ROYAL GOAN BEACH CLUB review: Time share

I completely agree with the members who have posted scam by this company ( Royal Goan Beach Club) owned by a person who is a foreigner from UK and is running his business in India ( Hopefully legally).We fell into the trap more then I think about 15-16 years ago and are on sufferers list.The modus operandi was the same at that time.We received a phone call from one of their marketing man, way back in 1998 to attend one of the sessions in Delhi and we will get one fr holiday in Goa for free without any strings attached.Like fools we fell into the trap and I along with my wife ( they insist that we both have to attend this) went to a rented place by them for this purpose only .The condition was to listen to their presentation and at the end of one hr session we will be offered a free holiday, no strings attached.So far so good, we sat patiently while the executive explained this new concept ( at that time) of buying a holiday week and and spend one week in apartment owned by you without any expense.The same apartment is sold to 51 others who own one week in a year.Anyway this looked wonderful and tempting since we were given free holiday vouchers to visit Goa .We had to only spend for our tickets and everything else was free.Since no one asked us anything else barring taking our phone no we were on the top of the world to receive this free holiday in Goa.

We packed our bags next month itself and off to Goa.We were welcomed in one of their resorts in South Goa, We were happy since no one asked us to pay any money.( till then we were non believers of the dictum that nothing comes for free specially in India )and if you believe we are still paying year after year for that one mistake and foolish act of ours but now have reached a point go giving up paying, fully knowing that all money paid so far will go down the drain since they are looking for an excuse to declare us defaulters and thereby cancel our membership to their advantage I will explain late how and why)

But first please read what happened next- we had very quite first day roamed around the beaches and felt very happy and proud about ourselves having won this free holiday.In the evening we were in the swimming pool when a very polite young man came and asked us how we are feeling and we spoke our heart that we are having great time and that too free of cost.He thanked us and vey politely asked us that someone from the company want time to meet us tomorrow so he fixed time for us.We were taken into their sales office and a very young and enthusiastic sales person introduced to us and we were asked to wait for his boss who finally arrived and took out a piece of paper and started explaining the benefits etc of owing membership.We went with the mind that no matter what we will not buy their membership ( we were told previous day by a couple staying there that their hit rate is 100%.The man kept of offering discount after discount and finally impressed upon us that it is a life time offer and if we don't by it today we are going to miss this opportunity for life.Twice we got up to leave and we were stopped with more free bees and offers till finally we gave in.The trick which worked that we had to decide then and there only even though we were insisting on going home and decide but to our bad luck we gave in ( i don't thing there was any other option since the young lads started becoming quite aggressive obliquely pointing to our acceptance of free stay.)

WE were given a contract of ownership of red season and later came to know there most weeks are marked red barring 1 or two rainy months.) Since they has resorts in Goa only we were told to buy separate RCI membership to exchange our high value red season week with other resorts members of RCI ( which never worked for us and we gave up our RCI membership after payments of 2-3 years.Since then we have been paying our dues annually which have gone up from 6000 in 1998 to about 25000 now.

During these 16-17 years of our membership we have availed their hospitality but have come back anguished for one reason or other.The maintenance of their apartment is so bad in some of the resorts particularly one in North Goa that we had to fight for a better room since there was seapage and fungus on the walls.Once we tried to book week during Christmas and new year and we were told that this is prime week and all resorts are already booked.When this happened no of times we had to write to Hutinson and Hutinson, their lawyer and arbitrator based in London and to our surprise our request for christmas week was immediately met with but with a caveat that we can't book this prime week for another 3 years.During our stay we talked to some of the guest and surprised to know that they were non members and they paid more then 50, 000 to buy this holiday.I don't know how being a non member they could get holiday week on payment of huge sum.

Another shocker we received during one of our stay at Haathi Mahal when we were approached by a sales guy to meet him in the office.We were told that company is no longer making members like us with a 99 years lease any more where are we are right ful owners of the apartment for 99 years.Instead of that they are now making new members on a point system where you don't own an apartment but earn few points every year and can convert them into holidays and can bank these points with company like our owned week.Only caveat is that the points also expire like the initialised are certain period of time and this system is only for 25 years.We were offered to convert our ownership to this point system for obvious reasons. WE did not want to loose our ownership for the apartment and secondly we were asked to shell out huge amount in conversion charges for this. we kept refusing and he kept convincing us despereately and in the end when we totally refused to give in he started became abusive and started insulting us.We left their marketing office and gave a written complaint against him to the management. After this incident we were very disheartened and have stopped availing holidays.Our weeks are being expired year by year and we have in total paid huge amount to the company in the name of management charges.We are at a point now that we want to stop paying and the company will fore feight our week ownership and will trap someone else by selling this into new system of points which we find is a new way of coning people.

There are a few questions which come to our mind and despite raising them have not come up with any satisfactory answer.

1;One of the reasons we got trapped into this affair initially is that we were told that we will be able to rent our week with their help to any one we want and company will assist us in this.This way we will be able to recover our management charges which we pay every year.But this never happened and the reasons are not very difficult to foresee.During one of the visits to the resort we noticed that there are about 70-80 % foreigners staying there at any given time.They are mostly from UK.Now this is too much of a coincidence that owner of this company is also from UK.On few discreet inquiries we found that they are not members obviously and they have paid money to avail this holiday.Now there is so much of jargon of companies - first prestige the royal and then karma etc, so many names that it is very difficult to trace where in which name payments are received.On top of which they have a hotel unit at Haathi Mahal which can and I suspect is used to disguise to receive the payments.after all the unutilised week surrendered by us to the company after paying annual dues is utilised by the company in some way.For this reason I suspect despite advertising a number of times internationally we have have never been able to rent our week even in UK with a very low quoted price, even though most of the foreign clients coming to Royal Goan are from there.

2 This suspicion becomes stronger with the fact that despite a court order in 2010 in favour of a member who went to the court against the company, to call a annual general body meeting and share the audited accounts with members the company has failed to do so.This order I believe is applicable to the old members who own the week and not to the point system members who don't own anything legally and hence company, s keenness to convert old ownership into the point system and make some extra money.

Regards

Dr Lokesh Kumar