The Regent Vacation Club Bali scam
A vacation hotel timeshare kind of deal based on points being marketed heavily to tourists in Bali.
Is it a scam? Yes, in the sense that it is not what it is presented as.
How does it work?
The focus of the selling is on “bonus weeks” through rci and daelive. RCI is a scam and you can check pages and pages of complaints about them at consumersaffairs.com.
The “bonus weeks” scam runs like this:
The sales associate will show you a catalogue with hundreds, even thousands of 4 and 5 star hotels that are participating in “bonus weeks”. You can stay at these 5 star hotels for between $150-399 a week subject to availability. And that’s the kicker. Because even though the salesman has just shown you thousands of 5 star hotels you can stay in for between150-399 a week, none of those hotels will ever be available for this. It’s a pure fraud. Just ask the salesman to go online now and even find one single hotel room available for bonus weeks. Not one will ever be found. [Actually, there are some listings on the DAElive.com website for bonus weeks. Nothing like what is shown to you in the book the salesman presents though, and certainly nothing in Europe or the more economically developed countries. And of course without Regent Vacation Club this is all available to anyone for $59 per year by independently joining DAElive.com.]
Another sign of a scam is that the contract they want you to sign will say, that you agree to never cancel or ask for a refund and no refunds will ever be given. Why don’t you have them write into the contract you have up to 10 days to cancel or change your mind? They would never agree to this because they know that if you have time to check it out on the internet their little scam is over.
The legitmate part of the deal is that you are told you are buying 460 points a year to be used at one of 6 hotels for $6700. 460 points will get you approximately one week a year at their hotel. Since few people would pay that amount for one week a year that is not what the focus of the selling is on.
If you somehow got out of there with your free t-shirt congratulations. It’s a piece of crap and you will trash it but you got out cheaply. If your postcard says you won of of the other prizes it will be some worthless coupons.
If I saved you from bothering with these scammers send me a dollar or two. Paypal address: quietriotr@hotmail.com
Update: 23 March 2011
**** I think I was a bit extreme in calling RCI a scam. After doing some research it seems like you can save 10-20% on certain hotels. I have not seen any European hotels for $99-$399 per week.
The RCI weeks membership that you get with the Regent Vacation Club is available to anyone for $89 per year.
Here’s a link to pages of complaints about RCI:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/rci.html
**** The DAElive.com membership that comes with the Regent Vacation Club is available to anyone for $59 per year, first year $89.
**** Unless you just like to pay extreme prices for vacations I would still have to say Regent Vacation Club is a scam when you can get RCI and DAElive for $89 and $59 respectively per year.
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