Yes you have understood the question correctly. Indeed it sounds really strange that people sign up for a so called No Win No Fee Action Group but pay over £6000 upfront. But this is something that is really happening. Something that seems to be a “normal” procedure in the meetings set up by ITRA – International Timeshare Refund Action.
Through different connected companies such as Victoria Marketing, Sherlock Marketing, Information Advice Bureau, Timeshare Release, to name a couple of them, Timeshare owners are invited to a meeting. These meetings are held in the UK, Spain and Portugal. Most of the Timeshare owners attending these meetings are doing so because they have been told and re-assured that all they will be informed about is a No Win No Fee Class Action against their “Resort”, The Timeshare Industry or the Exchange Organisations.
We received the testimonial of a Timeshare owner who had the bad luck to be invited to such meeting as well and attended the one in Manchester. He was cold called and the lady on the phone explained to them that ITRA is compiling a case against the industry for misrepresentation and are willing to include the Timeshare owner in a ‘No Win No Fee’ case (they need around 30,000 applicants and will go to court in approx. 18-24 months).
At this meeting from ITRA most of the time was certainly not taken up by the Action Group Information. After filling in a simple questionnaire the timeshare owners were informed that they had grounds to claim against their resort. Strange enough, everybody seems to be qualified to claim…
Then the Timeshare owner was asked about his membership and if he realised that he would be stuck with this for the rest of his life and worse even, after he dies the family, children, grandchildren will be liable for the fees and debts. (Perpetuity clause).
Like many others the Timeshare owners was caught by surprise here and without any possibility to check these facts out with his resort. For a price of around £6000 the so called “legal team of Spanish Lawyers” from ITRA would take care of the disposal of the timeshare. A deposit of around £500 was requested on the day and the balance payment to be done in the following account:
Account Name:- Sochalls LLP Delmar International Limited
Sort Code:- 309384
Account:- 23992060
Email address:- Beth Pryce admin@delmarinternationalltd.com
And this is how people end up going to a No Win No Fee meeting and sometimes lose all their savings because they think or have been convinced that this is the only way out.
Sad part of this story though is that most owners are not aware that a lot of resorts nowadays have changed their rules or at least are offering a way out to those owners who are in need to cancel the membership. So stating that everybody is stuck with their timeshare for ever and beyond is really not true.
We have done some research on this company Delmar International Limited and although we could not find them at the UK Companies House, there is a company registered in Gibraltar by this name and registration number 41551. The company appears as “Active” but under Company Status it shows “Struck off by the Registrar”. Seen the history of ITRA and Club Class Group of Companies with Gibraltar registered companies, we suspect that this is possibly the one they are using for these payments.
So please be very careful when you receive a cold call and are invited for a No Win No Fee claim because this can turn out to be a very expensive meeting!
Always check out the company first, and if attending such meeting, listen to the offer but don’t make a decision on the day and certainly do NOT pay any fees towards such services there and then.
Any statement made about your Timeshare Membership or Resort should always be verified with the resort. Don’t just take anybody’s word for granted and certainly not if this means paying thousands of pounds!
If you have been approached already on a cold call for a similar meeting invite, then please do let us know. You can email us at customercare@mindtimeshare.com or place a comment on this blog
Mindtimeshare 
We fell for this.. phone call … went to meeting to find out 7,500 and we will defo be out of timeshare .collins Harper associates waste of time .He then said they will then get you information to claim no win no fee c** merchant .
Unfortunately I parted £6,440 on the same day of the meeting with ITRA at Brentwood office and have heard nothing from them at all so can I get the money back?
I recieved this yesterday from WARWICKSHIRE CONSULTANTS following a cold call…
THOUGHTS??
We are dealing with Time share members for the potential mis-selling of their contracts.
A number of factors are taken into account such as:
· If they sold the product to you as an ‘investment’ which is untrue, timeshare is now a financial burden for 90% of owners due to the escalating maintenance fees.
· If they didn’t explain the perpetuity aspect on the contract to you i.e. the fact that when you do pass away it is deemed as part of your estate and will pass on to your children or next of kin who will then be liable for those maintenance charges.
· Lack of Availability after being promised 5 star holidays whenever and wherever.
· If you wasn’t informed that the maintenance would rise by 10-15% every year.
These are just a few cases of a potentially mis-sold contract, there are many more…
Here at Warwickshire Consultants we are working with a number of legal teams across the UK and in partnership with Third Party Lawyers running compensation claims against your time share on a No Win No Fee basis in an attempt to retrieve the monies you have paid out over the duration of your ownership and in purchasing it. Should we be able to mount a successful claim on your behalf then the compensation would be split 70-30 with
yourselves taking the majority share, this is how we make our money.
Of course, should we be unsuccessful then you will not be liable for any fees.
If the claim on your behalf is successful then you will still be deemed a member of your time share and still be entitled to use your annual
allowance and any banked weeks/points.
All of legal actions are processed by RSB Legal Ltd, who would deal with collating information for the’ no win no fee claim’.
They are based in Redditch, Worcestershire which gives you the added security of the fact we are working under and governed by UK law.
At this stage we do not know if we can help you with your specific ownership until we can appropriate some details from yourselves in
regards to it, at which stage we will then pass them along to 1 of our legal assessors to study your file and deem if you do have a valid case
to claim.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
Warwickshire Consultants
I got a call from Victoria Marketing inviting me to a no win no fee meeting on the Costa del Sol. They said they would get 40% of any damages that were awarded. Also said they would pay for trip of up to 3 days to go and sign the class action. Tried to scare me with perpetuity etc.
I agreed to them sending me information and when i opened it the first thing I did was google the company name to see if all was well. (I have learnt to always do this with any cold call and doubly so when it is to do with timeshare – everyone should always do this as it takes a few minutes and you can save yourself a lot of cash and a great deal of wasted time and unwanted stress).
Happily my google search came up straight away with several links to the Mindtimeshare site which clearly told me to keep well away from this bunch.
i would like to thank the people at Mindtimeshare for the good work they are doing helping people to avoid these pitfalls, well done guys.
I am so glad to have found this. Got a phone call on Friday regarding claiming back money but my husband wasn’t at home and I explained I would have to talk it through with him first. He reckoned it might be a good idea to go to Marbella to get the ball rolling. The lady who contacted us is phoning back this evening for our decision……guess what our answer is now. Thank you for this
My husband and I nearly got caught up in the ITRA scam back on the **th August. We actually attended a meeting in Chester and believed their convincing story about how they are helping people like us to be free of our timeshare. We did state at the time that we were prepared to lose all that was paid up to-date to be rid of our financial burden but ITRA and their representative insisted that we could have so much more and claim against the resort. We parted company after allowing them to take a copy of all our details and signed their paperwork allowing them to start the process.
We had no reason to believe this was a scam at this stage, no monies were parted with and we were allowed to leave with their documentation and told we would be contacted the following day to pay a deposit of £480 to start the claim process, (we were told that there would be a balance of £3520 to be paid by the 25th August).
At the time we should have been alert enough to realize that ‘no win – no fee’ means exactly what it says, and it was only after parting with the initial deposit (paid by credit card) that the situation didn’t feel right so I started to do some research and was horrified to see that ITRA was named as one of the companies not to be trusted on the Mindtimeshare web site.
I contacted Alberto at Mindtimeshare regarding our situation and was offered some sound advice and followed this. Within 4 weeks of corresponding back and forth with Alberto, our credit card company, plus reporting this to the local authorities, we did receive our deposit back by claiming through our credit card company.
We were fortunate enough with the help and advice from Alberto and his team,not to have lost our hard earned money so cannot thank them enough.
From this bad experience I would be happy to answer any questions people have regarding our unfortunate encounter with ITRA and hope that others take note of the warnings regarding cold callers and be aware that the name ITRA is one big CON.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT ‘NO WIN – NO FEE’ MEANS EXACTLY THAT.
ALSO
IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE THEN IT QUITE POSSIBLY IS.
Best wishes
Wendy
Thanks Wendy for your praise,
This is “too good to be true” (= wonderfully promising) and it is indeed “too good to be true” (= so good that it cannot be true).
‘No-win, no-fee’ literally means that, you do not have to pay any money before knowing the outcome and if the legal claim is unsuccessful, the claimant will not have to pay the solicitor’s fees.
ITRA makes cold calls and invites timeshare owners to meetings with false arguments.
Regards.
Customer Care / Mindtimeshare
and more…
We had a meeting yesterday with this company (ITRA) in Chesterfield regarding our timeshare in Spain, we were told it was a no win no fee basis but we had to pay £4850 upfront for solicitors to act on our behalf on the day. This company expected us to make payments via credit/debit card or gave ups an option of taking out a loan or ask friends and family for the money.
I stated I am not happy with the options they suggested and will certainly not be making a payment of £4850 on the day, I also said that my understanding of no win no fee means exactly that!
We cut the meeting short and walked away.
Still having problems with delmar international ltd/solutions/sochalls/LAWOFTIMESHARE so many aliases disputing the deposit of £950 and cannot get our deeds back people beware they are very devious keep ignoring our e.mails or saying we have a virus I will carry on fighting them !
Think I have been ripped off by Delmar international is it true they ha ve been struck off by the registrar if so I can probably get the deposit if £950 back thanks
I think I might just have been scammed by delmar is it too late to get out they want £4,950 already paid the £950 on my card they are waiting for the £4,000 what do I do please help me
I attended a meeting on Tuesday at the Exeter Office of ITRA with my wife and mother in law, who are both members of the Castillo Beach Club (from 1999) and signed up for RCI points back in 2010, both of which we are trying to dispose of (not the wife and mother in law) due to increasing maintenance fees and inability to secure the right location at the right time. The meeting was interesting and we left having signed nothing, it definately wasn’t a hard sell, and we were free to walk away – whcih we did. The main thrust of the sales pitch was that the company would be able to recover both the purchase prices and reimbursment of maintenance fees for the entire time of holding. The RCI points were partially paid for by credit card (over £100) and the sales pitch at the time stated they would buy back the points at any future date for the purchase price or more so the ITRA rep suggested they conduct a Section 75 claim against the credit card company. Seemed too good to be true but then the rep stated that this would come at a cost of £5400 although we would be able to claim 60 percent of that back once the whole compensation package had been received, a total of £13000 for my wife and mother in law. We walked away and are now investigating liaising directly with Castillo Beach and RCI.
Mike
Mindtimeshare is the best thing that has ever happened to expose these scams. Alberto and his team have helped countless people including myself to steer clear of these fraudsters. Listen to the best FREE advice of all and never, ever, pay any money up front.
This is a familiar story, I was cold called some years ago and invited to such a meeting. I went and spent all of ten minutes with their so called lawyer answering a few questions which could easily have been done on the phone or on line.
Following this I was subjected to a high pressure sales pitch for “Club Class” and we all know about them. I was given the same frightening spiell, rising maintenance costs, liabilities passed on to my children and grandchildren, etc. They had a solution for me, buy a club class membership and they would take over all my timeshare liabilities, and they would give me a discounted price, but only if I signed up there and then. I said I would like to think it over and was told that if I didn’t sign up then the price would increase by several thousand pounds. Under pressure I signed and paid a deposit but only after checking there was a cooling off period in the agreement. Back at home I did my research and realised I should never have signed up. I cancelled immediately by recorded delivery post and got my money and timeshare deeds (which they had taken) back.
I was lucky but I suspect many others were not. Please please do not fall for this, these people are very clever and very persuasive but at the end of the day they are con men pure and simple.
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your testimonial. Indeed a familiar story although not many were as lucky as you to escape en not lose their money and deeds.
Plus ending up with a membership they didn’t want or need, for which they still keep on receiving requests of membership fees.
A nightmare!
Glad you you did your research on time.
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi Alberto
This is exactly the same scam I encountered some time ago, except that the £6000 was for membership of Club Class in exchange for ownership of my timeshare week. The deciding factor in my paying for membership was that I was told that timeshare ownership was in perpetuity and that management fees, increasing at around 10% a year would have to be paid forever, even after my death! Club Class seemed away out and a reasonable deal at the time. It wasn¹t!
My advice is to put down the phone as soon as the word ³ITRA² is mentioned.
Best wishes
Mike
PS All attempts to retrieve my £6000 have been unsuccessful
I very nearly got caught by this last summer. I went all the way to Slough from Kent and experienced exactly the same treatment as above. I should have been a bit more switched on when I arrived at an office in one of those buildings that rent out office space and have a general information/service desk – there was absolutely no signage on the outside for the company (my Taxi driver had difficulty locating it). I was in financial straits at the time and would have fallen for this xxxx but I had absolutely zero money in my account and told them I couldn’t pay. The demeanor of the ‘really nice man’ suddenly changed. What is really concerning though is that I found they copied all my documents which they told me to take and gave me back the photocopy of the Membership Certificate. I was left waiting in the outside lobby afterwards for an hour, for a taxi they supposedly called for me and was then taken by another team member to the station, who continued trying to pressurize me. I was widowed a few years ago and ITRA seemed to prey on that fact. Fortunately for me with support from various relatives & friends I got my certificate returned by recorded delivery, and I reported this through Action Fraud. My resort were very understanding and horrified. Net result – I will be going back there next year, and a relative is going this year. I’m hanging on to it!