This holiday club endangered our lives, embarrassed my husband professionally and caused me considerable stress and anxiety
By Gwen Frangs / Tipperary Town, Ireland / 14 May 2024
What a dark day it was when my husband signed the contract with Quality Vacation Club, South Africa. The salesman who marketed the holiday points to us assured us that if we ever needed to sell the points, that the club would sell them for us. However, the club went on to over market the points to people who could only go on holiday during the school holidays. When these people tried to book holidays during the school holidays, they discovered that nothing was available. Suddenly these people started to sell their points and nobody wanted the points anymore. The points lost their value. We had been told by the salesman who marketed the points to us that the points were an investment which would appreciate in value. Suddenly the points were worth nothing.
I guess we would have been okay if it were not the case that my son was born very premature in 2006 and was diagnosed with learning difficulties at age five. I had stopped working to look after him and it was at that point that we could no longer afford to be paying holiday vacation club management fees every month. However, nobody wanted to buy them. We were trapped because according to the club, if you own the points, then you have to pay the management fees. Things were so bad for us financially that my husband had to take out a company loan in 2010 and in 2012 we had to move onto a plot close to a squatter camp at a monthly rent of R 3 900. In 2012 the management fee was R522.31 a month. If it had not been for having to pay Quality Vacation Club, South Africa every month, we could have afforded to live in a townhouse in a safer area. We had to borrow money from my brother in 2012 to pay for my son’s occupational therapy and his Godparents assisted us with paying the fees for the special school that he had to attend. We really needed the money that we were paying Quality Vacation Club, South Africa each month; but, there was no way that we could free up this finance because nobody wanted to buy the points.
When my husband tried to cancel his membership in 2013, the club humiliated my husband by asking him to provide evidence of his inability to maintain the payment of his management fees. In the end his company had to increase his salary. This was extremely embarrassing for him as he had to provide his managers with a breakdown of his expenditure.
Quality Vacation Club, South Africa also caused my husband additional embarrassment at his place of work. In 2015 my husband tried to sell the points to a director in his company who was initially open to purchasing the points, but after reading up on what was said about the club on-line, was so unhappy with what he saw that he decided not to purchase the points after all. My husband was extremely embarrassed because it looked like he had tried to take advantage of the director by trying to sell him the points.
We had paid over R30 000 for the points. My husband tried to sell them for years for R7 000 through Cape Escape, a company which seems to be affiliated to Quality Vacation Club, South Africa. We were told that we had to use Cape Escape to sell the points. However, nobody was interested in purchasing them.
Last year my husband tried to cancel the contract and return the points to the club by giving written notice. This was because we had read legal advice on-line from an attorney who said that these perpetuity contracts were not legal and that one should give the club written notice of cancellation of the contract. My husband also closed the bank account that the debit order came off on, to ensure that the club could no longer take the fee out of his account every month. The club told us that we could not cancel the contract, but that we had to buy our way out by paying an amount of R16 659.30. This is what my husband was told:
‘Should you wish to cancel the agreement/portfolio with immediate effect, you will be held liable for the cancellation fee of more or less R16 659.30. The fee is payable once off. If you cannot afford the cancellation fee, the alternative will be to reduce your agreement term to allow you to exit the agreement earlier and you will be required to continue until 2025 with the portfolio.’
What a cheek! This club is already responsible for the loss of R30 000 of our money because the points lost their market value; but, instead of apologizing profusely for this lost investment, they want more money from us. It is my understanding that the directors of companies can be held liable if they mismanage the company. Why is it not the case that the creators of Quality Vacation Club, South Africa cannot be held liable for selling the points in such a manner that the points ended up losing their value?
In 2003 my husband paid R30 000 for the points. Therefore, he is being asked to pay over 50% of what he originally paid for the points to cancel the membership. I have to question whether this is a reasonable cancellation fee, in light of the fact that the club’s actions resulted in the points losing their entire market value and the emotional and psychological distress that the club has caused us over the years.
My husband has been a member of the club since 2003 and he has had to keep paying, even though we could not afford to belong to this club; because there was no way out. For years we believed that we would never get out and that one day the points would be passed to my son so that he would face the same humiliation and sense of desperation that we have felt over the years as we watched finances, which we needed, being extracted every month from my husband’s bank account by the club.
For years I felt ashamed because of the fact that we got involved with Quality Vacation Club in the first place. However, I now recognize that the people who got themselves involved with this club are honest people, who had the expectation that other people were also honest. We were people who believed the best of other people. We were people that were optimistic about the goodness of other people. Quality Vacation Club, South Africa has been able to abuse us because we are, or were, that type of person. After being involved with Quality Vacation Club, South Africa for over twenty years, I no longer believe the best of other people. Perhaps we need to chalk up the cancellation fee that they are asking us for, as fees for an education into just how dishonourable people can be.
In 2022 we were so busy with a move from Cambridge in the UK to Galway in Ireland, that my husband forgot to transfer money into the FNB account that the QVC debit order came off on and the debit order failed for the month. Quality Vacation Club, South Africa was the only remaining debit order on my husband’s FNB Bank account. All of the other organizations had allowed him to cancel their debit orders with ease when we immigrated to the UK at the beginning of 2019. My husband had to keep this bank account open from 2020 onwards solely for the purpose of paying Quality Vacation Club, South Africa every month. When the debit order failed, Quality Vacation Club, South Africa immediately handed him over to a debt collection agency. There was no friendly email from the accounts department at the club to ask him to make payment. He was immediately handed over, although he had missed only one month’s payment. This incident happened after my husband had been a member of the club since 2003 and had never missed a payment before in all of that time. We had taken out loans, we had moved house to reduce our spending, I had gone back to work, before my son was ready to attend a nursery school full day, my husband had humiliated himself begging his company for salary increases; but, he had never once missed a Quality Vacation Club, South Africa payment! The fact that my husband was handed over immediately, left no doubt in my mind that Quality Vacation Club, South Africa is a cold, soulless and greedy organization. I do not believe that the conduct of this holiday club pleases God. The club is most definitely an ungodly organization and it is not possible that God’s blessing is resting on this organisation.
In light of all of the above, I strongly urge South African and international consumers not to become involved with this holiday club. I would also like to call for an investigation to be conducted into whether or not the creators of Quality Vacation Club, South Africa have consciously defrauded people. It is hard for me to believe that they did not know that by over-selling the points to people who could only go on holiday during the school holidays, that the points would lose their value and trap people in the club. The way that this club was organized and run over the years suggests to me that the creators of the club are not the sort of people who do not understand how the law of supply and demand works. The salesman who sold us the points told us that he was a qualified attorney. These men need to be held accountable for what they have done.