Sapphire Residences / Bahia Turquesa Residences Scammed into a fake timeshare purchase and fake HSI membership Playa del Coco Guanacaste Province

During our vacation stay in August 2016, my wife and I thought we were purchasing a legitimate time share with Sapphire Residences (Costa Rica - Playa de Coco) that included a Holiday System International (HSI) membership. We were somewhat skeptical in doing this because "Sapphire Residences" was not the name of the resort (Bahia Turquesa Residences) we were staying but it was the same management staff.  We were also skeptical since this would be an international long-term agreement and verifying the legitimacy would be a challenge. Nonetheless, we decided to buy into the timeshare/HSI membership since we were impressed with the terms and benefits of the membership explained to us.

Once we re-entered the United States a week later we decided to web search on “Sapphire Residence Costa Rica reviews” and “Bahia Turquesa Residences Costa Rica reviews” and soon found there had been numerous complaints about this company (who has changed names many times in recent past) scamming others like us into signing up for similar exaggerated timeshare/membership terms that are simply invalid.  The next business day I decided to call HSI to get explanation about their membership benefits (specifically the HSI World Famous Cash Exchange Program that pays Maintenance Fees for Vacation Owners) to see for myself if what were we told was true.  Unfortunately, I was told that not only did HSI have no record of me being a member but they also had no record of Sapphire Residences being a resort they did business with so they could not discuss any membership details with me.  This is when I immediately called our credit card company to submit a dispute claim for this transaction.  I was never able to get in touch (via phone) with Sapphire Residences personnel to inform them of my decision to completely terminate things but I'm sure the lack of communication is deliberate considering this an entire scam.

One specific questionable term verbally explained to us was HSI would pay us the cost of our maintenance fees of our current time share that we own in the US in addition to $895/week of any unused weeks of this new timeshare with Sapphire Residences (4 weeks/yr of 2BR unit) as long as we deposited the weeks between Jan-March each year with HSI.  The review posts we read online stated the same promises and others said it was simply untrue.   

Fortunately, our credit card has been helpful in this matter but we feel very much victimized nonetheless.