Worldwide Timeshare Hypermarket's Phil Watson Talks To BBC Radio Somerset

June 28, 2011 - PRLog -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mX3LazuZRc

Phil Watson “The Timeshare Lord” was today part of a discussion group with presenter Vernon Harwood on BBC Radio Somerset talking about the recent demise of St. Frances Marketing Ltd based in Exeter, who were operating a “Holiday Club” scam involving hundreds of victims. The company had recently been taken to court by Devon Trading Standards for “unfair trading” where 5 senior staff were ordered to pay £150,000 in costs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mX3LazuZRc



Unfortunately, they were spared a potential two year prison sentence because they all pleaded guilty. The decision not to jail the five defendants who ran this scam company has been criticised by ABTA for not being a strong enough deterrent.

ABTA risk manager Steve Abrahamson said “It was disappointing they weren’t given custodial sentences. However, I am pleased that Devon Trading Standards bought action against the company and the individuals concerned and hope that it sends a strong message that these types of practices won’t be tolerated.”

Members of the public were generally cold called and told that they had won a free holiday and in order to claim the prize they had to attend a presentation. It was at this presentation that customers were conned into paying between £8,000 and £17,000, and some were persuaded to take on finance to pay.

Judge Philip Wassall of the Exeter Crown Court said the practises were “wholesale and systematic, adding their customers were nothing but their “victims”.

During the show we heard from one of the members Carol Richards from Watford who had been caught out by this scam and in her words she “felt very foolish and pretty stupid”. All I can say is that I feel very sorry for this couple but as Vernon said later in the show “haven’t the people who fall for this only got them-selves to blame?”  
The answer to this question is very simple and that is “yes!” as most of these people respond to a cold call on the telephone and the greed factor kicks in. My answer to this is if you haven’t contacted the company in the first place then put the phone down as the old saying goes “If it’s too good to be true ~ then it is”.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom as we did get a phone in from a gentleman called Sheridan in Bridgewater who has owned timeshare since 1989 and currently owns two weeks in Tenerife. He went on to say that he had, had many good holidays both at his resort in Los Cristianos and on exchanges through RCI, but what really made my day was when he told us that the management fee was only £400 for his apartment that slept up to 6 people. This only goes to show that there are lots of people out there who own and enjoy their timeshare.

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Worldwide Timeshare Hypermarket are Europe's leading timeshare resale company and have undertaken many new initiatives aimed at educating the public to the benefits of timeshare.