Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Club LHVC Beware of Joining as a Member! Puerto Plato, Dominican Republic Nationwide

My husband and I visited Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Club during the 2014 Memorial Day holiday week. We were initially impressed and after meeting with their salesmen we decided to become members. We paid about $20,000 down payment and have a balance of about $15,000. We went through an extensive negotiations process with the lead sales manager. Our main concern was that we already have a timeshare property with RCI and did not want to invest in a second vacation resort property. The sales team ensured us that they would pay our remaining balance of $2000 on our current RCI timeshare property and take over it's ownership. Because of this key detail, we decided to transfer ownership of the RCI property to LHVC and join LHVC as members. We were told to fax/email our promissory note with the price of the RCI property and any other relevant documents to the LHVC Transfer Dept within 7 days and after processing the necessary paperwork, they would take over the payments for the remaining $2000 for the RCI property. We did so on the same day we returned home. The Transfer Dept representative Julia Lympany immediately emailed back acknowledging receipt of the emailed documents and asked that we give her 7 days to respond. On the 7th day, she emailed indicating that because we received a discounted price ($35,000) on our LHVC membership, LHVC would not be able to take over the remaining balance on our RCI property. My husband and I were appalled and asked that we just cancel our LHVC contract because the terms of the contract were not met. Julia indicated that the 4 day cancellation period had ended (including the 7 days that she took to review the documents) and that we are not permitted to cancel. Furthermore, she indicated that we would now have to be owners of 2 properties (RCI and LHVC), both of which serve the same purpose. It's pointless to pay for 2 properties that have the exact same access and privileges. Of course, we would have never signed a contract with LHVC if we knew they would not honor their agreement of paying for our current RCI property. LHVC is not denying that they were responsible for paying the remaining RCI balance (per our negotiations) but claim we were provided with a discounted rate in exchange for the RCI property. This is odd because now they would not even be eligible to receive the property in exchange. Hence, if their logic of providing a discounted rate to us in exchange for the property is valid, why are they not alarmed that they will no longer have the property?

We are extremely dissatisfied with the LHVC response to helping us resolve this matter. We have already disputed the deposit charge on our credit card and now have to pursue legal action to void the contract and remove our financial liability. This is frustrating because our vacation experience has turned into a nightmare. LHVC is a scam and takes advantage of its patrons.