Welk Resort Group

I again called on March 15 and was able to get a hold of a representative name Kay. Kay, along with the advice of her supervisor (Trish **), stated that they will have to charge me for the hotel stay of $59.99 as a no show, without any consideration to the Coronavirus nor the unexpected circumstances of our children's school closure. The conversation was all business. No personal touch to the current crisis and fear of travel, just business. This is a very disgraceful act for a company to not consider a world pandemic and proceed business as usual

Being so frustrated, we decided to cancel our entire reservation with them for touring their property. We do not want to business with a company that has zero human touch and the inability to provide empathy or understand the need to provide flexibility during a worldwide crisis. Disgraceful. This is also when we realized our deposit is non-refundable. Kay and her supervisor, Trish **, refused to refund. They offered a better hotel in the future, which is not what we're interested in. We are/were interested in possibly purchasing at timeshare with Welk, but we a disgraceful act as such, that is no longer the case. When a company cannot adapt to unforeseen circumstances, you do not want to do business with them.

Overnight on Christmas day there was a big rainstorm. The room that we were in was partially sub floor level. The closet where the bride’s wedding gown, my own gown, all the clothes and dresses for the various wedding events were hanging, as well as all the shoes for all the gowns and dresses that were on the floor of that closet, completely flooded. This was not a small leak, but a full on flood. Everything was soaked. This was literally thousands of dollars worth of property that we had spent at least the last 9 months buying and preparing for the wedding scheduled to take place a week later. It was clearly visible that there was a major crack in the exterior wall at the side of the villa where the water must have rushed in.

My main concern was to try to rescue anything that I could and even more so, to keep the bride, from finding out what had happened to her dresses, property etc., as she literally would have had a nervous break down. Luckily she was not in the villa that morning when I woke to see the flood. As soon as I got everything out of the closet, I went to the front desk. There was no manager available. There was only an assistant manager available who, in spite of being very sympathetic, told me that this was way above his authority and ability to deal with. I remained calm and polite. There were literally over a thousand guest at this property and there was no one available or present in a capacity of authority who could deal with this. The assistant agreed with me that we must keep this situation from the bride since at all cost, he wanted to avoid creating a scene at the resort.

Obviously, the bedroom was no longer usable and when the assistant asked me once if I wanted to move, I said to him that in order to do that I would have to tell the bride what had happened. He immediately agreed again that we should not tell the bride and not change rooms since that would create a terrible scene for him that he was not in authority nor capable of handling and that it would have created even more chaos and I now had to concentrate on repairing all the damage done before the wedding that was happening the following week.

They attempted to clean the room before the bride returned to the villa but the person trying to vacuum up the water told me there was too much water and he couldn't get it all up. The bedroom also started to smell moldy immediately. Clearly this was not the first time this had happened. I closed the door so that the bride wouldn't see what had occurred and never used the bedroom again. Since her room was on the other side of the villa, she remained unaware of what had happened.

Days went by and not a single manager or person in authority tried to contact me. Because I had so many things that took precedent to deal with, which included the wedding event, rehearsal, dinners, guests and relatives arriving to stay at the wedding venue in La Jolla, and now trying to replace and repair the damage that was done to my property without the bride finding out and the total chaos this created for me, I told the assistant that if they would just reverse the charges of our stay there, I would be happy to settle everything. He told me he didn't have the authority and didn't know why no manager or director had contacted me but refused to give me any contact information of anyone who could help me.

Over the next few days, I kept going back to the front desk and asking to speak the general manager of the hotel. Each time I was told that there was no manager available on the premises. They were on vacation and there was no one in charge present. The only person I could speak to each time was the same assistant who kept telling me that he was "completely on my side" but his position didn't allow him to reverse the charges and rectify the situation.

I never argued or lost my temper with him or any other person there as I was being respectful of the fact that there were at least a thousand other guests there for the holidays and I was trying to be considerate. In hindsight, perhaps that was a mistake as ultimately management was completely ungrateful and rude to me. Each time I kept asking why isn't anyone "in authority" contacting me and he didn't know. Each time (at least 5) I politely asked for contact information for the general manager of the hotel so that I could contact them and they refused to give it to me or tell me how to speak to someone who could help me. When we checked out of the hotel, Christmas had passed days before and still no one contacted me. Again, I asked for contact information since we were leaving and moving on to the wedding venue and the assistant refused!

Five days after the flood, days after we had checked out, the afternoon before the wedding a PR person named Hutch ** contacted me. Needless to say I was completely preoccupied at that point with the wedding but he claimed he knew nothing about what had happened (even though the assistant had previously assured me that “corporate” was fully aware of everything that had happened) and he made me explain everything in detail, to him. He was clearly disturbed and sympathetic. He said thank you so much for being so patient and reiterated to me how grateful he was and how smart it was that I didn't and still hadn't told the bride what had happened, which was one of the main reasons for not changing rooms at the resort. He even said to me that he could only imagine what a horrible situation it would be if that had happened to his daughter.

He told me that he was on my side and that he really appreciated and admired the way I had handled everything. He told me that he promised I would never have to repeat the story to anyone again, that he would deal with the whole thing and that he would keep me up to date and stay in touch with me and call me every step of the way. I thanked him and said just don't call me during the wedding which was the next day. I didn't hear from him again for 15 days. I managed to get his phone number off my cell phone. After the wedding, I kept calling him and leaving messages and he NEVER called me or contacted again for 15 days.

When I finally got him on the phone, he made excuses about having so many other messages to answer and being busy in many meetings. He said that he had discussed the flooding of the villa with his superiors and it was decided by his bosses, that they would not refund me anything but if I gave him receipts they would consider paying for the cleaning of things. He said I should have changed rooms.

I had to explain to Mr. ** that the issue being addressed here is NOT that we didn’t change rooms (which the assistant manager agreed was not a feasible option) but: A) The flood had already happened and changing rooms would not have changed the fact that your facility needed to take responsibility for the flood that had occurred not cause more stress and inconvenience to the guest. B) I would have had to tell the bride what had happened and that the assistant asked me not to tell the bride since there would have been a completely unmanageable scene created for him to manage. C) That regardless of the thousands of dollars in property damage and the immense stress and chaos this created, anyone staying in a hotel room that was flooded should NOT be charged for their stay there.

His response to me was that this was his superior’s decision and there was nothing he could do about it. When I kept asking him to give the contact information of the people that had made this decision he refused to give me anyone's name or contact and he refused to go back to his superiors to reconsider. He left me with no option except to try to stop payment on my credit card. I hope you as CEO can help me and correct this horrible treatment at your resort.

I went to 1 owner's update, where they put us in a really bad room, then tried showing how great a room we could've had, then asked me to pay more to get more. The heck?! Why would I up my time, when I'd be paying a Ton more? I called and asked nicely for them to just let us out of the deal, but they just said they'd take it back if I pay off the loan. So I'll go buy a car, then just give it back to the dealer? This company is nuts! High maintenance fees, for 2 days per year. Think twice before you buy into them. I have 3 other timeshares and they are awesome. This place is a joke and they won't let you out of a bogus deal.