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Re: Global Access thru Orange Lake Resorts (by Jean P.):

We own a 2 bedroom at Orange Lake West Village and upon checking in we were shepherded to another desk in reception where we were informed that there was a 15 minute maximum update for owners on benefits of Holiday Inn Club. They said that it was definately not timeshare We agreed to go on Tuesday at 8.30 am for breakfast - which turned out to be tea coffee and stodgy buns. We were suspicicious as the letter we had been given said it was timeshare - but we foolishly went.

We had about 1 hour with a lady who explained about the points system and took us on a tour - as she had only started three days previously, she could not answer some of our questions.

Then the hard sell started - where we were informed by another female saleswoman that our week was worthless as Holiday Inn had taken the resort out of RCI with whom we had exchanged several times with no problems.

We were then subjected to a hard sell - He said that we had to buy something to join the club and convert to points. Our unit was worth 159,000 points and if we came in low season or to a smaller unit we could have more weeks - He made many suggestions involving payment of around $10,000 for an extra 50,000 points + half a weeks maintenance - we said that this was far more than we wanted to pay - and after about 2 hours of pressure he got the message that we were being blackmailed into buying what we already owned and would like to join the club but did not want to buy anything.

We thought great, but then came along another person who apologised and said well you did know you were coming to a timeshare presentation and he was only doing his job trying to sell to you This person tried a different technique and made out that he was not selling timeshare but only entry into the points system - basically $5000 + $500 in extras just to join and buy 15,000 extra points.

Fortunately we went away for two days to think about the deal and returned two days later to check a few points. We asked many questions and signed documents supplied by him and completed the loan form - and paid t he deposit , We went into the legal deparment to finalise and sign the legal document and when asked if we were happy about eveything we asked the legal lady to confirm some responses we had just been given by the salesman.

Her answers were different on some topics - and alarm bells started ringing for her and us and it resulted in her tearing up the agreement and returning our deposit.

The contensious points were:

1. Salesman said that if you do not use your weeks with RCI within 2 years you lose them - if you join HI Points Club you can carry them over you never lose them TRUTH - HI points expire in two years from Jan 1 - if you wish to keep them longer you have to pay $45 to transfer them to the Rewards Club and even worse they are then only worth 80% of their original value It may be possible to hold them for a further 6 months for $199

2. Weeks would be useless - RCI would not be dealing with Orange Lake anymore TRUTH The RCI Office on site confirmed that they are still receiving weeks including rental weeks from Orange Lake which was also confirmed by checking on RCI website for upto 2013

3. If we bought another Orange Lake Week privately, because were members of the club it could be converted to points for a nominal sum

TRUTH Because Orange Lake now has a points system, you can only convert weeks to points by paying again - it may be possible to exchange for points if you buy from a timeshare resort does not have a points system

When the salesman realised that we were not completing he said "thanks for wasting my day " - no thought for us who must have been in the offices for 7 hours listening to a lot of misrepresentations of the truth

The only good thing to come out of this - is that we are thankful that we did not join and we have learned a lot more of how the system is supposed to work and will absolutely refuse to go to any more presentations - we will be keeping our week