Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Club [LHVC]
Reviews and Complaints

We know the owner and the truth of this scam artist, if anyone needs help to get this delinquents contact me asap.
[protected]@aol.com we use to work for them, lets give them what they deserve, we know exactly how to zink their boat.

I want to take the time and talk about lifestyle holiday vacation in. This company has such a bad reputation for their membership scam. I'm sorry I didn't know about this scam before we signed up for it. My hubby and I purchased the jr suite membership for $5, 000 down and many monthly payments for years to come. We were promised many things such as hotels anywhere around the world at their "sister resorts" for the low price of $199 per week. This was a big lie. I've tried inquiring about rooms in Ontario, New York, Cuba, and many more and the prices were through the roof. It's even cheaper to book these rooms from the hotel itself. What's the point of paying all this money for these discounts and it's not even a discount! They have lied about many things and I'm wondering if anyone else had this experience as well and manage to get back any money.

What was originally planned to be a 2nd honeymoon for us ended up as
the worst endangering experience of our lives. The level of corruption and Anti-American hatred is
without equal within the prison compound of the Lifestyle Holidays Resort Cofresi. We were abused,
harassed, robbed, detained, arrested, stalked, intimidated, verbally assaulted, yelled at, sworn at,
threatened, and above all threatened with the use of deadly force should we not comply with hotel
staff.

The first problem with our room was that they entire building smelled like raw sewage. This is due to
exposed sewage and sewage pipes in and around our building. It was a very nauseating smell.

There are no food standards in the Dominican Republic and there is a guarantee of food borne illnesses
due to mismanagement of food. The food was inedible. Food was covered in flies, cooked in vats in pots
that were not washed. We witnessed a pot that was cooking alfredo sauce, and they started cooking
tomato sauce in it without washing the pan. We saw hundreds of health food code violations by
American standards. Items requiring refrigeration were not afforded such. This is in 80 degree 80%
humidity jungle-type weather. There are only two restaurants available to non-VIP guests, Casablanca
and the Pearl. At the Pearl, Kelsey ate a quesadilla and choked on chicken cartilage. There was hard
bone and spongy chicken cartilage in the meat that my pregnant wife choked on and spit up all over our
table. There was clearly no food standards at this resort.

White sands and clear blue ocean? Not even close. Brown dirty sand with trash all over the beach. The
ocean in this particular part of the Caribbean is not clear blue and is full of algae and other ocean loose
plants. For starters, 90% of the beach is VIP only. The tiny section of beach we were allowed on was full of aggressive peddlers trying to get you to buy something every 5 minutes, and they won’t take no for an answer.

We were given yellow wristbands. Yellow is the target bulls eye color for innocent travelers. We also
noticed that were no Americans staying at the resort. During our entire trip we could not find more than
a handful of Americans. Out of thousands of people we came across, most were from Europe, Canada
and the Dominican or other Latin countries.

We were approached by a member of the hotel staff and stated that it was hotel policy that we come with him for a short tour for safety. He stated, we could be removed from the resort if we did not comply. We politely declined and were met with a sharp “You f***ing rich white Americans come here and think you are entitled, you don’t understand our ways and don’t understand what is expected of you here. You aren’t safe unless you are a VIP”

Complaining to the manager only aggravated the situation. We were harassed even more heavily by the
white shirts. We at one point barricaded ourselves in our room because there was so much anti-American speech being used against us outside.

White shirts on Day 3 began to make terrible Anti-American comments such as “You will never leave my
island alive with that attitude boy.” This was in response to me replying a polite “No thank you.” This gentleman wanted to fight me, he was so aggressive and intimidating, he threatened me with physical violence over and over. Here he is swearing and pointing at me. He told me that “Americans have no respect for the Dominican way of life” and he chased us for quite a ways.

When we left, we were detained and robbed by the fake police that worked for Cofresi.

This company uses false and deceptive practices and there Club membership is a SCAM. Everything that I was told about the Vacation club turned out to be a lie. They kept information about the cancelation period which is 4 calendar days and did not mention that even if you were to cancel within the four days they get to keep about $3000 of you money in fees. They lied about the amount of resorts they own in countries around the world, in fact they only are affiliated with the one in Dominican Republic. The prices for the rooms that they say is guaranteed is false and they would end up charging you a lot more for a lot less accommodation than the suites they promise. DONT BELIEVE THIS LIFESTYLE HOLIDAY VACATION CLUB ITS A FRAUD.

My fiance and I vacationed at Lifestyles Vacation Resort 4-20-11 through 4-25-11 and joined to obtain a V.I.P. joint membership for a junior suite using our credit cards to pay the upfront costs. This morning, my fiance saw charges on the credit card he used to pay for his half of the membership for airline tickets and told me to check the cards I used to pay for the membership as I used two of them to pay. One I maxed out and put the remaining balance on another credit card. The maxed out card had no unauthorized charges but the card where I charged the remaining balance has over $2, 000.00 of unauthorized charges for hotel reservations placed with Hotels.com which I did not make.

It is no coincidence that both of the cards we used to purchase the membership have unauthorized charges. It appears the personnel at Lifestyles Vacation Club are credit card fraud artists and someone within the organization needs to be notified ASAP. I attempted to contact Mr. Geooff Ballotti as CEO of Lifestyles Vacation Club/RCI but I could not locate on the internet any direct contat to advise him of his underlings activities.

I have also alerted CheapCarribean.com as they have the all-inclusive trips to Lifestyles Vacation Club Resorts and have the relationship to funnel prospective buyers of memberships to Lifestyles so they will look into this as well.

I am totally upset and angry of these occurrences with regard to the illegal activities that the Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Club personnel are participating in and causing undue stress on unsuspecting vacationers.

The slaes peoplpe at LHVC mislead you in what they are offering and what you actually get. On the second day after your arrival at their resort, you will be hounded by
specific staff telling you to come and recieve your welcome gift. These people target you by what color bracelet you may have on ( the color identifies you as a RCI member, regular traveler, VIP Gold member or VIP Platinum Member). They take you on a tour and show you nothing but the best rooms and at the end try to convince you that if you puchase one of thier levels of membership, that you can rent theses places out anytime you want and unlimited weeks. They promise that you can book a villa a month in avance, then you find out it is a year in advance. They also promised limo service for our ride to the airport in which we recieved a beat up old taxi.I have requested a refund in which they will not allow.

We paid a substantial amount of money for the "Timeshare" even thou they deny. I was told that if we was not happy they could reslae in hours because the deal was so good. They even said they would take back if we changed our mind.
Within 5 days we decided we had done wrong and emailed to ask them to take back or sell on. That was April 2008, now NOV 2009 still no response and no money back either.
This is a massive fraud, I see also that people dont get to use it like they say you can.

I want my money back they have had enough interest on it, can anyone help?

We have been unable to get resolution with LHVC over an upcoming reservation. We made the reservation almost 2 years ago and were told in writing that we would be put in the new villas for our stay. Upon checking on our reservation in September I was told that there was no guarantee. Since that time I have tried to contact the Jackie Bramhill, Customer Service Manager, to no avail. She will not answer my calls or emails. When I contact the resort they will not tell me who is in charge and get me to that person. The runaround continues and the trip quickly approaches. Does anyone know how to contact the President/CEO of LHVC?

Thanks,
Trudy

I am a single mother with one child. I saved to go to the Dominican Republic and was there from Dec 30 2008 to January 5, 2009. On the last day there I too was taken on a tour by a sales man named Dominico. He also applied pressure. He also told me that I can choose any sister resort with no black out days and that this was not a time share. He also told me that the price will be going up and this opportunity is not available anywhere else. He indicated Lifestyle vacations is in Toronto but I could not join this club there as they only have a sales office in the Dominican Republic. He told me and another couple that the owner of this business is German. I checked everywhere on the website and found nothing. I did request a copy of a contract which he was unwilling to do. He indicated that this contract would be available once the financing went through and I signed the paper as an initial application. He was even willing to sell me 25 weeks for $4000 U.S. but I had to come up with $2000US. He sat there while I made a phone call to my credit card company to have my credit limit increased even after I told him I would not be able to get it. He asked if I had another card but I told him no.

He even told me I could make extra money by selling weeks at a higher amount for villas including Hawaii.

I can be reached at: [protected]@hotmail.com

My name is Eve.

At the time of purchase it was repeated to me (and my girlfriend who was with me) many times that I could get a full refund for the LHVC Gold Package for any reason within the first 12 months. Since the 3 times that I tried to book a vacation for a friend, for work and for myself were either too late in the response, not the size unit (a 3-bedroom villa, which I did not need as it was more expensive than the hotel), or no response at all to this date, I decided to request a refund. They had suggested I have a friend or family member put up a website to rent as many weeks as I could right when I returned home to try to recoup my expense. If I couldn't get my first few requests, how could I make money with a website?

Of course they have it all figured out. There was a fine print clause saying that I agreed that there was nothing else presented than what was in the written contract. The sales representative did a great job explaining everything in a manner that made me feel comfortable in the fact that I had nothing to lose. Of course I repeated my understanding many times and was reassured by him, as well as a customer representative the next day, or I wouldn't have gone through with it.

Would everyone like to get together and go after RCI, who owns LHVC? Together maybe we could get somewhere.