Complaint Review: Roark Vacation Travel Club - Branson Missouri

I am not 100% sure that it was a rip-off but certainly think it fits a scam of some sort to which my wife and I had a very close call i.e. feeling I was getting scammed, while on Vacation in Branson with one of the Vacation Clubs in the area, namely Roark Vacation Resort.

This is my story:

I was at Wall-mart and leaving with some purchased items when from a booth my wife and I received a hollaw from a nice lady that asked if we needed some tickets to any of the shows in town. We had just arrived and yes we were there to view some shows so it sparked our interest. The nice lady was able to give us four or five show tickets for a total of $90 ( almost half price ) as long as we listened to a 90min talk on some vacation program that their owner , whom was part of the Sheppard of the Hills.

Apparently the owner had great connections in town and he was able to give us these deals along with a cheap way to travel and lodge in the future, thus the reason for the 90min presentation and did I mention there was no obligation to sign up or anything, all we had to do is just listen. They werent a timeshare bla,bla,bla as we looked into what shows we were going to see.

Okay we said, received our stubs for the tickets and would pick up the tickets after the presentation the next morning.

This presentation was going to start at 10:30 sharp ( stressed ) and if we were late, then we would miss out. We were give directions and off we went. I wasnt the least bit worried about getting lost because I was sporting a GPS with me and so all I had to do was plug in the address and yes be there on time.

Needless to say, we were late so my wife phoned and said it didnt look like we would make it on time. The voice on the other end said they would wait for us. Hmmm... the first alarm bell went off in my head but I just pasted it off as just me being me.

Anyway, we arrived at the 90min talk where we were escorted by three different people to a room full of people. We sat down at a table and the lady asked us some information and mentioned again that this was a 90min presentation and that the speaker was a special guest and they would like to welcome him with a good hand clap to make him feel welcome. Another couple of alarms bells. I felt I was in an Amway convention or something ( my assumption on what may go on there too ).

So the special guest was highly excited and told us how we could get approximately 65% off on any trip if we plan it through them and that they could give us this about 80% of the time. He told us all we had to do was pay $8964.00 as a membership, which by the way is way less than those timeshare people that pay $15K+ for a chance to stay for a couple of weeks, plus maintenance fees, plus upgrade fees bla,bla, bla. Being different than a timeshare Roark Travel Club was able to get us into these same timeshare units without all the maintenance fees etc. because they had connections and could book not only the accommodation but give us a break on the airfare as a complete package as well as cruises.

Did I forget to mention that this presentation was 90min, well this special guest mentioned it too. Another alarm bell on why the 90min being stressed, but I soon realized that the presentation only took about 30min and we would have to stay the entire 90min to receive these half priced tickets that we purchased in the first place.

Anyhow, the guest speaker stopped talking and left. Then another lady came back to our table and asked what we thought. My wife said she thought it was great and I said 'foul' of I smelt something fishy here. I told my wife that whatever vacation we took in the future we would have to take lots of trips to get back that $8964. Right away the lady said she would give us a deal and the total cost would only be $6964.00 instead of the $8964. Another alarm bell went off and I smelt a scam. Why so easy to drop the price. I again said, we would have to make lots of trips to recuperate that $6964.00.

I asked to show me a planned trip and since I am from Canada would I fly from my local airport or where was the round trip from. The lady seemed dumb to me and couldn't answer the questions properly. I was wondering what happen to the orginial lady, she seemed smarter. The lady said that my wife seems to think this is a great plan being able to save so much on a trip by only investing the $6964.00 and I was being a stick in the mud. I asked if I signed up could I change my mind. The lady said NO. I asked how many more minutes do we have left before the 90min was up so we could just get the show tickets and she said 16minutes. Soon another person came, he was the manager and he would give us the deal of a life time. He cut the price to $3964.00 again a big ding dong. What they cut the price from $8964 to $3964 without any reason..hmm something was fishy me thinks.

He said we had nothing to worry about, we could recuperate that money within a couple of trips. Two trips to Hawaii would be all we would have to do and we would have saved the $3900. I was second guessing myseld because if it were true those prices showed would do as he suggested. I was thinking that anyone could show this so I asked to access their site and compare it to another site with the same kind of trip but he said that they would snail-mail me the password to their site once all the transactions were completed. He said by the time we got back home, we would have all the info we required.

He then left us alone for a few minutes. Then the cow bell rang, a couple up front signed up and sheese I thought I was in a scam set-up for sure. My wife said that her and her niece were wanting to go to Vegas before December , plus she wanted to make a trip to Hawaii next year and if what these people are saying, this would be cheaper than anything she has seen.

Urrah, since $3964.00 was only peanuts to me, I gave in but was sick inside as I started to sign the documents, especially knowing I had no way to back out, or so I thought. I asked again, and I was told that I could will, transfer or sell my membership along with the annual fee of only $159/yr as an inner office cost.

We picked up our tickets and went for lunch. I was sick inside. I kept talking to my wife about how not a good deal this was, and how we just wasted $3900 and not able to get it back. We talked about it some more and went back to the hotel room. I received a call from the front desk to come pick up something at the lobby. It was a nice bottle of grape drink, some sweets etc. I said jokingly to my wife that here is what we bought for $3900. I didn't know what to do so I ran down to the front desk where they had a computer for the hotel guest. You see, I left everything home because we were on vacation and I spend enough time on the computer as is.

I sent an email off to my daughter and asked her to check this Vacation club out if she had some time. When I did a search on Roark Vacation, low and behold this site appeared so I started to read some items and I got sicker to my stomach. I saw a three day cancellation mentioned and back to the room I went to read some of the info I had signed but wasnt able to locate anything on my documents. We were in a hurry trying to get ready for our show so I depended upon my daughter to do some research for me during that evening.

The next morning, I spent time fine tuning my reading skills and sure enough it was there. I had three days to cancel. We decided to ponder it all day, wait for some feedback from my daughter and then head down to the spot and cancel my once in a life-time deal for vacation. After noon came and down we went and low and behold, everybody was gone for the day. Now I was sick to my stomach. The first thing the next morning we planned another trip for this was the third day and it needed to be done today. Yes, there was someone there to listen to us. I gave the reason for cancellation as of being personal and wouldnt elaborate further. There was a pause and neither my wife nor I would say anything and again we were asked the reason and I said it was personal so the gentleman asked a couple of more questions and he received the same answer. He then told me that Yes they were obligated by law to refund me the money and so he proceeded. I felt that he treated us very admirably and with sadness of losing us. We were treated with respect and weren't made to feel uneasy in the least.

I said at the beginning that I wasnt sure if it was a rip-off because I never had the chance to compare their site against any other site nor have I experience an actual trip set-up by them. The only thing I know is my gut was telling me it felt like a scam.

Elwin s

Fort McMurray, Alberta

Canada