SLG Had to Fight for our Refund
Westgate Timeshare Resort Issues



Date of Incident: 7/28/2003

My husband and I booked a rental unit at the Gatlinberg, Westgate Resorts. I had rented a unit in Orlando two years ago, so thought I knew what I was getting.

We made our reservation in January of 2003, rental date was to be June 23rd, 2003 , for a full week. We specifically stated we wanted a two bedroom unit, and were promised that we would get a two bedroom, one with a king bed and one with two doubles.

The money for this rental was charged to our credit card within a few days of our making the reservation, a full 6 months before we were to arrive.
When we arrived, we were given two separate one bedroom units. As we had our 9 and 7 yr old granddaughters with us, this was obviously not satisfactory. When we told the manager we could not accept the accommodations, and they weren't what was promised, we were told that was what was set up for us, and if we didn't like it, they would refund our money.

Since we were in Gatlinberg for a national dance competition, of course accommodations were a necessity. We left the resort, found other accommodations, and returned to Westgate to confirm that we were leaving, and asked them to refund our money. When we returned, about 6 other couples from our dance group were in the lobby, checking in. They were all being given the same accommodations we were offered. All of them had reserved the same accommodations we had, at about the same time of year. One of the couples was finally given what they had ordered, even though they were there 3 hours later than we were, and the rest accepted what they were given, but were given one night free. I was standing there while this was going on, and we were offered nothing!!!

Our vacation time was less than pleasant, since we were in a much smaller motel room, (at least my granddaughters were not alone).
I finally got a business card from the manager and she promised to be certain that I was given a refund. She told me the home office would have to refund our money.

When we returned home 2 weeks later, the refund had not appeared on our credit card. After 3 weeks, I called the home office, who said they had never heard anything about it, and would check it out. It took two or three calls to them, and finally, about a month later, we received our refund.

I feel we were defrauded, lied to, and in general, cheated. They had our money for over 6 months, almost $1,000.00, and when we asked for interest, they laughed at us.

Who should we write to about this? From your website, I have to assume that the Better Business Bureau was useless. I don't expect any money or anything else, but would sure like to aggravate them as much as they aggravated us, and surely would like to warn people about reserving anything with this company.


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