Residence Club La Jolla Boutique Resort
Complaint 196706 Details

To Whom it may Concern;

Residence Club La Jolla Boutique Resort [RCLJ] in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, is located about four miles north of Mazatlán’s golden zone in an area known as Emerald Bay in Nuevo Mazatlán. We have read extensively online, and found that RCLJ has swindled many Americans and Canadians out of their savings. Deceptive practices and corruption experienced by travelers has been experienced by many unsuspecting tourists at the Residence Club La Jolla in Mazatlan. These people know the cost to litigate one deal at a time, cost prohibitive for many, so they lie and cheat each one of us independently and repeatedly over and over.
The La Jolla sales team, (Manuel Altamirano, their VP of Sales, Alfredo Marq; Sales Manager, Efrain Morales; their counterpart in the USA representing SWAP Global Vacation, Cameron Moretti, and their customer service representative,) were all fluent in English, two of them were American Citizens familiar with contract law, the banking system, property deeds, and taxes on capital gains – they offer to buy a time share that we as customers already own and are so astute in describing the deal, we believe this to be a deal we can’t pass up. The main deception (and there are many) is a promise they will buy your timeshare weeks from other resorts to free you from high annual maintenance fees if you will buy a membership at La Jolla. You are told your annual maintenance costs at La Jolla will be considerably lower and eventually you fall into their trap.
We were told we would be enrolled in HSI and we can trade our time at La Jolla and continue to stay at our original resort. In fact, they offered to pay us a rental price of $1,500 per week for the next five years to not stay at Residence Club La Jolla because they wanted to keep as many units available as possible so they would have enough rooms available for other prospective buyers who might come to view the property. It turns out they simply listed our timeshare weeks on a phony website with no guarantee of buying or selling them.
We experienced their deception first hand in January 4th , 2012 and again July 2nd , 2012. Furthermore, Lajolla Resort is not honoring the addendum to the contract beginning July 2nd , 2012. We were told that we could use our points from our contract effectively immediately as we were planning a November family vacation and wanted to schedule as soon as is possible. They told us to call them and they would make our reservations. After reaching out to them we received an email reply that we could not schedule a vacation using our contract till 2013. They told us we are to use Holiday Systems International (HSI). We have been an HSI member for 3 years.
As part of the incentive for us to purchase the Lajolla Resort contract, they told us they would sell our Grande Luxxe Villa using a company called Swap Global Vacations. We were told this would take 0 to 180 days. On July 2nd (180 days this particular week) we were told in person that the sale was complete and that we would need to pay $7,000 Mexican Tax before the monies would be released to us. This would be wired to us to the US to our account OR a certified check would be issued to us. The choice was ours. The monies were to be released on July 11th 2012. When we arrived to the Villa Mar, a sister resort, we were told the monies would be wired to our checking account. Manuel Altamirtano told us it would take 48 hours to post and if we didn’t hear anything from them by the following Wednesday we were to let him know. We are still waiting and he will not return our phone calls. We have called numerous times, at different times of the day and left messages for him to return my call. NOTHING. They are never available, off that day, or at another location, bottom line they are never able to talk.
After five months of trying to reach them through e-mails and phone calls, which have gone unanswered, we have given up on the money, our future vacations, everything, except for forewarning other tourists who may fall into the same trap as we did.
We know there is nothing we can do to recover the money we lost, but we have the power, and obligation, to alert others of what happened to us, in hopes that they avoid giving their savings to a bunch of La Jolla Mazatlan crooks.
Since we’ve written this, we have learned that the sales people (VPs, Managers, Customer Service, and others), change their name regularly to avoid being identified as guilty parties on internet postings.
Because this is a Mexican case, the only way we can get a class action law suit is by advising the people who felt prey of the Ponzi scheme, to file a complaint with the Attorney General in their home state. If enough complaints are made from different states, this then becomes a Federal Case against La Jolla Boutique resort Mazatlan, and a class action suit is possible. I think writing about my experience every opportunity we can, increases the chances of as many of us as possible to come together, unified; to do something about it.