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Updated by user Nov 07, 2013

Update:

Since the time of this post we have discovered that the NC Attorney Generals Office has received over 430 complaints against Festiva. We have also filed a complaint with the BBB.

However, since we have now hired an attorney Festiva will not respond to the complaint. No surprise there. Please, if you are going through the same situation we are send a letter to the BBB and to the Attroney Generals office in NC. The headquarters for Festiva is in Asheville, NC.

You can also write a letter to the AG of your own state. I feel that until the AG gets involved they will continue to use deceptive business practices in order to get customers.

Original review posted by user Sep 10, 2013

In 2011 my grandparents deeded their set and paid for week (worth $15,000) in Banner Elk to my husband and I as a wedding gift. My family has been traveling to the Blue Ridge Village in Banner Elk since I was a girl and so I was very excited about the gift. Upon arriving we knew that there might be paperwork that would need to be signed in order to finalize the transfer and we had wanted to talk to the staff about a bill that we had received for maintenance fees.

We spoke with John Paul โ€œJPโ€ about what would be the best option for us. We were told by him that in order to avoid maintenance fees we would need to switch over to the points system. He further explained to us that Festiva Resorts as a whole was trying to do away with deeded weeks and trying to move everyone to points. He told us that it would become very difficult for us to get available weeks (even though our week was deeded and designated.)

JP also explained to us about the โ€œprosโ€ of switching from our deeded and PAID FOR week to points and being able to use the travel adventure club. We were told that we not only had to trade in our deed, but also purchase over $5,500 worth of points. We would in exchange receive over 6,000 points that could be used for any travel.

At the time my husband and I were in the process of adopting a special needs child from Russia and the travel cost were incredibly expensive. I specifically asked if our points could be converted to pay for our plane tickets and he said, โ€œyes of course!โ€ I pressed him even further on the issue and asked if there was any catch to that. I asked if there was a cap on how much we could use at a time or any rules and his response was to think of the points like dollar bills. So, I explained even further that our tickets weโ€™re $2,000 each and so therefore I could take the travel points and convert them to pay for our entire flight. He told me that was exactly right. He flat out lied. If he had told us the truth to begin with we would never have signed with your company. It was an absolutely deceitful business practice.

Upon returning home it took MONTHS just for us to receive our passcodes to the travel site. We only received them after calling for months on end to request them. Once I had them we not only found out that we could not use the points to pay for our trip, but we were also being forced to pay maintenance fees! In the midst of our very expensive adoption we have had to battle with Festiva continually about new โ€œfeesโ€ that were somehow and magically overlooked by the company and now we have to pay them. It is deceit of the worst kind.

After speaking with our family attorney I wrote a letter to Festivaโ€™s legal department with my issues listed above. I proposed to Festiva that they could keep the deed to the timeshare, they could keep the points, they could even keep the money we have paid out thus far. In exchange we wished to be released from our mortgage contract and any further monetary obligation we had to their company because of the lies we were told.

I got a blanket letter back from a legal compliance coordinator, Angela Norville, telling me that there was nothing they could do. Furthermore from several of her incorrect statements in her letter it was clear that she had not done any background work.

We have also been informed that our only option (according to Festiva) is to hock their worthless points onto another unsuspecting person (which we would never do) or we can pay the remainder of our mortgage with them and then turn the points back over. The catch with turning your points back in is then they demand that you pay 2 yearsโ€™ worth of maintenance fees! Thatโ€™s $2,500 more!!!

Once again we went back to calling costumer services representatives. The thing with Festiva is, every time you talk with someone they tell you something completely different from the previous agent.

However, after speaking with a lady from their Banner Elk location I have learned an additional piece of information. Shortly after we were tricked into our contract with Festiva the manger that oversaw our contract was fired from Banner Elk for none other than lying to customers in order to make a sale! They were also encouraging and coaching their employs to lie as well. This is no surprise to us or the countless others they lied to. Ironic though, that the company would fire the manger but not do anything for the customers they lied to!!!

In closing, I am saddened by what Festiva has chosen to do. Festivaโ€™s business has been built on deceit and fraud of its customers for far too long. My husband and I will continue to fight this company on this until we come to a resolution.

Monetary Loss: $20000.

Location: Jackson, Tennessee

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Guest

I live in Canada and we own a week at the Atrium in St Marten. I would like to know if we can get in on any lawsuits.

I tried to bank my floating week and they told me that there is no inventory available and there is nothing I can do.

What a joke. Paid my maintenance fees and now I can't even get the points for it.

Guest

Does anyone know of a class action law suit against this horrible company?

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-815998

I would like to join if anyone has one started. Please contact your State Attorney General's Office.

Guest

you *** *** people. all sales people lie. don't believe anything they say and only half of what is written.

Guest

I bought a pkg with Festiva that is a points system while in Branson a couple of years ago. We used the free trip to Florida and recently booked a trip for 4 nights to Myrtle Beach.

There we were offered 60.00 to attend an update on what was going on with Festiva. Chris Miracle, whose name I now see mentioned as one of the biggest liars, told us that our 3000 point pkg would never be enough to get us trips except maybe in December. He told us he was recording everything said and then proceeded to fill out a survey, asking us if we were happy etc....I said I felt like we were lied to on several points after we really had time to look it all over, very misleading things were said to us in Branson. Chris got all emotional and acted like we were really upsetting him and apologized at one point.

Anytime I tried to tell him simply that this or that was not as we were told he would get defensive and all emotional and say that he was just trying to help and agreed that it must have been deceptive and he was going to call someone on our behalf. He kept saying that he could see that I wore my heart on my sleeve just like him and then he would get up and leave 2-3 times and come back saying there was nothing he could do for us. Finally, after his third time leaving us to "make a call" he said that he was actually the regional manager and he would extend an offer for 6000 points one more time to us graciously so we would have enough points to REALLY have nice trips and exchanges so we could go many places anytime of the year. Plus it would be more attractive if we wanted to market it through a broker.

He said our original contract was not a good one and wouldn't get us trips except maybe in December. He teared up and said that he had to do what was right for us cuz he had God to answer to and he was going against the company policy, risking his job etc... to give us this good deal. The maintenance fees would be given back to us in the form of credits we could spend on travel and all sorts of things.

Tomorrow is our last day to cancel and I decided two days ago to cancel.

This great deal will cost us another 6,500 and our maintenance fees will increase due to our increased points. Wish I had never signed in the beginning.

So much for the Christian based philosophy. Would love to have this monkey off my back.

Guest

Go to Asheville. WE also had been lied to when we traded our Peppertree week in Atlantic Beach NC for points.

I did talk to the NC State Attorney General and they have had a lot of complaints about this organization and were actively investigating Festiva. This was 5 years ago, to fix my problem we drove to Asheville, found the company and spoke with a representative.

He fixed our problem after we explained what was told to us and that bonus points would be added to our account for purchasing the points, since then we have had a couple of good trips with them but I do not anticipate buying any more points or using their RTX system due to the prior experience. Good Luck

Guest

I am sorry that you got caught up in their lies I did too. But, I am glad to see that you are as I am going to continue to fight the company.

I have already filed a complaint with the NC consumer division of the NC Attorney General's Office. If nothing comes of that I will file a complaint with the better business bureau and also my United States Senator who has helped me before in different problems with a couple of other companies. I also owned a week at a Festiva Owned Resort. My late husband and I purchased the week on Cape Cod in MA in 1986 before they even finished building it.

It was frames when we went to see it. I like you traded my week for points and was also charged a purchase price which they said was the excess after the trade in equity. My week was paid for many years ago. I knew that a lot of resorts are going to points and the week since I bank it as I cannot get to Cape Cod at the time to use it anymore so when they said that they use developer inventory so that there is a greater amount of inventory I agreed.

It made my finances a little harder to manage but I did manage them that was in Nov 2012. The problem is that there is no vast developer inventory if it is it is in places that people will hardly go. The book says you can use roll over points anytime of year following the roll over yet there website says no a reservation on those points can be no more that 150 days that is approximately May. So you cannot have a reservation on say 2013 points that are left over from 2013 until at least May of 2014, I also was not told that in order to get a mid week or week end reservation it cannot be made more than 45 days in advance which means you probably will not get it.

Also a last minute which uses less points is 30 days or less and almost a certainty that you will not get it. They also have a couple of resorts one of which I had said if I traded my week I would like to go to no problem plenty of availability lie they do not own or manage the said resort in Lake Buena Vista. They say they own 39 resorts now yet their 2nd edition 2013 book shows only the same 28 resorts as was in the 2nd edition 2012 book their website shows only 23 resorts. One day after their blatant misrepresentation / fraudulent sales practices they are going to have more FAC members then they have inventory.

That is what I am worried about. Also I changed over because they said I would save money over RCI lie I am now paying much more than I did with RCI. Granted I must say the resort I did end up getting a reservation in only cost me 85.75 for the week.

No security fee, no exchange fee. But, I found out from their corporate office for the week I went there were only 10 units that they had control and authority to use.

Guest

contact the Attorney General in North Carolina What the rep told you what we call the Chris Miracle close he is the biggest liar in the group right along with Mike Stacey and Kenny Wintermote

Guest

My husband and I were roped into a presentation on our trip to Charleston this last week and thankfully we did not purchase. It seemed too good to be true.

They kept saying that it was no pressure and we would only have to say "no" once. Even after we told them that we had dinner reservations and were pressed for time, they continued to try and sell us the product. Once they realized that we were serious their demeanor changed drastically and they became very cold. We are so glad we didn't buy, especially after reading all of the negative reviews.

Good luck with your fight!!! Hope you can sock it to them!!

Guest

Just went to court against them call Carl Finley

Class action law suit attorney metairie la

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-718775

:cry Please post how court date went. I will be stopping payment on mine and going to court also, tired of never being able to use it 9 years used 2 times.

Festiva is doing nothing but ripping off people. Is there anyone opening a class action suit? If so I would love to jion it or maybe just seek out enough people to create my own suit.

Please post and keep me posted. Dennis from Illinois

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-718775

Skygirl, what were the results of your court case? Unfortunately you're part of a Joinder Lawsuit which is under state law.

So this lawsuit would only pertain to Louisiana residents.

So for everyone else who would like to be part of a Joinder Lawsuit against Festiva would need to contact their Attorney General (Consumer Protection Section) to file a complaint and hopefully there would be enough complaints to start a Joinder Lawsuit in your State of Residence. Virginia residents, please contact the Attorney General and file a complaint.

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