Puerto Vallarta Forum (PV Bulletin Board)

Thanks for your very helpful information. I'm planning on going back to PV the latter part of May and will not leave until I have our $5,700 back in the bank.

I'm planning on going back to PV the latter part of May and will not leave until I have our $5,700 back in the bank.

We'll be there in December... perhaps we can meet up for coffee?

Good luck to you! The Profeco office is located on a street called "Francisco Villa" in the Fluvial area (again close to the Costco). If you want to e-mail Profeco in PV, try this address profecovallartajalisco@hotmail.com. The Profeco phone number in PV is (322) 225-0000. The office is open Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 3:30pm.

Thanks again for the good information. Today we made contact with our Bank of America "billing dispute" office and faxed all of our pertinent information to begin that process. I will email Profeco tomorrow...

Have any of you thought of writing a letter to the editor in the PV Tribune? I noticed in the latest edition there was a letter with a person complaining about an OPC from Mayan Palace in MEGA while this person was shopping. The person writing the letter outlined the entire experience and they printed it, so it might be worth a try. Whatever bad publicity you can throw their way will not be good for sales and alot of visitors read the english newspapers while they are visiting PV.

I agree about putting this in the Tribune and other papers

pvjack wrote:I agree about putting this in the Tribune and other papers

It might serve as a warning to others but the English papers are not read by the important people here. Save your ink!

Things might be changing for the better... or maybe, it just does take longer in PV??? We have finally rec'd. credits to our bank for the transfer fee and the down payment we made. Still need a credit for the closing cost refund... but nice to see that over 1/2 of our refund has been rec'd.

kcowan,
I have to disagree with you; alot of tourists read the english papers when they are in town. They are the ones that would be going to a presentation and purchase not the "important people" in town.

If you get the name out to the General Public they will remember the negative remarks about the place far more than they will the positive, that's just human nature. Someone says, Yeah I went to such and such and it was really nice and another person says well don't go to such and such because they ripped me and several others off for several thousand dollars; that's the one that is going to stick in their mind as the one to avoid.

I'm thrilled to post that we have now received all $13K+ of our money back including our down payment, closing costs and $699 marketing fee to Luxury Vallarta. Althought this was much longer than the 15-days that we were promised (we cancelled on March 25th), we got our refund in record time compared to the other posts. I don't know if this is because we cancelled in person backed by a letter from Profeco and immediately filed a dispute with our credit card company or if management at the Grand Miramar is finally being more responsive. In any event, I thought it was only fair to share the good with the bad - Grand Miramar did keep their word and gave us a full refund.

I worked with a wonderful professional named Claudia in the dispute department at Grand Miramar. She took my calls and responded by e-mail when she said she would. For those of you still struggling to get your issues sorted out, you might want to ask to speak with Claudia. Good luck to you!

Great news! Glad to hear it finally worked out for you. One down and how many more to go?

Great news on the $13,000 returned. I think the combination of complaints, phone calls, emails, etc. is working. Claudia Ramirez is also working with us and has been good to respond when a refund/devolution has been posted. I had even sent the link to this site to them, so they could see what was being written about Grand Miramar.

Hello, we are going the same mess as are many others. Unfortunately we left PV the next day after being scammed and cancelled only by email. That is what we were told to do after my husband talked to someone at Miramar. Luis Tello was not in. Shawn Hodges, our salesperson was also informed of our decision to cancel and he responded by trying to make the deal better for us. Our credit card company does not want to accept the email cancellation. Could we get Claudia's email address?
Thanks for any help.

Here's Claudia's email address: claudia.ramirez@grandmiramar.com
The GM phone number (from the US) is: 1-877-211-5456

If you call and they say Luis is busy, ask for Claudia. Keep on them with weekly emails and phone calls. Save all of your email responses, especially from Shannon Hodges. He continually told us we would receive our refund and all of this information was faxed to our credit card company when we filed our dispute. We have had all of our money credited back to our bank acct. Good luck!!! :-)

Runmast56 wrote:Here's Claudia's email address: claudia.ramirez@grandmiramar.com
The GM phone number (from the US) is: 1-877-211-5456

If you call and they say Luis is busy, ask for Claudia. Keep on them with weekly emails and phone calls. Save all of your email responses, especially from Shannon Hodges. He continually told us we would receive our refund and all of this information was faxed to our credit card company when we filed our dispute. We have had all of our money credited back to our bank acct. Good luck!!!

Thanks for the address
Janet

You might have trouble with your credit card issuing credit since you didn't return to the sight where the contract was signed (a requirement listed in Miramar's contract).
Miramar allowed me to take our unsigned contract with us overnight to think about, and when I called the next day to say we weren't going through with the offering, they demanded that I return the unsigned papers to their premises. Instead of doing this personally, I had a taxi driver return them; I also faxed and emailed my desire to not go through with the offer. Even with all that (and a completely UNSIGNED contract), my credit card company was not forthcoming in reversing the charges until they got confirmation from Miramar .... which never came. Miramar continued to say that they had reversed the charges, but my credit card company never received.
After lots of wasted time and a 3 way call with Louis Telles and my credit card representative, my credit card company finally reversed the charges. Needless to say, I was unsatisfied with my whole experience. The credit card company should have taken my side from the beginning, and reversed the charges immediately; and Miramar should have been quicker to notify the credit card company of the reversal.
All this trouble, and I didn't even have a signed agreement!!!!

lakeoedo wrote:You might have trouble with your credit card issuing credit since you didn't return to the sight where the contract was signed (a requirement listed in Miramar's contract).
Miramar allowed me to take our unsigned contract with us overnight to think about, and when I called the next day to say we weren't going through with the offering, they demanded that I return the unsigned papers to their premises. Instead of doing this personally, I had a taxi driver return them; I also faxed and emailed my desire to not go through with the offer. Even with all that (and a completely UNSIGNED contract), my credit card company was not forthcoming in reversing the charges until they got confirmation from Miramar .... which never came. Miramar continued to say that they had reversed the charges, but my credit card company never received.
After lots of wasted time and a 3 way call with Louis Telles and my credit card representative, my credit card company finally reversed the charges. Needless to say, I was unsatisfied with my whole experience. The credit card company should have taken my side from the beginning, and reversed the charges immediately; and Miramar should have been quicker to notify the credit card company of the reversal.
All this trouble, and I didn't even have a signed agreement!!!!

I don't understand how they could post charges against your credit card when you didn't sign the contract but that shows how crooked they are. We did send an email to Claudia and she responded back that she would look into our situation. That was over a week ago and haven't heard back from her. Same goes with Luis Tello and Shannon Hodges. My husband is going to call Miramar today, but I am not expecting much.

My advice w/b to continue calling and emailing them. Send them the link to this site. And the most important thing is to file a dispute with your bank. Our bank (BOA) said that if the Mexican bank did not respond withing 45 days, they (BOA) would automatically reverse the charges. It's frustrating that they can charge your account in a couple of days, but it takes weeks for those charges to be reversed :-)

Runmast56 wrote:My advice w/b to continue calling and emailing them. Send them the link to this site. And the most important thing is to file a dispute with your bank. Our bank (BOA) said that if the Mexican bank did not respond withing 45 days, they (BOA) would automatically reverse the charges. It's frustrating that they can charge your account in a couple of days, but it takes weeks for those charges to be reversed

We did get an email from Claudia yesterday, to a Fernando Jaramillo, cc'ing us;
Hola Sr. Jaramillo,

I have this email from Mr. Burkholder, I was checking on our system and shows that the contract is on request cancellation but still active, note, Could you please contact the client an see what the proceed with him regarding his request?

Thank you
Claudia Ramirez

Also my husband finally talked to Luis Tello and he said that the credit card payment had not gone through because of the dispute and he wasn't interested in sending a letter of cancellation but would write a letter. My husband is going to contact Mastercard and ask them why are not supporting us totally. If we had written a cheque and then put a stop payment on it the bank would cancel the cheque and not ask why. You would think it would be the same with the credit card companies. Hopefully Claudia comes through. Janet

How I wish we had seen this blog before we bought!! We just purchased last Thursday, June 17, 2010 with all of the same promises listed - guaranteed rental, guaranteed liquidations of our Grand Mayan TS. We have contaced a lawyer here in Austin who specializes in timeshare fraud. He has been amazing so far and I only contacted him this morning, and this may be easier for us since we are still within the 5 day cancellation period in the contract and he is only charging us $500 retainer. It would probably be more if we were outside the cancellation tems and it may still be more if Grand Miramar isn't cooperative and he has to get more aggressive. But just knowing I have someone on my side that knows the ins and out of the Mexican timeshare system is a huge relief. His name is Carlos Hernandez-Ojeda and I'm sure he can work with anyone, anywhere.

Carlos Hernandez-Ojeda, LL.M.
Hernandez-Ojeda
Foreign Legal Advisors
Austin - Mexico
The Capitol Center
919 Congress Ave. Suite 900
Austin TX 78701
P: (512) 539.0599
F: (512) 623.6256
www.HernandezOjeda.com

I will post back on whether this works