A new cold caller that has been highlighted over the past week is FHA Marketing.
This company has started a very active call campaign and we received numerous inquiries asking who they were.
FHA Marketing is though yet again another company, which is cold calling on behalf of another company using the name of RSB Legal who has meetings in Redditch and Manchester.
Sounds familiar? Of course it does, because long before we had the calls from FHA Marketing there were other companies cold calling as well for the same invitation.
Anderson Read Consultancy, Warwickshire consultants, Taylor Marshall Associates, Charles Ashworth Consultants and Harwood Jones Consulting.
All these companies invite for a meeting to discuss a so called “No win No fee” claim against the resort or exchange company.
After the initial contact by phone, the timeshare consumer is sent an email to reconfirm their appointment. The subject of the email is: RSB LEGAL APPOINTMENT CONFIRMATION LETTER- Redditch Office.
But once at the meeting they actually ask the consumer for money upfront for administration fees etc. so we don’t really understand their perception of “no win no fee”!
So far we have not heard of any consumer with a successful claim done by “FHA Marketing” or their “claims assessors”
Email address for FHA Marketing are: consultants@fhamarketing.co.uk or info@fhamarketing.co.uk and website http://fhamarketing.co.uk
If you received a cold call from FHA Marketing or attended the meeting in Redditch or Manchester, please let us know.
You can email us at customercare@mindtimeshare.com or place a comment on this blog.
Mindtimeshare 
Hi went to one of these meetings about trying to get out of my Time Share Contract. It was to Standon Mortimer Associates on a Sunday in Jan` 2018 at their office in Meriden. Lucky for me and my wife we did not give them any money we just went for the free offer of trying to get out the time share contract. It all looked dodgy for me was when this other guy came out of another office he was supposed to be the legal brains. He wanted about £7 to 8k to start the ball rolling and his suit looked very cheap with frayed shirt cuffs. he was very pushy trying to get the money up front of us. Apart from the wasted drive from North Wales we got of lightly
i’m just kicking myself at the moment i have made an appointment along with my wife to go up to have a meeting in reditch/Birmingham or whater ever place they are lady phoned me to arrange an appointment for a week sunday usually the first thing i normally do is ask for the company name and the go on www to find out about them (as i have now done) needless to say she told me that there was no upfront cost…lie thank you all for putting me on the right track so we wont be traveling from Swansea all that way for nothing
My Husband and I went to Meriden in Coventry today with Standon Mortimer Associates on Elm Court Drive. The gentleman Andy went through our paper work re our timeshare and said we could claim for misrepresentation , but also asked if we wanted to get out of our contract which is in perpetuity wecsaid yes as we don’t want our relatives when we die to have a yearly maintenance fee. Another guy came in and went through some details then asked us for over £2000.00 and then wanted another payment of over £5000.00 within 7 days to get us out of our contract. He brought a contact out for us to sign, when we said we don’t sign contracts without having advice from our Solicitor he suddenly said he we could not take the contract away for our solicitor to see. So we declined to give him the money. Can anybody let me know is this a sc** or wher can go to get out of our timeshare cataract without costing a fortune. If they are so convinced they can get us compensation back and get us out of our contract then why as they say no win no fee. Would like to hear from other people please
I received a cold-call yesterday from a company calling itself ‘Appointing Consultants’ offering to get me compensation from DRI for mis-selling timeshare. The telephone number used was 0121 392 2553, the same number used in the past by ‘Edwards Consultancy’, ‘Leyland Marketing’ and ‘Timeshare Solutions’. They must have a different name for each day of the week.
I also receive the persistent cold calls from 00213 922553 requesting that I attend the Standon Mortimer offices hundreds of miles away. I simply wish they (including Lucy) would stop calling me. They now want to arrange a home appointment!
STANDON MORTIMER ASSOCIATES LTD
The company above contacted me with same proposal. Not attended yet but received confirmation e mail for an appointment next week. Has anyone had similar experience? With what outcome?
I had an appointment with Standon Mortimer Associates yesterday at their Chertsey Office for nearly 3 hours. It started off with a no win no fees claim for mis selling of my timeshare, then went into terminating the timeshare so am no longer tied down with the maintenance fee which keeps going up and up every year for around £5,220 of which £1,556 (30%) is payable immediately to commence the paperwork. They started off with £8000 but told them I couldn’t afford it then came down to £5,220. So this is now 2 in 1, claim for misrepresentation and litigation to terminate contract. Initially the claim would be 75/25 in my favour. My appointment was based on the no win no fee side of it but in the end they didn’t want to do one without the other, insisted I’ll have to go and think about it. Has anyone ever been successful through them?
I have had a very similar experience to Abi’s above. However we were not directly pressured into doing a 2 in 1 deal. We are still able to go ahead with a no win no fee compensation claim if we wish to. The evidence presented though, stated our fractional contract (contrary to what we believed) tied us in to perpetuity of annual maintenance fees that would be difficult to exit. It was also stated that the T/S company was on the verge of absconding to a country outside of the EU to escape EU law to make it even more difficult for claimants to terminate their contracts. Going ahead with a compensation claim alone would leave us with no further recourse for six years. Therefore the idea of getting out altogether was implied as the best option.
Our total costs to terminate were quoted at around 10% more (VAT?) than Abi’s example. As with Abi we chose to go away and think about it. SMA staff seemed very genuine but it is difficult to know who to trust these days. It would be re-assuring if we could see some successful case history’s.
My wife and I had a meeting with Standon Mortimer Associates on Sunday at their office in Meriden – a two hour drive from home. This was set up by Edwards Consultants. The representative from Standon Mortimer (Declan) spent 2 hours going through all the reasons why we wanted to look at recovering the cost of our timeshare on a 75/25 no win no fee basis and them went on to explain that if we do this CLC would be aware that we had made this claim and that if we didn’t seek to cancel the timeshare contract outright, we would have no chance in getting any availability for our timeshare and that our annual maintenance fees would continue to go up and up. This made my wife very worried. Declan said that they could also deal with cancelling the timeshare contract, however that would not be on a no win no fee basis. We asked for some more details and he introduced us to his colleague Nick, who went through all the same scare stories, and then went away to get us a quote. he came back with (approximately) £8500, with £3500 payable immediately and the rest within 7 days. This could them be included within the claim against CLC and we would get 75% of this back as well. I was uncomfortable with paying any money up front – he said that if we paid it by credit card it would be covered under Section 75 and if they failed to get out timeshare contact cancelled within 12 months we could claim the money back from the credit card company. I said that I wanted to have a bit of time to think about it and that I was back in the area (remember it was a two hour drive) the following weekend and could pop back then to pay should we decide to go ahead. Declan laughed at the suggestion that I would come back in a week, saying that the claim was already in the system and that if we didn’t pay today it could not be included within the overall claim against CLC. I suggested that that sounded a bit like the tactics used by CLC to sell the timeshare in the first place, and that he had spent two hours explaining to us was not acceptable practice. He took great exception to this! After a total of three hours with them we decided not to pay anything up front and just go for the no win no fee claim option. He advised that the solicitors acting would be in touch on Monday morning to get the ball rolling. It is now Wednesday night and we have heard nothing.
Has anybody actually had a follow up call from solicitors in any of these claims?
We had very similar experience, unfortunately paid a deposit. Were promised call from solicitor within 24 hours, 7 days later NO SUCH CALL so decided to cancel the agreement. Trying to get our deposit back!!!
have reported them to Trading Standards, please do the same
We also received numerous calls from 0121 numbers ended up going to a meeting with Standon Mortimer Associates, foolishly parted with £1450 deposit – realise they will not come up with what was promised. Please don’t get involved with these people, we are trying to get our deposit back!!!
Please be very very careful if you go to a meeting, they are very clever at manoeuvring you and distracting conversations, we will never get involved in this type of offer again.
Fantastic result for us. We have received a full refund of our deposit from our credit card company! No correspondence at all but we did provide them with an almost minute by minute detailed report f our meeting with Standon Mortimer and obviously proved our case.
Needless to say we heard nothing back from Standon Mortimer re our complaint and have definitely learned our lesson.
Maybe we have been VERY lucky with our Bank, we don’t really know but PLEASE everyone out there tempted by one of these cold call offers, be very very careful and think long and hard before paying anything up front.
Reputable companies just do not ask for it.
Just received a follow-up call from Reece Turner at Leyland Marketing Consultants(reece@leylandmarketingconsultants.co.uk) 0121 667 5932. I put forward to him my concerns that his company was just a marketing company to find leads for solicitors in his area and that if I was to attend a No-win, No-Fee meeting, that I would be subject to a timeshare-style pressure sale for upfront costs. He re-stated that the lawsuit to cancel my CLC perpetuity agreement would be no-win, no-fee and worth pursuing to avoid costs of leaving, to which I reminded him there was no cost as I had previously advised him. He then went back to talking about reclaiming (at least some of) the original outlay, to which I re-stated my concerns about being pressured to pay up front. He then politely (unexpected) wished me all the best and hung up.
The number above is very similar to other numbers mentioned regarding this topic (only last 4 digits differ) so it does point to the possibility it is the same company, under different guises (or at least companies in the same geographical area) that are involved in this scheme.
The very fact they want you to travel to a location that is remote from your place of comfort is a classic timeshare-esque sales tactic, where you are already making a commitment to them just by travelling a fair distance for the meeting.
Please be aware.
Hi, I’ve had a call from Julie at Leyland Marketing Consultants offering a 25/75% split on a no win/no fee claim to recover some of our costs from Diamond resorts. I was just wondering if you have heard anything else from Leyland Marketing Consultants since the conversation you reported on above?
Hi Phil.
My wife and I had a spate of calls from Leyland and Edwards Consultancy. However, Andrew from Leyland, made a fatal mistake by using the EXACT same number as call from Edwards, proving they were the same company using different names and the same sales tactics and virtually the same emails detailing their sales pitch.
I emailed them stating my discovery and suggested that lying was not reinforcing any trust in their organisation. I mentioned that we were now making a record of the date/time of all calls and requested they remove our details and desist from calling us. I went on to state that our telephone no. was x-directory and that we were registered with TPS (both true).
I am glad to report we had had no further calls from them.
Regards,
Cameron
I agree with you that it seems to be one company using various names. The telephone number used by Leyland Marketing when they have cold-called me is 0121 392 2553. I received a cold-call yesterday from someone who claimed to be working for ‘Appointing Consultants’. When I asked him for his telephone number he said it was 0121 667 3458. A 1471 gave the number 0121 392 2553.
I received a cold call yesterday from Leyland Marketing Consultancy claiming to be able to retrieve funds from our timeshare without us having to give it up. I was told I would have to attend a meeting in Coventry with Standon Mortimer Associates. She did not want to take no for an answer.
Please see an email my wife and I wrote to them, and are currently awaiting there response. Their response (if received) will also be published on this blog.
Hello,
Thanks again for making this appointment.
We did our research on FHA Marketing and found it to be an illegitimate company.
We found out that:
1. It’s just a ‘cold calling’ company.
2. There is no record of FHA Marketing on the Company House register, though your website suggests FHA Marketing has been around for 50 years.
3. There are no evidence of anyone successfully receiving a claim from yourselves or anyone associated with FHA Marketing.
4. People ‘who appear to have written blogs on the internet’ were very similar to our circumstance, where clients are brought out to offices and given a hard sale to pay upfront admin fees but heard no update on the progress of their claims.
5. There are no proof or actual testimonials that validates FHA Marketing of successfully winning any claim.
6. We concluded it’s all a sc**.
If you can provide evidence which disproves the above, we are happy to speak with you in the future.
Until you have provided this evidence, please remove our names and contact details from your data base, as we do not wish to be contacted by you or anyone representing FHA Marketing or similar cold calling companies.
Kind regards.
hope you don’t mind but i copied it and sent it off to them as well
My wife and I are also timeshare holders at CLC World and are desperate to get out. We were contacted by FHA Marketing who promised a ‘no win, no fee’ claim against Shawbrook Bank (based in Chelmsford). The promised a 70:30 return in less than 9 months. After reading these posts, I’m happy to say I will not be driving from London to their office address : Unit 8 Elm Court, Copse Drive, Meriden Business Park, Meriden, Coventry, CV5 9RG.
You can get out of your CLC timeshare at any time with no penalties. I had an email from the Resort Development Organisation a couple of years ago confirming this. Of course, you won’t get any money back, but you’ll be able to avoid having to pay the yearly maintenance fee.
Hi Cameron. I also wish to get out of my CLC timeshare. Please can you advise how to avoid having to pay the yearly maintenance fee? Roger
Hello Cameron,
I am also a timeshare owner and am looking to get rid of it. Could you elaborate on how Resort Development Organisation said we can get out at anytime with no penalties? Thanks in advance.
Hi Nigel,
I think you are looking for this publication:
http://rdo.org/industry-updates/rdo-strengthens-its-code-of-conduct-to-give-enhanced-flexibility-to-legacy-timeshare-owners/
Kind regards
Customer Care
Hi Roger.
Please refer to the RDO document link. I received a CLC-specific email confirming there is no buy-out cost. If you would like me to send it to you, please contact the Mindtimeshare Customer Care team (customercare@mindtimeshare) for my email address and refer them to this post and I can forward it to you.
You will also need to speak to CLC Member Services (0800 031 9151) to get the ball running and confirm when you have to do this in order to avoid paying the following years maintenance.
Remember, you will be HANDING BACK your CLC timeshare – they won’t buy it back.
Hi Nigel.
The RDO publication states ‘up to 3 years’ penalty for its members, The No-penalty agreement is CLC-specific. If you are a CLC Timeshare member, then I can send you the email re CLC I received – see above. If you are not a CLC member, you will need to contact the Customer Services or Care Team for that organisation for their T&C’s.
Regards,
Cameron
I sadly think I may have been co**** out of £1000 at the weekend by Standon Mortimer Associates,in Meriden Coventry ,5 hour meeting to get a 70/30 ssplit in my favour using a section 75 ,then they wanted £8000 to terminate my contract ,I stupidly paid £1000 deposit ,for this using the legal partners Taylor Marshall,, CLC member for 11 years ,they said they go after the finance company and credit card company’s for misselling to us .Thay arnt getting the balance … Sad day for my wife and I … any others used this company ,what can I do now
Hi – what happened then to make you decide to pay no more ? We have just done exactly the same so we are concerned
Just come back from a consultation. They told us as our contract was outside the 10 year period for a claim they couldn’t get us compensation (not that we care – we just want to get out of our timeshare contract). Then said they could get us out of the contract but it would cost us about £5,000. We insisted on going away to think about it so haven’t paid anything. Wondered if anyone has gone further and with what result. Mike, what happened to convince you you’d been stung?
Just to fill in a few more details, this was a meeting with Standon Mortimer Associates in Chertsey in Surrey. The consultants we met were John Burrows and Philip Stance. We were invited by Appointing Consultants, a Manchester based company. They are persistent as we have call guard on our phone and most cold callers just don’t bother to leave a message. We responded because they said no money up front. We are owners at CPO. When they were talking about compensation they were offering 75% 25% split. Same with terminating our contract. We would pay an initial payment of about £1000, then the balance of the £5000 7days later. This was for legal fees which they assured us would be paid back by MGM as they would settle out of court, then they would refund us 75%. They said this was pretty much guaranteed as the terms of the contract were unfair and the company would not want to go to litigation, but would insist on a non-disclosure agreement. That was it. Sounded plausible, but didn’t smell right to me; same formula as other sc** we’ve almost got pulled into so we’re holding off. Company has only been registered since April, but the consultant said he’d been seeing clients for 2 years!
Also been contacted by FHA Marketing and arranged a meeting in Manchester, any advice would be appreciated
Hi, we have recently received a cold call from FHA Marketing and offered a 70/30 no win no fee claim against Club la Costa and an appointment has been arranged with RSB Legal Ltd in Redditch. Is this legit and has anyone else pursued a claim with this Company.
Good morning Jayne. I had an appointment with RSB early in May. I was also offered the 70:30 split whereby the Company pursues the banks that loaned you the finance to purchase your CLC timeshare, but they were more interested in me paying up-front legal fees to take claim against CLC themselves, which i declined to do. I signed the paperwork to pursue the claim against the banks / finance people (which incidentally, has a ceiling amount of £30,000) and i await the next stage….. More concerning is the fact that i called into their Redditch office this morning to find that they are no longer there, and that the offices (still with the same furniture in) are now being used by a Company called “Holiday Rewards”. No idea if they are linked in any way but in this industry, it is quite possible. I decide to call the Manchester office to inquire about the state of my claim (awaiting a call back now….) and while on the phone, asked what was happening to the Redditch office. I was told it being “refurbished” which is total BS. I am now very suspicious, but fortunately, i have not parted with any money. I would advise you to proceed with caution. I have spent the last 2 years trying to find a legitimate Company with which to pursue a claim against CLC, and i am still not sure i have found one. I would be very interested to know if you had or are waiting to have, your Redditch appointment.