Silke Living Well

February 28 (4th day in Mexico) was a “rest day”. No activities planned, except relaxing and having fun.

Except-a breakfast meeting first thing in the morning, that we had no idea was actually a meeting by crooks who try to scam you out of money. Well, we found that out after…

Sorry guys, it’s a long one! Here’s the story:

A couple days after we arrived we were approached by a nicely dressed, handsome and charismatic fellow, who came up to us and said “Hi! You guys arrived a couple days ago, late in the evening, right? We meant to connect with you before now! Sorry about that!” We were like ok, what about? He says “We try to connect with everyone, and show them what the resort has to offer you during your stay!”

So we’re thinking, oh how nice! That’s a really wonderful thing to do for their guests, they really do go above and beyond…
Then he says “What are you guys up to now?”

We said we were going to go to our room and then head to the beach, so he’s like, “I’ll take you there!”, and then goes up to a black and gold golf cart and talks to the driver in Spanish and then says “come on! Let’s go!”

During the short ride over to the building where our room was, he just made small talk with us then when we arrived he gets out with us and says “Is there a day we could take you for breakfast?” So we said ok how about a couple days from now? He took out a clip board and had me fill out a small form, that asked our names, ages, professions, family info, etc. I was thinking ok they really are friendly and accommodating (how naive we were ha ha ha!). He says “the hotel would like to gift you a romantic dinner on the beach for your time”.

We’re still not cluing in at this point. Keep in mind I’ve never been on a holiday like this, and had no idea people try to sell you time shares etc. So, we fill out the form, and make plans for him to pick us up at 8 am in a couple days. He had me add him on WhatsApp so we could message.

At 7:58 am, a couple of days later, he messages me and says “my boss is on his way to pick you up, I’m really busy today!”. We go down to the lobby and an older man comes up to us and shakes our hand and says “I’m here to pick you up and take you over to the other resort to talk to me colleague”, and we’re like ok…

On the ride I say “so what’s with the black and gold golf carts”. He says, “the carts belong to the Privilege Club. I’ll introduce you to my colleague and he will tell you all about it!”.
We’re still like ok…even though this wasn’t the first red flag we should have seen. Ha! I just think back now and it was just obvious.

We get to the other resort and yet another nice looking and charismatic fellow introduces himself and then says “are you hungry?”, and we’re like yes, we thought we were going for breakfast. LOL
He takes us to the buffet for the club members. My first impression was that the buffet at our resort was so much better! He makes small talk with us, and gets in my good books by talking about the dogs, both ours and his.

Then, after a few minutes of this, he starts talking about travelling. Then asks, “how did you book this holiday? Through a travel agent?” I told him we googled resorts and then booked through Expedia. “Ok, so what if you could get a better price by booking directly through our website?”

…he did more talking, and then after we finished eating, he led us to club’s office, which was through doors, with a receptionist, and then a large room with multiple tables. He offered us a seat and said “do you still have a few minutes to talk?”
By this point we were both thinking-just tell us how much you want to join this club so we can leave, and get on with our day.

Let’s just say, a “few minutes” turned into a couple of hours. Warren and I put the guy, and then his “boss” through the wringer with questions. I’ll not bore you with every little detail! Before they will give you the price they say “we want to make sure that this would not be a financial burden”. Ok…so what’s the damn price to join this club???

Again, a lof of talking and still no definitive price. They also said “here in Mexico, it is illegal to bribe. So we call it an incentive. But really, we are trying to bribe you to join our club”. They promised us two weeks free, we would pay our own flights and food during our stay. Plus-one week a year for the contract, which we could use all at once if we wanted to. Plus-weeks we could sell or give to friends and family, without taking away from our weeks. So, essentially we are travel agents. At this point it sounded good, and we’re thinking ok, this could be a business, and could be good for us, plus, we get to travel.
So again…what’s the damn price? Well, here it is folks-

They want people to sign a thirty year contract and pay over $30,000 USD to join their “Privilege Club”. So Warren says “I don’t know if I’ll be alive in 30 years, and I definitely don’t want to make payments. Give me another option. So the other guy goes to talk to his “boss” and comes back and says, “there is an opportunity to take over a contract that was left unfulfilled halfway through, so you’ll get 15 weeks, plus we will give you two free weeks to use when you want on us, plus 15 weeks for your family and friends, plus plus plus…”

Well, we fell for it. We bought into the scam.
$15,000 USD (through our business), and they “gave” us passes for golf and cart rental at the PGA golf course at the adjoining resort, and tickets to a show. They had other people at the other tables and a couple times we heard clapping and then an exclamation of “yay! Champagne!”, and they did the same for us, once we signed the contract.

We walked away afterwards and started thinking, oh sweet we can think about our next vacation. You can imagine I’m incredibly excited because I love to travel, it’s just so expensive, and trying to get Warren to take time off is like pulling teeth-and now we have two weeks free! We’re still excited at this point.

Then over the next couple days we’re thinking about it, talking about it, and Warren says, let’s look at the contract. And I say, I was thinking the same thing.

Good thing we did, as they did mention in passing that we could cancel if we decided it wasnt for us, just not the time frame in whuch we could cancel. This was day three after signing, and we had used the show tickets and done the golf thing as well. Well, the contract said we had 5 days to cancel. So I said, tomorrow morning we’re going over there first thing and let’s get out of this!

One thing that bothered me was even though you pay big money up front, your “privileges” don’t take effect until your next trip, where you book as a club member through their website. And the day after we signed, we were approached by guy number one again who said “oh I heard you joined the club! Congratulations!” And I said to him, well I think it’s complete bullshit that you can’t use the “benefits” until next time! So then he called over a black and gold car and told the driver to take us where we wanted to go. That was strike one.

When we used the tickets they gave us for the show, an employee saw the vouchers and said “oh. You’re in the privilege club”, to which I replied, “we’re in the first couple days, we can cancel”. He looked at us stone cold and said “don’t do it. Get out of the contract”. Strike two!

Not giving us all the details, plus not telling us we’d have to pay for the “gifts” they gave us as “incentive”? Strike three!

The next morning, we went over to the club office and the people at the desk were friendly until we asked to see this certain person. Then, they whispered amongst themselves and said “what’s this about?”, to which I replied, we’d like to talk to this person please.

We were then led to the private office where we had signed a few days before and the guy said “what’s this about?” And Warren said, “after thinking about this, we’ve decided we want to cancel the contract.” He looked upset. He went to get the other guy. More whispers. The other guy comes in and asks us why we want to cancel. We gave him the list. LOL
He tries to sweeten the deal. Warren shuts it down. “We’re done”.

They asked for the previous paperwork. I said “why do you need it? It’s copies and you have the originals”. To which the office guy replied “we need it to cancel the contract in our system. Once you return the paperwork, we can go ahead with the cancellation.” So I say, we don’t have it with us, we will go get it and come back.
They wanted to send someone to go get it from our room, but I said no, we will personally get it, thank you.

And then the guy says “we need you to sign an NDA”. We knew this was coming after doing some googling online about the club.

So I said “do we need to sign it to get our money back?”, and he said no, but we prefer that you sign it. I said “we will go and get the paperwork and think about it and I will let you know when we come back”. The look he gave me was…interesting. Disbelief maybe?

So we went and got the folder with our contract. We had taken pictures of every piece of paper. When we went back, news travels fast I tell you, they weren’t so nice anymore! The guy says “will you sign the NDA?”
And I say “No. I will not let you tell me who I can tell about our experience”.

We ended up getting most of the money back, minus the “non-refundable fee”, and the payment for their “free gifts” (bribes, incentives, whatever you want to call them). So this whole experience cost us about eight hours of our time, and a few thousand dollars.

If you can afford it, and want to join their club, by all means, go for it. But-think of this-when you book online for your holiday yourself, and you book at this resort through a site, lets say Expedia like we did, you get stellar service at the resort. Amazing food, too, and drinks all included. You book your own flights though the same site.

After joining this club, you still have to book it yourself, plus your flights. And, if you book through the club you have to pay for your food on top! Plus pay for the “privilege” of booking one of their special rooms. So what are you paying all that extra for??? We asked the guys that too. Couldn’t give us an answer.

We also made the point of speaking to multiple people wearing the gold wrist band. Are they happy they spent thousands for the “privilege” of joining the club? No.

So, this is me, telling you of our experience after not signing their non disclosure agreement. I can tell you we won’t be taking any more “meetings”! Learn from our naivety, and happy travels, folks!