posted 28th February 2025
Are you on your way to an urgent meeting at Seasons Headquarters in Bristol to talk about your Keys membership? If so, here's why they have asked you to visit, and this is what they will tell you.
Seasons will have emailed or called you and led you to believe that you need to make an 'urgent' appointment with them to facilitate the sale of your Keys membership. So far so good!
If you travel to their Bristol offices, you'll be met by sales rep and local lad Richie from Frampton Cotterell , who'll give you a nice drink and have a little chat with you; all very nice and fluffy so far!
Stage 2. "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Your timeshare sales presentation will now last 3-4 hours, so get comfortable! If you thought that you would be arranging for your Keys membership to be sold, repurchased by Seasons or extended maintenance free, your going to be rarther upset!
Seasons Holidays have got you to travel to see them under false pretences. The bait and switch scam lures potential victims in with promises of 'what you could have won' and then seizes the opportunity to sell you something else.
Local lad Richie will then tell you that when your holiday allowance comes to an end in 16 years, you will remain a fractional owner, not be able to use any facilities or book a holiday. However, this is the best bit ... you must start paying maintenance fees!
You'll probably be told the sorry tale about how Seasons Holidays are "haemorrhaging" money, won't be engaging their first right of refusal to buy and due to covid, Brexit and a surplus of apartments for sale in Spain that, your keys membership is going to be virtually impossible to sell!
Stage 3: Don't worry, local lad Richie has solutions!
Now, as in all great timeshare sales presentations, they always have a solution! A solution to fix a problem they created by misselling you your Keys membership, Quelle surprise!
You will now be offered a luxury lodge membership at Slaley Hall. In Richie's own words, "I feel quite lucky that these are sitting here in front of me now, and I can sell them to people because they are an amazing opportunity".
Stick with it, were getting to the best bit!
At this stage of formalities, you may or may not be falling for the sales patter and suitably worried about impending maintenance fees. In local lad Richies own words, he will try to scare you into spending more money by saying:
"A really difficult thing coming down the road that could be financially quite crippling, to be honest, for nothing."
The sale of timeshare is dependent on false promises, scare tactics, and emotional blackmail, and as this isn't your first rodeo, we're sure you've heard it all before! Maybe when you were sold your Keys membership!
If you have made it to the end of Richie's story, you'll be lucky enough to see what it will cost you to resolve your timeshare problems! The problems that Seasons has caused by not upholding the terms of your Keys contract and telling you it was an investment!
You'll be offered a trade-in of your Keys membership, guaranteed rentals on the new product, and another buy-back clause. Sound familiar! If you can't afford it, you'll be offered finance by Propensio Finance, and if you say you want to think about it, you'll be told:
"There's a coffee shop or whatever. It's not a hard sell thing. What it is we can't keep going around in circles with members that say, oh, I'll be back in a week. They won't let me hold prices. Right." OR "They're one off meetings."
At this stage, your are probably exhausted, however, if you muster up the energy, you'll see that from start to finish, Seasons Holidays and their representatives have broken nearly every rule in the The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Feel like you want justice? We can help.
We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and specialise in timeshare scams, fraud, and timeshare misselling. If you want to claim compensation or get out of your Sesons contract, we can help.
Our specialist knowledge and ability to succeed where others fail means we do not charge ANY upfront fees. Meaning that you only pay us if we win. To speak with a Seasons Holidays claim specialist, get in touch.