AS is an owner whose 30th anniversary was full of harassment
Westgate Timeshare Resort Issues
Date of Incident: 2/15/2003
On Saturday, Nov. 23, 2002, we checked into Westgate for our reserved week. As owners, we were staying at the Westgate Town Center for our thirtieth anniversary.
When we checked in, we were greeted by a "customer service representative" named Karla. At our condo, while I went to the car to get our luggage, Karla asked to meet with us later in the week for an information sharing and maintenance meeting. Pat said we didn't want to go such a meeting. At this point Karla began telling my wife that our account had been flagged, that there was something wrong with it. She set up the meeting for Friday morning Nov. 29 at 8:00 am. Karla insisted that the meeting was mandatory.
On Monday Nov. 25, my wife called Westgate accounting. They said we were all paid up and had a zero balance. My wife told Karla this. Karla replied that the accounting people didn't know as much as she did, that there was really something wrong with our account. She didn't seem very concerned about our being very upset for a whole week about possible problems with our account. She told us it would take about 15 minutes Friday morning to straighten the situation out. We said we had 15 minutes at the max. We had a dog at a dog hotel in Sanford, and could only take her out between 9 and noon on Friday. We told Karla this.
We showed up to see Karla about 7:40 a.m. on Friday. First, the "free breakfast" we were supposed to get before the meeting wasn't ready, so we had to go to a fast food restaurant outside Westgate for breakfast. We got back at eight. Karla kept us waiting for fifteen minutes. She didn't get specific, only stating that there was something wrong with our account. Nor did she even mention anything about maintenance or somesuch. When we pressed her as to what was wrong with our account, she said she'd go get her supervisor. It was 8:15 now; our 15 minutes was up. When she left to get him, we left too. We went to the doggie hotel, got our dog, and spent a wonderful morning with her in Sanford's enclosed doggie park. It was obvious that Karla didn't give a hoot about our dog or us getting to spend the morning with her. She would have kept us there as long as it took to get us to buy something, like another week, an "upgrade," or whatever.
Also, the Town Center was nowhere what Westgate told us it was when we "upgraded" to it in 1998. It was tight quarters with noisy neighbors. Also, we were right next to the building's heating unit, and it was very, very noisy. When we complained they let us move to another unit. They didn't help at all; we moved all the stuff ourselves.
When we wrote the State of Florida about this, we got a reply from Westgate that was mostly a pack of lies. (One important thing they did say that was that these "information sharing" meetings with the "service representatives" are NOT MANDATORY.) We provided a rebuttal letter, to which Westgate has yet to respond. This was almost two months ago.
The combination of the noisy, uncomfortable unit and the harassment from the "customer service representative" put a big damper on our 30th anniversary getaway.
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