Shell Vacations Club

5/10/2022. Called Shell Vacations Club to speak to the exit department. I kept getting messages that they were closed. I spoke to the main operator and asked for their open hours and was told 11:30 to 8 pm. When I called it was during those hours. The receptionist was flustered and acted like he didn't know what to tell me. He said just a moment put me on hold and then came back and gave me a different phone number to call like care department or something like that and said he would transfer me because they didn't have their own phone number. Put on hold and eventually the whole damn system hung up on me.

I was on hold for 1 hr. 25+ min. Transferred by 3 people, 2 of whom asked all the same annoying questions. Called on a second phone simultaneously for more than 25 min before hanging up, because someone finally answered the phone of the 1 hr 25 min call. One of the people (Charmaine) stated the account for which we pay a monthly maintenance fee was inactive. Totally untrue. Shell has one of the worst systems I have ever seen. They tell you to pay on line, but every time we attempt to pay online, the system tells us our account is locked.

Shell Vacations Club (now owned by Wyndham) is the most unethical organization I have ever dealt with. DO NOT ATTEND THEIR SALES PRESENTATIONS!!!! You will get hounded by their sales staff and you will be roped into a scam by their deceptive sales tactics. They made purchasing a timeshare sound like a dream. Telling us straight lies to make their timeshare more appealing. They never provided us a public offering statement, made misrepresentations of our right to rescission, told us their timeshare was an investment, and more. ALL LIES!!!! On top of this, we have written complaint letters to them and they have completely ignored us.

We were very disappointed in Shell Vacation Club. We got into this in 2013 and have since paid thousands of dollars out of our retirement fund and savings to pay Shell. We ran out of money and can no longer afford to pay unnecessary bills such as the timeshare. We told Shell many times over the years this didn’t suit us, it wasn’t anything like we were proposed it would be, and that we just don’t need this. For us, it is a headache and doesn’t work with our life. We were beyond thrilled last year when we were told our account was being canceled.

My husband and I purchased two timeshares from Shell Vacations Club which Shell has now sold to Wyndham Vacations Club. Wyndham has now informed us that unless we purchase into their program we can only go use the properties that we bought at. That is not the terms of the purchase agreement that we signed with Shell Vacations Club. It was that we purchased so many points and we could use it at Shell Vacations Club properties. We should not have to go into another debt in order to able to use what we already paid for. Now they want us to continue paying dues for only two properties when we were supposed to be able have access to at minimum 20-30 properties. We both feel that they have now broke the contract and are not upholding to their part of the deal, but want us to keep paying our monthly dues to maintain their properties.

Have been trying to negotiate arrears with maintenance fees. There is no negotiating! While being not current, loss of points banked and paid for. Can’t exit program until current. If I get current just to qualify to get out of this messy terrible “timeshare” I will still lose. Just the worst feeling of paying for nothing in return.

Shell vacations is one of the most SCANDALOUS companies I have ever been involved with. Do not waste your time and your hard earned money. Shell held me in a “short” presentation for over 2 hours. I am a physician and made it very known that I wanted to be able to travel to Nepal for medical mission work. They assured me I could do it using points but you need an astronomical amount of points to travel to Nepal. I attended another presentation that they told me was a “owner update” and they told me, "Oh this isn't right. The last person probably didn't know what they were doing!" Well it feels like nobody at Shell knows what they are doing and it's costing me money! I’d much rather use that money to pay towards the medical mission trips to help those less fortunate than the greedy people at Shell Vacations.

Wyndham is full of scam artists. Don’t fall for their lies. I have been completely disappointed by Wyndham, their product, and staff. We were lied to from day 1 in our presentation. The sales reps were pushy and gave us false information to trick us in to buying a timeshare. When we said we wanted to vacation near Universal Studios, our salesman said we’d be able to get discounted park tickets as owners, but that never happened. My husband and I REPEATEDLY told them we could not afford to purchase the timeshare but that did not stop them! All they did was offer smaller packages with lower prices no matter how many times we said that my husband was not currently employed.

We were SVC members for about 15 years. In the beginning we really enjoyed it, but once Wyndham came into the picture, things changed. In 2016, during our membership update, we were told that we could join Wyndham now or stay an SVC member forever. We decided to join Wyndham at that point. To join Wyndham, we had to buy more points. At our membership update in 2019, we asked why we could not make any Wyndham reservations. The Shell/Wyndham person working with us said they were more like "Side door members of Wyndham." Yes that is a quote. If we wanted to be able to use our Wyndham membership, we would have to upgrade our membership by buying more points.

BEWARE! If you are thinking of buying into a timeshare at Inn at the Opera, please think twice. Once they have you they disappear out of the picture leaving you holding the bag. We owned a week at the Inn at the Opera for many years. We are getting on in age and do not travel much anymore so we decided to deed it back to Shell Vacations (now also known as Wyndham Vacation Resorts). The transaction was completed in March 2020. When we received the annual property tax bill from the City of San Francisco, we sent it to Wyndham/Shell to accepted ownership of the property. Apparently, they ignored it.