thought was going to be an investment in our family's future has been a financial nightmare that could bankrupt us.