The OFT has obtained enforcement orders in the High Court against two companies and seven people stopping them using sales and marketing practices the OFT considers to be misleading or otherwise unlawful when selling and marketing holiday club memberships and other holiday based products.
Interim enforcement orders were obtained against Personal Travel Group Limited (PTG), Geo Demographic Market Research Limited (GDMR) and two people who are directors of PTG and were directors of Incentive Leisure Group Limited (ILG). Final enforcement orders were obtained against five people associated with PTG and GDMR, one of whom was also a former director of ILG. (No interim enforcement order was sought against ILG as it is not trading and is in liquidation in Gibraltar.)
The OFT was concerned that holders of timeshare products attended presentations on the promise of being able to dispose of their timeshares, with their maintenance charges, when in fact they were subjected to lengthy and high pressure sales pitches to be sold expensive holiday club memberships costing large sums, sometimes up to £12,000. Sales staff told these holders they could get back up to 95 per cent of these sums under a ‘reclaim’ scheme but did not explain the restrictions that applied, and often played on their fears that their children would otherwise be liable for timeshare maintenance fees. Many consumers then wished to cancel their holiday club memberships but were not allowed to.
Jason Freeman, Director in the OFT’s Goods and Consumer Group, said: ‘The enforcement orders put a stop to activities that we consider to be unlawful, and which we believe were causing serious harm to consumers.
‘It is important that traders do not mislead consumers or exploit their fears in order to make a hard sell. In particular, these are contracts where we believe consumers should have been given cancellation rights and we are pleased that the traders have accepted that they have to give notice of such rights in accordance with the law.’
http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/05/leigh-ve-it-out-you-lot.html
Leave us your experience.
See ILG’s April 2011 update here:
Mindtimeshare 
THIS IS A REQUEST FROM A CONSUMER:
Important re- LEISURE MARKETING of Tenerife
in 2010 we were ripped off by a company claiming to validate our Reclaim Cert on the basis that we purchased Holiday time with Cash back for 3 years. Under Section 75 we have reached a stale mate with a ‘third party’ clause,the problem being that our Credit Card deposit is not in the same name as the trading coy who sold us the holiday, we have to prove an association by documentation to FOS
We ask has anyone dealt with Travel Group Sl , or its other name Travel Group Administration ( The name on our CC receipt )
All our correspondence was with and in the name of LEISURE MARKETING both companies use the same Address and contact details
WE are required to prove that TGA own or are associated with LM and or have one or more common Directors.
If any one has faced the same Claim problem as us with these TGA and LM how did it get resolved.or by whom to contact to resolve
If anyone has correspondence with Director(s) names or both company names to show an association such as on behalf or for etc., can you submit a copy to Senor Alberto Garcia for onward submission to us Any help on this matter would be appreciated
Thank you Bill G
Excellent site…..
Would you have the names, address’s and phone numbers of the ILG Directors, all part of the deceased Garry Lee empire presumably please?
Hi Robin
What you infact saying is that they’re a legit company? I have my doubts and using my cooling off period to (hopefully) get out of the contract
Dear Tina,
Thanks for participating in the blog. We are sending you some information by email.
Is your contract with ILG recent?
Regards
Custmer Care
This comment was posted from my email address. However, I believe it was posted by one of the guests who were staying with me at the time, and 2 of the 3 were VERY vocal about how they believed I had been scamed, and what a fool I was to (1) have bought timeshare in the first place. (2) Been talked into parting with it, AND paying for the “unloading” of it.
I was as vocal in my reply, and countered their arguments by stating that I had paid by Amex card, and that would make the company traceable worldwide, even 36 months down the line.
I further pointed out that I had NOT bought into any other scheme or timeshare, although I HAD paid an extra amount to be included in the Cashback Europe registration. This brought gales of laughter from these 2, and it all got a bit ugly, encouraged by some liberal alchoholic sustenance. All was settled the next morning over a late breakfast, but I think that there may have been some “fishing” from one or both these parties after the supper party broke up. All 3 had access to my computer for the purposes of web searches and retrieving their mail through my connection.
I intend taking up this subject with the most vocal of them next week, when I will be in JHB on business.
I am now putting it on record that I do not believe that Penthouse Portfolio South Africa has any connection with Incentive Leisure Group U.K. or any other bankrupt group of operators.
I would further like anyone who thinks that there is any scam going on here to furnish proof of their allegations on this website.
Robin B Smith
Cape Town
South Africa.
After, right now, reading warnings on the net about Cashback Europe PLC, which I only came across whilst “registering my claim” with them, I believe with some horror, that I have been double scammed in one go.
I was interested in selling my Holiday Club timeshare and shares in a shareblock apartment scheme. I was contacted, out of the blue, by a group claiming to represent “1000’s of clients in Europe and the USA who had successfully sued, and been paid out” in Class Action legal actions against RCI, and other timeshare schemes worldwide. They claimed to be collecting a data base of clients to bring an action against The Holiday Club, and RCI South Africa. They also offered to take the “Worthless” timeshare I own off my hands, with the money being recoverable in 36 months time through Cashback Europe PLC. I had to pay in the sum of R40,000 ( GBP 3,672) for which I would receive a cashback voucher, and which, with annual increases in levies, amounted to the least I would be paying over in levies in the next 3 years anyway, a fact. I would no longer have “the burden of paying the annual resort levies,” and they would handle the “unburdening me of the timeshare trap I was in”, as well as the registering of my part in the lawsuit they were proposing, and the payout of any money received from this proposed Class Action Suit against the Timeshare Companies, on my behalf. As part of this deal, I have signed Surrender Forms giving this company, Penthouse Portfolio Group the rights to the Title Deeds, of both, my Holiday Club points, and the shares in the Shareblock Time Module that was my owned apartment week in the building. I was told that I “was just in time for the last block of cashback claim registrations for December 2010.” I was told I should receive my voucher no later than 18 January 2011. When I enquired 2 months later why I had not yet received my cash back certificate, I was told that they appologised for the late registering of my claim, which “had only just taken place” due to them not having put the credit card payment through until the end of December, which is a fact. I was asked, however, to sign a transfer of ownership for both the “worthless properties.”
I now suspect that, not only have they got ME to pay THEM, about the supposed market value of these two “worthless” items, but that they have also already sold the points on to some other sucker, and now own a 2 bedroomed, 6 sleeper week in a beachfront apartment in Durban!!! I also now suspect that they got my contact details from the Holiday Club after I asked them about resale options on my points. I see in one of the published warnings on the web that the owner of Holiday Club is also a major holder in Cashback Europe!!
After reading this back, all I can say, after bashing my own head against the wall, is . . What a PILLOCK!!!
My wife and I were “taken in” completely by people representing the Incentive Leisure Group at their Manchester office. We were
told that our membership of a reputable timeshare company would attract ever-higher management fees (which was
true) but that ILG would take care of these fees. We then had to pay in the region of £6,000 to be ILG members.
All the many advantages of such membership, including almost free holidays in five-star resorts, came to nothing and
our money just disappeared. Letters and phone calls remained unanswered.
Great news for some only wish I could have some of my monies back and they lock them???? up for a long time.