SECTION 3: The Basics
1) WHO YOU ARE IN BUSINESS WITH
No, you did not buy into a program with Bahia Principe, the hotel company.
The people you are under contract with are NOT Bahia Principe, an otherwise reputable company conducting regular hotel businesses successfully for decades. Nor are you dealing with Grupo Pinero, Bahia Principe’s parent company.
You are dealing with a smaller, newer outfit called the Privilege Club, owned by a Panama shell company called White Bay Trading Corp.
These people you are under contract with have their HQ’s split between Panama and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Their sales rooms in the resorts (where you signed up for the contract) are not their main offices, nor where you will find anyone high up in the chain of command.
These people are providing timeshare services to normal guests of the resorts under contract with Bahia Principe. This is to say, they are NOT part of Bahia Principe. Suing Bahia Principe or demanding anything from them is a waste of time, because legally, these are different entities.
You CAN, however, use the knowledge of who is on top to your advantage, since the Privilege Club people will do EVERYTHING in their power to avoid any issues you may have with your Privilege Club membership from escalating to the Bahia Principe owners. Anything that gets UP the chain to Bahia Principe’s HQ is very embarrassing and damaging to Privilege Club.
Don’t worry, we’ll come back to the key players of this scam operation before the end of this book, and let you know how to best involve them, if required, in getting your money back.
2) WHAT DID YOU BUY?
Contrary to what you could have been told, no, you didn’t buy a pre-paid vacation program. You have the right to no vacations with the entry price paid (or financed).
No, you did not buy a program which gives you any rights anywhere else but with Bahia Principe hotels. No New York, no Paris, no Disney, nowhere else.
No, you did not buy a program for cheaper airfare. Nothing like that exists with these people at the moment.
No, you won’t get vacations in any Bahia Principe resorts for a fixed weekly fee of any amount of dollars.
You paid for a RIGHT TO ACCESS.
For the several thousands of dollars you paid or are now paying, all you get is rights. These will change over time, but are boiled down to basically two: right to a discount, which may or may not save you money (once flights are factored in, most likely it won’t) and right to a few meaningless “VIP services” like a small and far-away beach section made private, a private Concierge, and others.
That is all. Nothing else they may throw at you is real, or substantial. They used to have vouchers for cruises thrown in. It turns out that when you called to redeem them, you were expected to pay more than if you simply booked directly with the cruise line.
Any “gift certificates” you are “given” are already ADDED TO your total program price-- YOU pay for them. Any other third-party program (RCI, Privilege Collection, Traveler Hub, etc.) offers NO GUARANTEED FINANCIAL ADVANTAGE OF ANY NATURE.
That you can make this a sound investment is NOT GURANTEED ANYWHERE BY ANYONE.
You do have the RIGHT to a discount that IF, and after DOZENS of vacation MAYBE, but most likely WILL NOT result in you recouping your investment.
3) BREAKDOWN OF WHAT YOU ACTUALLY BOUGHT
So you THINK you bought some type of pre-paid vacations program, or a Concierge which will l magically find flight tickets for you at 25% of cost, or a free-taxi program, right?
At least SOME of those should be correct, right?
Maybe ONE? Just ONE?
Hate to break it to you -- none of them are.
You bought THE RIGHT TO USE THEIR SERVICES with the upfront fee you agreed to pay by contract. You have NO RIGHT TO ANY VACATION WHATSOEVER with this fee.
You can ONLY go on vacation AFTER YOU PAY their Club’s All-Inclusive fee of a certain amount of money per night, per person -- just as if you booked it online, but MARGINALLY cheaper, IF AT ALL.
So then -- WHAT did you get?
Depending on what they pushed on you, and your willingness to agree to it, you got any combination of the following 3 elements:
A) ROOM TYPE
The majority of members, over 90% of them in our opinion, signed up for a JUNIOR SUITE type room.
This is a SINGLE SPACE room, for 2 to 4 guests, in 1 or 2 beds (up to you). This room’s exact size and layout will vary depending on the resort chosen, how old or new the building is, etc.
A small minority of buyers signed up for a MASTER SUITE.
This is made up of TWO ROOMS, that are connected by an internal door. On the one side you will have a Junior Suite. On the other, a STANDARD ROOM with two double beds.
B) NUMBER OF WEEKS
You signed up for A PRE-DETERMINED total numbers of weeks with the company. They do not pick and choose -- these are set by their higher management, and has not changed much since they started.
You signed up then for any of the following number of weeks: 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 or 120.
These weeks, or “Membership” weeks, are the ones you can use with RCI. More on that below.
IN ADDITION to these weeks, you may or may have not have received:
- Any number of what they call PREFERRED WEEKS or PREFERENTIAL WEEKS.
These are weeks you can use in Bahia Principe but NOT with RCI. You pay MORE for the all-inclusive by using these weeks, and they will book you in Standard Rooms while at it. It’s mostly worthless, even though they give them out like candy. Some people get an “UNLIMITED” number of them.
- Certificates for a 7-night stay for 2 adults (or more) in one or several Bahia Principe resorts.
These are NOT gifts. These are FACTORED IN into your program’s total, AND YOU PAY FOR THEM. As soon as you sign up now the clock is ticking, you have 18 months to use them or lose them. The idea is to push you to pay your financing, because you can only book these certificates if you have paid half of your program’s total price.
- Absolutely worthless “gift certificates” for RCI, cruises, or other services.
C) SEASON TYPE
This may actually be the most important element in determining the price of your contract.
The leaps we have seen between prices are enormous depending on the season you choose.
They will offer you, in increasing order:
- GOLD: basically low season. May to June, September to early December.
- PLATINUM: basically all year round, except the major weeks of the year, which are three-- Easter. Christmas, and New Year’s. These three weeks’ actual calendar dates are defined annually by the Club.
- DIAMOND: year-round with no blackout dates.
When you first sit with the Salesperson (some time after the tour) they start offering you packages from the most expensive down to the cheapest. Your answers tell them if you are, or if you are not willing to pay up for whatever benefit you think will come from the program. Your answers also tell them how much you are willing to pay for it.
This is a key part of the scam you must understand -- PRICING IS SET BY THE SALES STAFF, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Yes, there are predetermined prices, but those are bottom prices.
THEY WILL, AND ALWAYS BEGIN by offering you OVERPRICED packages first, and happily sell you something for MANY thousands dollars more.Your resistance will determine how low they go.
Pricing changes every so often, but the cheapest programs being the most popular, here is what we believe are most likely BOTTOM prices with no salesman inflation:
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 10, Price: USD 6,200
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 9,500
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 14,620
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 18,100
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 90, Price: USD 25,870
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 120, Price: Unknown
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 18,500
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 27,950
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 35,370
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 90, Price: USD 50,050
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 120, Price: Unknown
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 24,500
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 31,450
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 48,000
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 90, Price: USD 68,200
Room Type: Junior Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 120, Price: Unknown
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 19,190
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 25,750
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 36,700
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 90, Price: USD 52,300
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Gold, Weeks: 120, Price: USD 65,575
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 37,400
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 56,800
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 71,060
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Platinum, Weeks: 120, Price: Unknown
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 30, Price: USD 50,000
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 45, Price: USD 75,000
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 60, Price: USD 95,000
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 90, Price: Unknown
Room Type: Master Suite, Season: Diamond, Weeks: 120, Price: Unknown
ON TOP of the overpricing, ANY TIME you received “a gift” of a certificate for a vacation? YOU PAID FOR IT. They SOLD it to you, mixed into the package price. THERE ARE NO GIFTS MY FRIEND. You PRE-BOUGHT these “gift” vacations, and could have paid less if you had pushed more or threatened to leave the room.
Here are our estimates of how much you are paying extra for those “gift certificates”:
One week in the GBP San Juan resort (the OLDEST Bahia Principe) - US$ 700.00 per couple/week
One week in any BP resort, except Cayo Levantado - US$ 1,200.00 per couple/week
If you have any kids, they were likely included by paying half of the adult rate.
We have also seen cases of additional money added on TOP of everything described above, for no reason. Just to get more money out of you.
On the other hand, the “RCI certificates” are absolute garbage-- these ARE given to you for free, but you ARE also expected to pay a fixed rate when you use them, plus flights and transfers.
You may or may have not received a separate certificate for a cruise. This is even more garbage. The options they will give you are EXTREMELY overpriced and rarely worth the trouble of “redeeming” them.
4) PARTS OF THE CONTRACT
The documentation you received has various parts, some they show you, some they keep.
All in all, and with minor variations, you should have received the following documents, which serve the following purpose:
a) THE AGREEMENT ITSELF
This document says what you bought (room type, season, number of weeks, etc.), how much you agreed to pay for it, what amount of down-payment, what amount of closing cost, when your season beings and ends, and your agreement to pay all-inclusive when you go on vacation, and annual fee every year (whether you go on vacation or not).
This is the MAIN part of the contract.
Some important clauses in this contract are:
CLAUSE 1: which is a quick summary of the contract’s key parts and payments you have committed to make.
CLAUSE 10: this is the clause that spells out the conditions for a cancellation. According to this, you DO NOT HAVE an automatic right to get your money back because you changed your mind, or the program is too expensive. They would need you to prove a “breach of contract” in order to even consider canceling. Even IF you prove breach of contract, you AGREE BY CONTRACT that there is no cancellation involved.
That last bit, however, they can shove up where the sun don’t shine.
b) STATEMENT OF UNDERSTANDING
This document is an add-on to the contract, and essentially summarizes additional stuff, such as YOUR understanding of the payment of an all-inclusive fee for every night you book when using your contract. Also your understanding that they CAN offer you flights and transfer for your vacations-- at an additional cost, of course.
c) PROMISSORY NOTE
If you did not pay everything upfront (God we hope you didn’t) then you signed up for a loan.
Yes. A LOAN. With the Privilege Club. This Promissory Note document IS the loan. It says how much you owe, how many installments were agreed, how much you pay with every installment, and the INTEREST RATE.
Yes, INTEREST RATE. All Caps. Because sir / madam, it can and WILL go up to 18% ANNUALLY, very easily. They have NO REGULATION overseeing this percentage and will bleed you with interests for up to 60 months.