Unlimited Vacation Club ( UVC ) - Legit?

Looks Impressive / Sounds Good!

 

 Real deal or Scam?

I've historically never been one for time shares or vacation clubs.  I've never taken the time for the 1, 2 or 3 hour presentations.   I've heard good things.  I've heard horror stories.  I remember a few years back when out in Vegas and I stayed at the Mariott Vacation Getaways property next to Planet Hollywood while on business travel.  On the TV, they broadcast an advertisement for their vacation club.  The whole concept was if you bought in, it'd force you to take the vacation you deserve every year.  Huh .. really?   

Over the last several years, I've frequented two different Secrets resorts, about 8 times total,  that are part of the AMR 'empire'.  Apparently all this falls under the Apple Vacations 'empire' .  Each trip I've seen numerous folks get the VIP tour and the sales pitch for the UVC.  Interestingly, we've only been approached twice and both times I've pushed back and life goes on.   Our previous trip to Maroma Beach last year we met a couple of sisters that were part of the UVC, and they told us how happy they were with it.  I asked a few questions but nothing pressing.  This trip, I became aware of two couples that bought in.  For the first time, I found myself interested somewhat,  trying to 'do the math.'   I kept asking question after question of the folks that bought in.  I asked a few questions of one of the salespeople that I was around for a few hours in close quarters one day.   I actually liked what I heard, but I was having trouble making the numbers work for me personally from what I thought I heard.   My wife became aware of a trip-advisor thread on the subject and asked me to hold off until we looked into it all closer.   Of course the sales pitch last week was something along the lines of costs were lower due to COVID, etc.. but I wouldn't execute.   So now the question becomes.... should I have?  But I still for the life of me don't know all the costs.  What I do know is...  some info from the chart below handwritten by one of the salespeople last week .. I believe I know the cost of the left column and the right column.  Had I executed on this last week the left column was approximately $125k and the right column $10k.  What I couldn't figure out was the other costs.  I heard numbers like $99k .. $50k ... but .. I never got them assigned to a specific column.... so .. here I sit in my investigative mode that I tend to enjoy ... to figure this shit out.  Additionally, I heard unlimited (residence) use  with the high end option plus a daily cost depending on which resort level ($40-$120?). Also there were a lot of weeks thrown in but were those annual or a one time?  On the low end, I heard you could get 25% off the lowest advertised option via travel sites.  Also, one 'free week' a year.  I heard from the sales person the yacht club option shown in several columns was normally $5k, but only $1200 if you join (forget that I verified anyone could rent it for $1200 approx).  Salesperson said you only paid for gas and the time of the crew.  Wait ... $1200?

So, lets see ....  at least 4 levels : Impressions | Diamond | Platinum | Gold  .  I was assuming I'd do the Platinum level, but the Diamond has a nicer room option which intrigued me.  The Impressions was over and beyond what I thought I'd use. Up there in cost and looked to be overkill for me personally.  To say this is all 'confusing' is an overstatement!

UPDATE NOV 16, 2022 : Spoke with a couple in Cozumel this past week at the Secrets.  They were taking their first vaca after buying in ten months ago.  They bought in at 25k for the Silver, and negotiated ZERO black out dates and 42 Free Days included annually.  Took them four days to get there, meeting after meeting.  The had "Preferred" privilege's this trip but not a 'preferred room'.  So, they bought in for another $9500 this trip to I believe it was "Gold Plus".  They tell me they are 100% happy with their choice and the math more than works for them.   I have to admit, If I was traveling to AI's 5-7 times a year ( week long each), and I was 50 or younger. ... I'd  consider that one.

UPDATE 10 DEC 2022:  I posted this in a social media group and it got deleted right after someone with a positive attitude towards the UVC, stated they were under NDA.  NDA?  I pointed out that should worry anyone...   and .. DELETED.  I rest my case.

I've copied about two dozen 'positive' comments from the many discussions out there.  There are 10x more negatives than positive.  Are these folks just complaining?  Did they get screwed?  Simple 'buyers remorse.'  I'm not sure at this point.  I do know AMR/UVC utilized intense sales pressure.  Make it difficult to canx legally within the 5 day window.  I do know it's outright confusing especially since they have changed up the club name options apparently.   If you have any additional info, please free to share! Part of me would like to join.... but.....  not yet.

This was sent to me by cell ; originated from sales person

Some Positives from the forum replies:

 

 

"I have heard such variable rates ...from 7000 to 40000..I have the gold package with 700 days and 40 years with renewal rights and renewal fee of 126.00 per year..28 premier nights and 10 years in yachts. UVC lifestyle and rci for 2 years...paid over 25,000.... ..."

"We just signed up on 12/31/14 at Secrets Maroma. We paid 21k for the sliver same extras that you have listed"  

" bought a Gold Plus membership, a year ago. We just came back from a 2 week trip from Secrets Puerto Vallarta   and I can´t express enough how wonderful their staff was. Member services took care of everything for us, from a free upgrade to preferred club, to helping us with questions regarding the membership. And the best part, it didn't cost us a penny. We used miles for the flights and 2 free weeks. I estimated around 8,000$ of savings, plus we still have few more free weeks. Should brake even in the next 3 years. Only negative Platinum Rewards doesn't work, but I guess they changed to a new company."

"I bought the Silver membership for $16000, and paid $8000 down and pay the $8000 balance over 48 months at 0%. The 50% discount promotion is I only have pay $4000 by Feb 28 2015 and my membership will be paid up."

" I have used the price match and saved. It was very simple. I sent them a "screen cap" and they gave me 25% off the rate I found. I purchased a Gray Pearl @ Dreams Cancun for about $7000 which included 1 free week. I upgraded to Silver for another $8000 which included another free week and 2 VIP weeks ($1500 locked in rate per week). The customer service and resorts are fantastic. Other than Dreams, we have been to Secrets Capri and Secrets Silversands. They were both spectacular with exceptional customer service. I think the sales people can be VERY misleading which leads to many negative reviews. I am pretty savvy with finding travel deals, but I am really uncertain how people claim the can book a package cheaper than UVC rates. I understand agencies can offer a discount when you bundle room + flight, I have ALWAYS been able to make out considerably better with the discount on the room and finding my own flights. If you have FF miles, you can save A TON. Overall we are happy. Although I feel I was deceived by both sales reps, their saving grace is their exceptional customer service and their very nice resorts." 

" we found AM Resorts / Unlimited Vacation Club to be misrepresented. We understood that we would receive 140 all-inclusive days over 10 years for $10,000. We discovered that we received only 7 all-inclusive days and must pay for the balance. In other words, we gave them $10,000 for a one-week stay at Now Larimar in Punta Cana. The next time (if there is a next time) we will supposedly receive a 25% discount for the hotel room. Not a very good deal for that amount of money. The presentation was misleading. It turned out to be a scam."

We are currently at secrets aura in Cozumel. the offer was the silver membership but add NO blackout dates, add all benefits of platinum except NO Zoetry. The only drawback of Silver i was told is for the free upgrades, we are competing w Gold, Platinum and Diamond.  They bought back the 1 free week (bc that has blackout dates). Total cost for 30 years - $19,000 + 1999 closing fee. 25% down 48 months at 9% interest.

The Club is unique i will say that. I am a member, had a horrible experience after i brought it. Then i figured out how to use the club. Can you make up on your money on Future trips. Heck yea you can. Use your 2 free weeks at peak time if you can. That alone will get you most of your moneys worth out of the deal. also remember to price match your trip after you book it with them. Also make sure you price match from the sites they tell you can you use. find the price and 25% off of that price and if its less than what you paid send the the screen shot and they will get you your money back.

We own Gold Plus and we just came back from Secrets using our 2 free weeks and miles. trip expense zero. And I still have 6 free weeks left. my membership i guess is fine.

We just upgraded our package to Gold membership from original Pearl package that we bought 3 years ago.  I don't think you can cancel it. When we first bought the package, we had terrible buyers remorse. We tried to cancel but they didn't let us. However, I'm glad we didn't. The free nights and vip weeks made up for the cost. Plus we where able to earn some more free nights through referral program.

I don't think UVC membership is a scam. Its not perfect but the services are real. You can book your vacations on a short notice, without any blackout days, and no maintenance fees. Free weeks are real as well.

Gold Plus. But my friends bought a 110,000$ Diamond package and they are happy. I guess it depends how often you travel and how much luxury do you need. They are family of 6 adults, who spend roughly 30,000$ on vacations a year. First, when they told me the price I was shocked , but when we revised the contract it makes sense.

If you are spending 4,000$ per couple, times 3 rooms, times 3 trips a year, equals 36,000$ a year. In 3 years you would spend 110,000$ anyways. So, if you get 36 free weeks, you break even in 3 to 4 years and the rest is savings.  If you don't travel that much you should be looking on a different package.

36 Premier weeks free in the Preferred Club. Roughly that's a 110,000 $ value. Plus they have an exclusivity Registry Collection, Presidential Suites that normally goes 10-15,000$ a week. Plus some other extras. I don't remember full details. But Em sure if anyone is interested in buying this package, UVC would gladly explain you the full details.

I own a white pearl package. Why do you feel its a scam? I used it 3 times. First 2 trips were free(I used the premier weeks) and the 3rd one was 1500$. I'm even thinking to upgrade my package to a higher level.

Hi There - Just a comment for all those who are 'on the fence' about UVC membership. Note that this is a membership that gives you access to discounted rooms at selected resorts and hotels. It is not a 'fractional' ownership like a timeshare where you get a free week, every year (or every other year), of a given size, at a certain place - depending on your contract. UVC membership is just like a Costco or Sams Club; but given the price - its probably closer to a Direct Buy membership. For comparison purposes if you bought a 30 yr, 1 week/yr timeshare, paid the yearly maintenance and never went - you would have 30 free weeks in your last year. However, if you bought a 30 yr UVC membership, and never went - you would have nothing at the end (promotional freebies at the start normally expire in 7 yrs).  We were offered a 50yr diamond membership at $139,000 while at Dreams Sands Cancun. We whittled it down to $25,004 - by cutting the time in half (like I'm gonna be here in 50 yrs!), taking out the yacht (yeah like we would use that!), Zoetry access and the top 2 premium room levels, but get 35 free days and 4 RCI weeks. The membership discount would get us to about $104/night at Secrets Cancun - which we liked a lot. BUT in the end, we DID NOT take it since we felt the room rates will get more competitive with the help of the internet and other group discounts.

The original messages don't make any sense. UVC value so far is not bad at all. We purchased the pearl plan with contract to upgrade to premiere within 1 year. These are all inclusive resorts with gratuities paid. I normally pay 10-15k in vacations every year and now we get similar vacations for 3-4K each year. Once we pay off the 10k the savings is in the bank. Plus we got 2 unlimited weeks and access to Regency Collection for 2 years. I've traveled for years so let me tell you that there is great value in UVC if you use it. FYI, with premiere plan u get $9000 in cruise credits per year.

My husband and I bought it. We even upgraded last year. We get 6 free weeks vacation per years and 6 weeks at 1600 dollars every six years. I think it will pay off at a point. We haven't really used RCI just yet, but if we use all the weeks I mentioned, it will be well worth it. The weeks are all preferred club too.

 I see that this post is a year old, but I think it’s a great question and wish more people would reply to it. I assume people are afraid they paid too much or just don’t want to spend the time. I look at it like this, do you have an Amex Platinum card? If so, you will save money with this membership. If you are the type of person to spend 2 weeks comparing 7 travel sites for your family to take their $1500 yearly vacation, then this is probably not for you. Do you join a motorcycle club when you only ride once a year? Do you join a yacht club when you don’t have a yacht? Then why join a vacation club unless you take vacations?? That said, this club is very niche. If you like adventurous vacations, this is not for you. They only have a very limited number of hotels and are mostly in Mexico and the Caribbean, all beach type resorts.Ok, let’s move onto the numbers. I joined on 3/15 at the Now Jade in Cancun. I don’t remember the offers they first gave us for Gold and Silver, but they were too much. Finally they started taking things away and we ended up agreeing to the following (which was just paid off last month!)

White Pearl Membership

Blackouts on Major Holidays and Festive Weekends

Level 6 (Deluxe & Junior Suites)

RCI Exchange Nights - 210, never used, costs too much, we tried 3 times, twice all inclusive they ended up having huge fees per person per day and once they couldn’t find a room anywhere in the city to accommodate 5 people (3 months advance booking). Garbage.

Premier Nights (which are free nights) 14

Purchase Price 8950

Closing costs 799

Down Payment 50%, the rest 0% interest over 3 years, plus they would call every couple months offering an additional 5% discount if I paid in full

We had some complaints on our room and were immediately upgraded to the governors suite, ocean view, for 5 nights, very nice.

Our first free trip was to Sunscape in Jamaica, upgraded to an Ocean Front suite for 5 nights for 2 adults 2 children and a baby. That room upgrade would have cost us an additional $750/night

I compared to a couple travel sites and that hotel for the days we stayed would have been 4,000.

So I still have 9 free nights to use and I have already gotten my money’s worth.

I have not used the discount because I still have free nights to use, so I can’t speak to that, which is technically the entire reason for the membership, but once those are gone we will try it out. Again, the locations are limited so we find that we don’t use it a whole lot, but if you can get 14 nights (that was a hard push, required manager approval) it is worth it!

Also, in Jamaica we went to another presentation and almost upgraded, but if you upgrade you LOSE your unused free nights! So be careful, wouldn’t have known if I didn’t read the entire contract.

We joined the UVC in Oct 2017, paid $7900 plus $800 for the white pearl. I take exception to SMUSHIE's response that people are fooled into doing something stupid like joining a VC. Why? We did the MATH, plain and simple. We live in Vancouver Canada. We will break even after about 8 years of vacations, after that it is saving us money, so for the 15 year term we will pay way less versus buying our vacations online...etc.   If you can't go every year then yes I agree it is a WASTE of money. If you go every year then it is WELL worth it !   That's how these things work, time shares, vacation clubs are only a worthwhile investment if you USE THEM EVERY YEAR !

So you pay a monthly membership for 10,15, 30 or even 40 yrs at 9% interest (a Lot these days) which can be as low as $200 per month or as high as $500/mo) plus whatever resort u go to as cheap $80 pp/per night + flight (not included) we did the numbers and we don't save anything by joining! We figure if you only travel to Caribbean and get cheap flights and do so more than once per year then it might be worth it! It bothered us there is a one time lawyer (contract) fee of $799 to 1500 . Anyway we declined and off we went! They offered us over 5 different scenarios but we declined all of them for the above reasons!

I purchased the White Pearl at $7,600 plus the $700 processing fee. I got 7 premium nights and 15 years, plus the RCI for two year and the other partners benefits. My first vacation after buying was at NOW Jade; I received NO benefits while I was there. They told me I could only dine at certain restaurants, I wasn't allowed in the preferred club and it took me over an hour to check in because the lady with the AM resorts kept walking off and told me to wait on the bench so other people started going in front of me. I requested a ground floor room because my husband who is 65, had a knee injury. The resort was not full and they said they didn't have any rooms to upgrade us to. We were stuck in a room at the back of the resort on the third floor and the elevator was not working most of the time. When I questioned them and told them I was a white pearl member, they said they have never heard of that membership. When I sat with the sales person, Peppie, about four days later, he basically told me I got nothing with that membership, not even the restaurants. I called UVC when I got back home and they said I should have received those privileges. There were other problems too but I don't want to be petty. Since it is already paid for, I guess I'll see what I get next time. It is a shame that they didn't offer something for my losses and it was there fault for not informing their staff that a "White Pearl" membership existed. Oh yeah, the funny part is that Peppie got mad when I wouldn't purchase the upgrade, he asked me why not. I asked him if he would keep putting money into an old car that he couldn't drive. He got mad and slammed his book shut and walked off.....poor Peppie.

My husband and I bought the 5 year package at $4,000 Choices at Dreams in Huatulco, blackout holidays with no interest for two years. They gave us Secrets for $100 each for two nights that day to stay at the following two nights and one free week at Secrets to be used after two years when plan paid off. Two weeks to travel with 6-8 people at any RCI hotel for $685 a week for rooms for all. We travel three weeks per week if not more so it was definitely worth it for us. No children we take advantage of Secrets.

We paid $10k + $799 closing fee for 20 years. Black outs on major holidays. $150 / year membership.  2 years of RCI included. Seems like we could have bargained lower to $5-7k based on this thread :(.   This was at Dreams Nuevo Vallarta. Its tough to say no when you are in vacation mode and the salesmen are really good. They are just trying to make a living so I don't blame them. But only time will tell if this club membership will be worth it. Maybe if we stay on top of all the benefits and plan ahead well. Lesson learned is not to get into the pressure room to begin with. Just ask for the best offer sheet and meet on your own terms, not in the "presentation room".

 

 

Yikes... BBB ain't looking good

Interesting Review worth reading. I agree with their summary:  https://creditcarrots.com/unlimited-vacation-club-review/

WOW .. this document is an eye-opener!!! 13 SHOCKING SECRETS The timeshare industry does not want you to know

 

TRIPADVISOR discussions

944 replies: Overall discussion https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g659488-i11442-k4540320-Unlimited_Vacation_Club_AMResorts_Dreams_Secrets_Zoetry-Riviera_Maya_Yucatan_Peninsula.html

78 replies:  UVC Costs:  https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i10700-k10185059-Unlimited_Vacation_Club_costs-Timeshares_Vacation_Rentals.html

1347 replies  UVC Members only 'please' : https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i10700-k6954399-Unlimited_Vacation_Club_Members_Only_Please-Timeshares_Vacation_Rentals.html 

637 replies Need Help to Canx!  :  https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i10700-k8179711-Need_help_to_cancel_UVC_Unlimited_Vacation_Club_contract-Timeshares_Vacation_Rentals.html