Club La Costa - sound or con?

[benjy48]

Hi,

For the past 18 months I have had phone calls from Club la Costa telling me I have won a holiday. I gave them my mobile number, not my house number(phew!). They tell me that I will receive a £25 M&S voucher and two tickets to a theatre production of my choice. All i have to do is turn up at the presentation. I was initially sold on this because I haven't had a holiday for an age, but I got curious today about their claims and searched the web for any info on them. Well as far back as 2003 there was a Guardian investigation and two undercover reporters went to the presentation. Well after reading their account I am disappointed but glad that I haven't been able to go to the presentations. For all of you that have been contacted by this group, think first and read report. Here is the link to that guardian report;
Lying in the sun or just lying in Lakeside? | Travel | The Guardian

Cheers!

[Sidewinder]

CLC are well known for extremely high pressure selling. Whilst the resorts are good, anybody attending a presentation in order to qualify for a 'free' holiday must understand that you will be put under a lot of pressure to sign up to what in many cases seem to be reasonable terms. You will be sold on the concept of opulence, sand and palm trees and even the strongest willed find it hard to resist the idea of 'owning' a piece of a property abroad. If you absolutely can't resist, then never ever take money, cards or cheque book and be prepared for a long, drawn out selling exercise. Do a lot of research before deciding anything. Some owners swear by it, some are desperate to try and get some money back.

[Meldrew2]

CLC do indeed operate high pressure selling - but they are more honest than most companies in their field. That's why they are still around in 2008 - we first visited one of their resorts in 1987....

A 21 year track record in the Timeshare industry is probably pretty rare - and trading under the same name all that time surely means they are more concerned about their reputation than many others.

For instance, you will get the gift they promise for attending the presentation... we attended at St Helens a couple of years ago, we were promised a TV/DVD, after the presentation they said "we have none left",

I thought "here we go" but they gave us Argos vouchers to the same value - it turns out that they had cleaned all the TV/DVD's out of the Argos stores for 20 miles around - so it was cheaper to give us vouchers than to send the TV/DVDs on to us!

(We bought a week in 1987 - gave up around 1995 due to increasing maintenance costs and our week clashing with school (daughter turned 5 that year) - but we enjoyed the years we had - and for £900, including the flights, car hire and maintenance for the first year, it wasn't too bad a deal.)