WorldMark by Wyndham review: Dishonest sales practice 4

On June 13, 2022 my wife and I attended a "training session" to understand the new offering called "Travel Up" . The session of course was not about training, it was their standard sales pitch, this time touting the benefits of the conversion to Travel and Leisure. We foolishly stayed to hear the info trying to be skeptical knowing that their sales technique is high pressure and light on honesty. Our sales agent was Rebecca Bellamy and her supervisor was Danny Falcon if those are real names.

We listened to probably an hour of word salad about how Travel Up(the big benefit of the company conversion to Travel and Leisure) would increase the value of our points. They assured us(several times) the Travel Up benefit would give us access to a different website(www.travelup.com) which offered Worldmark properties with a different "points per night" chart that required only 1/3 the points for each property compared to the chart on the standard Worldmark by Wyndham website(https://worldmark.wyndhamdestinations.com). They even referred to this new "magic" chart as offering a "triple play". Unfortunately we believed them.

We argued over how much of an additional investment it would take take to gain access to Travel Up and eventually bought 7000 more points for $17,000. After signing all the docs and paying up(via a recorded video call) we received a memory stick with our copy of all the documents and a promise that a "few" updated documents specific to our purchase would be emailed shortly.

We eventually learned that the description of Travel Up was a blatant lie and no relevant documents appeared as of now, 9 months later. The memory stick only contained boilerplate documents like Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws etc. nothing referencing our purchase or explaining what Travel Up was. We were told our access to the Travel Up website required an IT call which would happen in a few weeks, but we never got contacted and so about a month later we inquired and got in contact with the Travel Up IT folks and established our access to the website. We studied the website and contacted their support to finally learn that Travel Up has no connection what so ever with Worldmark points.

This seemed like a new low even for Worldmark so we contacted them directly, then attended a "training session" on how to use Travel UP. This was of course only a sales presentation and when time for questions came we asked about how to use Travel Up, but the sales rep had never heard of such a thing as "Triple Play" or the alternate points per night chart supposedly in Travel Up. They suggested that those "crazy sales guys" in Vegas were known to be a little fast and loose so we should file a complaint.

We did file a complaint in November 2022 through owner support. We did get a call from John W, an Owner Strategy Specialist at Worldmark. We explained the above and he also commented that there was no such thing as Triple Play and that some sales reps go a little overboard selling points. He forwarded our issue to Paul Chavez, Sr. Sales Experience Specialist, Owner Strategy.

An email from Paul requested that we give him 3 times/dates that he could contact us which we did, but never got a confirmation that he would call and he never did. In fact we sent available times on Dec 21, Jan 12, Feb 8, Feb 14 and Mar 9, but none of those were responded to with confirmation or phone call. I did receive one phone call from Paul at a time we had not suggested which was a poor time since I was driving and could not talk nor was my wife available to talk or join a conference. We suggested times again on Mar 11 with no response and finally on Mar 15 I was able to talk with Paul even though again we had not offered this time as available.

I expected to have a chance to discuss the problem and possibly come to an agreement on what might be a fair resolution, maybe even an UNFAIR resolution like some some compensation for misleading(to be kind) sales technique. What I heard instead was "we have reviewed your case and the video tapes and rejected your request to cancel the sale". The video conversation in question I presume was the recorded conference call which did NOT include any of the discussions on the benefits of Travel Up, but simply; yes we want to buy points in order to access Travel Up and here is our signature and payment. Paul promised an email with written statement about their decision(maybe including details) would be sent very soon. It is now a week later and no email has arrived.

My opinion is that the sales reps made up whatever they needed to in order to make a sale regardless of the accuracy. It seems like the company does not want any evidence of that therefore nothing written by the company reps is allowed to be taken from any presentation, no documentation even of the transaction is provided, and the company insists on a recording of the formal sale, but not any of the sales pitch.