We got pestered by one guy, for days he tried to get us give him 'one hour'
I told him we had paid a lot of money for that 1 hour in India who was going to reimburse it? He laughed, I didn't. He knew I was being serious.
My Husband then told him, ' Bring to us One other Couple to prove that the meet is only 'One hour' then we may think about it'.

We didn't see him for the rest of the Holiday

i know someone who went with them,but knowing them im not surprised.you would think with all these programmes like watchdog about people would be wise to them.
they didnt buy though

Hi Alan, seems like 10 years since our drink at Morjim 4 weeks ago,

Anyway speak with Delboy up at Alex's shack in Ashwem if you go back in next few weeks, he will tell you that they are mainly funded by Russians and it can be a scam.

Once again good to meet you.

Garry

Hi Garry, I Wish we were going back in a few weeks .unfortunately not till December now, going for Xmas & New Year.. unless..... sickie
It was good to meet up with you and your family just wish we could have had more time, still we will catch up again, allan.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"i know someone who went with them,but knowing them im not surprised"
Thats exactly what i was thinking, so come on who is going to own up ? Allan.

We went in November when we were staying in Cavelossim.
We had an afternoon when we didn't have anything planned and went along about 3:30. 3 hours later we finally got out with a T shirt & a weeks accomodation for $50.
The complex was fine and well above usual 3 star in Goa.
the price just kept getting cheaper and ended up as £400 for 3 years. But being mean we said no.

A couple of weeks ago they were giving free kingisher beer away at the end of Candolim beach. You get a scratchcard and have to get 3 questions out of 6 right. The quote I liked was "kingfisher beer reduces colesterol".
I enjoyed the beer but did't get one question right (believe me that took some doing).
They didn't ask us after that, not sure why.

We were caught by them in Candolim in Feb 2006. I was very sceptical about them and if I was alone I would not have had anything to do with them at all. But one of my friends said that we might as well go along as we had no plans that afternoon and at that time the prize was a bottle of wine.
Initally several things seemed rather suspect, we were told that we would go to Baga by a taxi and the time they said it would take to get get there was far less that I knew that it would take, even if the place was in central Baga. As we drove through Calangute we took the Arpora road at the roundabout and I became even more concerned as to where we were going. In the end we got to Monterio on the north side of the Baga River in twice the time they said it would take.
We got the prize and an initial sales talk which probably would have been less than an hour. This was probably the first level of filtering to select people that might be more suseptable to further salestalk. We must have fitted their target profile and got passed on to the real saleman, in our case a really nice local guy who seemed quite upfront about how much commission he was making. A tour of the hotel and a talk in the bar probably lasted an hour. As he talked we must have registered as showing some interest and I must say my attitute went from hostile to at least giving them a chance to explain the deal. Afterwards he gave us some time together to talk amongst ourselves. At this stage the price hadn't been mentioned and I set a figure in my mind of what they might be asking for. He then returned as gave us the figures, it would cost about a third of what I had set as my upper limit. More discussions followed and then he left us alone again, we decided to go for two of the deals, one for my friends and one for me. The sales guy almost couldn't believe it when we said we would have two as he had pitched the deal at my friends (a couple) and hadn't really considered me as being interested due to my initial hostility. We placed a deposit and signed the deal. We had a period of cooling off to back out but we did sign away the deposits.
They gave us a taxi back to our hotels in Candolim and Sinquerim and I went straight on-line to search the internet for stuff about timeshares.

I found some good advice on some sites:

Don't buy into a place that isn't built yet.
We had already seen one of their locations up and running, seen photos of the others and were to be given a tour of the other three places in Goa in the next few days.

Don't look at it as a property investment. The resale value of the deal is low.
I would buy into it to use it rather than as an investment.

Make sure the deal is not low season only.
Our deals were for the peak season.

Don't expect to get the peak week (Christmas/New Year) every year.
I'm flexible on my timings and would rather go in November/February.

Don't buy into a floating bookings system if you want the same weeks every year.
Again I'm flexible

Don't believe the sales hype about being able to buy extra bonus weeks or exchange your allocation to go to other parts of the World.
I'm only interested in Goa

If you do want to exchange for other locations make sure that you have a high graded allocation which is needed for trading power.
Goa is in the top category and the exchanges have good trading power - but I'm not interested in that.

In my case the deal passed all these tests (although I do realise this would not be ideal for everyone).

We had reservations about booking availability and phoned them the next day to ask a whole long list of questions. There was loads of paperwork and the terminology was then unfamiliar to us, plus not everything they said had sunk in.

In the meantime one of my friends was admitted to hospital in Mapusa with a severe ear infection. When the salesguy heard of this he visited my friend in hospital with flowers and then we had a meeting to discuss our questions and reservations. He gave satisfactory answers to all our questions, but I must say that in part two of this posting I'll mention a few things that didn't turn out to be as we were led to believe.

(more later!!)

I continued to research timeshares and our deal passed all the tests (at least it did for my low expectations). I found a list of blacklisted companies and this one wasn't on the list. The ownership of the property is through a trustee and this firm showed up as one of the recommended ones. I did find that there is another company trading under a very similar name and they are scamsters. I did check that we were dealing with the real company.

We then tried to piece together exactly what allocations we had and how we were going to use them in the near future. We each had our paid-up allocation week for 2006, a new members bonus week for something like $99 and two weeks elsewhere with RCI as new members for the price of a booking fee. My friends also got two more prize weeks from the stratch card.

As we began to make plans we looked at our deals. I worked on the worst case senario of only getting the allocated week in Goa and maybe carrying this over to the next year to get two weeks every two years over 25 years. I ignored all the promises on extra weeks being available and being able to exchange elsewhere in the World. I worked out that in this case the deal would break even in around three or four years against what I had paid in the past for accomodation elsewhere.

I booked two weeks in November split between the Royal Palms at Benaulim and Monterio north of Baga, travelling with a fresh friend, not the ones who had the other deal. I did find that the accomodation met my expectations and there were no hidden charges beyond what was already set out in the original deal. The only bills that I had to pay were a few rupees a day State Luxury Tax, and bills I'd run up for a few breakfasts and internet.

A few days after arrival a salesperson called for me and arranged a meeting. This was a little different from our original sales talk back in February. I could now talk to them with knowledge of the system as I was not confused by the complication of it all. Most of my reservations about availablity of extra weeks were confirmed and they said in effect that I'd been sold a new entry start-up type deal and that much better deals are on offer. They ran through the options and convinced me to pay up for a much better deal - I've now got four weeks, peak season, platinum grade. I will now break even in just under five years.

We also had booked three weeks in Benaulim in February for seven of us. My friends have worked out that these three weeks would elsewhere have cost them about the same amount as their original deal so they have already broken even. Again we did find that the accomodation met our expectations and there were no hidden charges beyond what was already set out in the original deal. My friends got the sales meeting just like I had in November and as we were prepared from my earlier findings they too signed up for a better deal.

My conclusion:
Forget most of the sales hype at the start. Be realistic and the deal may work for you. It all depends on what you are looking for and what you are currently paying. The main target group are regular Goa visitors, with flexible timings looking for 4 star acccomodation. This may also work for exchanging elsewhere in the World but I've not tried that yet. A further point is that the costs involved are per appartment not per person.

May I just say what an excellent explanation of a very complex issue.Good to hear you got exactly what you wanted.Not sure I could do all the research required or give up time on my holiday but I am really glad you got a good resolution.

regards

Papa

What an explanation! echo papas words, well done geoff
i hope it all goes really well for you. Allan.

We have also bought in to this type of holiday ownership in Goa,
after being members of another timeshare resort for 15yrs we
went in and knew what we were doing,after being to Goa twice
and not getting good class accomodation we were pleased to
to know that for all our future holidays in Goa we would know
what we were going to,we have stayed at all 4 resorts owned
by this company and the apartments are all 1st class,we bought
the 10yr package with the option to extend if needed,we have
always got the weeks requested so can,t ask for more,we find
the company to be helpfull in every way.
ann&john

they sell the crap also in estonia - usually there is some "small letter announcement" somewhere hided. when things do not go as good as they planned, the letters grow in size and they happen to be the most important sentence of all agreement.