Zelfs de RDO houdt Anfi de hand boven het hoofd

 

Hierbij de reactie van de RDO op een dispuutprocedure die een van onze Anfi gedupeerden onlangs bij deze organisatie heeft ingediend. De klacht tegen Anfi hield in grote lijnen in dat er tijdens het verkoopgesprek overrompelende verkooptechnieken gehanteerd zijn, een verboden aanbetaling geind zou zijn en er zelfs geen melding is gemaakt van wettelijke bedenktermijn. Nadien heeft Anfi  op geen enkele manier geprobeerd met de klant tot overeenstemming te komen en in een later stadium zelfs elk contact met de klant afgehouden en genegeerd.

10^th June 2011

Dear Mr & Mrs XXXXXX,

Your correspondence has been passed to me via our Consumer Services department for review and noting the issues raised and the nature of your complaint I have elected to respond to you directly on this matter.

Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to clarify some points with reference to RDO and RDO’s complaint handling procedures.  In your second letter to Anfi Sales S.L. you state that RDO does not look after the interests of the consumer..  RDO is of course  a trade association representing the timeshare industry in Europe and that is what our members pay us to do. We therefore represent member companies and as such do indeed look after their interests. However, RDO’s members recognise the importance of having a strong consumer policy and therefore provides a timely and accessible complaints procedure where there is a genuine consumer complaint about members within RDO. We provide this consumer service totally free-of-charge and aim to resolve valid complaints against member companies.

In cases of allegations of misrepresentation, RDO always refers back to the written materials handed out at point of sale and checks these materials against the requirements of the Law and indeed our Code of Ethics. If RDO finds that the written materials comply with the necessary requirements, we will investigate the possibility of oral misrepresentation. Such allegations are extremely hard to prove, as in many cases they are of a subjective nature and reflect the word of one person against another. We would also like to point out that RDO does not adjudicate in disputes, we are not a Court of Law; we simply try to assist in resolving them without recourse to more formal matters.

Turning to your complaint and the points raised in your correspondence to our member Anfi Sales S.L., I will deal with each key point you have raised to support your claim below.

The Contract – you state that you were misled and that the contract you signed does not state that it is a trial product and thus is a timeshare product. You also claim that this is further confirmed by the contract duration of more than 1 year.

The contract you signed does not state that it is a trial product, but there is no legal requirement under the current Spanish Timeshare Act for the contract to state this. Furthermore, under the current Spanish Timeshare Act, products with a duration of 35 months or less are not considered to be “Timeshare products” in terms of falling within the requirements of the Spanish Timeshare Act.

 

2. As the contract does not fall within the current Spanish Timeshare Act, there is no legal requirement that the contract carries any cooling off period, and the contract you signed clearly stated that there was no cancellation permitted, once the contract had been signed.

 

3. The RDO Code of Conduct (March 2009) requires its members to adhere to the law applicable in the country where they operate and sell their product.  There is no requirement that an RDO member must offer a cooling off period of 14 days unless the current law requires them to do so.

 

4. As to the deposit payment, again as the product you purchased does not fall within the current Spanish Timeshare Act, there is no legal relevance to the point you raised on the deposit.  However just for clarification, I would point out that the Timeshare Directive has been transposed in national Spanish law, being the Spanish Timeshare Act, and whilst you rightly stressed that the Spanish Timeshare Act does not allow “any advance payments by the purchaser to the vendor before expiry of the cooling-off period” it does not forbid the taking of a deposit by a third party, for example a Trustee.

 

5. As to the legal cases that have been taken against Anfi Sales S.L. these cases bear no relevance to your case as they relate to” Timeshare Products” as defined in the Spanish Timeshare Act and as previously stated, the product that you purchased does not fall within the legal definitions of the Spanish Timeshare Act.  Further more as explained by Anfi, the company has won all of the cases brought against them to date relating to the taking of a deposit within the cooling off period as no deposits were taken by Anfi, but by a third party namely their Trustee Continental Trustees Ltd.

 

Therefore in light of the above points and the factual evidence presented, RDO does not believe that our member has acted against our Code of Conduct and that any assertion that the company would have acted against the current Spanish Timeshare Act is in our view also not correct.

When a complaint cannot be resolved through our own internal complaint procedures you do have the option to take it to arbitration or to court. The choice is yours, and we have therefore attached for your further information a copy of the Arbitration Scheme (‘the Scheme’) documentation and a list of European lawyers who have experience in dealing with timeshare related matters.

However, before you do so you should make all reasonable effort to try and settle the matter with the company. In practice this usually means an arbitration or court claim should only be made once you have reached a deadlock after corresponding with the company.

As the arbitration scheme is totally independent of RDO, should you wish to utilise the scheme you will need to complete the Statement of Claim and return it to the IDRS Ltd at 24 Angel Gate, City Road, London EC1V 2PT.

There are some important rules, which we would like to bring to your attention:

 

• No claim may be made under the Arbitration Scheme for Timeshare Agreements entered into prior to 1^st March 2005.
• No claim maybe made under the Scheme for amounts less than 500 Euros.
• If you do decide to use the Scheme, you will need to ensure that the Statement of Claim form is received by the IDRS along with the correct fee and all supporting documents within 90 days of the date of this letter or within 365 days of the date on which the Timeshare Agreement was entered into, which ever shall be the later date.  The IDRS will then send the claim form on to the member for completion and their defence.

There is of course no obligation on you to use the arbitration scheme. You may wish to pursue your claim through court. If you do decide to go to court, you may want to seek further advice from your local consumer advice bureau or solicitor before issuing a claim.

The main difference between these two courses of action is that arbitration does not require a personal appearance or legal representation. The decision is made on the basis of written evidence submitted by you and the company.

I am sorry that your particular complaint remains unresolved, but hope that this letter allows you to decide which procedure you wish to take advantage of in order to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion.

Yours sincerely

Paul Gardner Bougaard

Chief Executive

 

Naschrift van de redactie:

Terwijl het voor timeshare organisaties is voorgeschreven om contracten op te stellen in de taal van de nationaliteit van de klant, neemt RDO niet eens de moeite om haar reactie vanuit het Engels te vertalen.

Kort gezegd komt de reactie van RDO op het volgende neer:

RDO verweert zich tegen de aanklacht dat zij met name rechte van leden en beschermt en niet zozeer rechten van de consument (zoals eerder door ons geopponeerd), door te stellen dat zij uiteraard door de leden betaald wordt om hen te vertegenwoordigen, maar dat er een gedegen klachtenprocedure is voor consumenten tegen RDO-leden. Ook zij geven aan alleen te kunnen bemiddelen en geen enkele rechtspositie te hebben.

Specifieke antwoorden op de door klager aangevoerde onderdelen:

Anfi Voyager is geen trialproduct en valt ook niet onder timeshare regelgeving vanwege het feit dat contract geldt voor minder dan 3 jaar.. (toevallig he, dit is nl. precies 35 maanden….!!!! )

Daarom hoeft er volgens RDO geen afkoelingsperiode in het contract opgenomen te worden en is daarom ook niet voorgeschreven in de gedragscode van de RDO zelf.

Het contract vermeldt expliciet dat er geen opzegmogelijkheid is en kan dus ook niet geannuleerd worden.

Hoewel inderdaad voor het verstrijken van een afkoelingsperiode geen aanbetaling door de verkoper mag worden verlangd, is het niet verboden dit door een 3^e partij (Trustee) te laten doen ….!!!

RDO geeft bovendien aan dat rechtszaken die in het verleden door Anfi gewonnen zijn omdat niet zij zelf de aanbetalingen binnen de geldende afkoelingsperioden hebben aangenomen, maar dat aanbetalingen verricht zijn aan een Trustee.

De enige mogelijkheden die nu nog overblijven zijn:

1. Het aanspannen van een arbitragezaak bij de IDRS (Londen) volgens het “Arbitration Scheme

for Timeshare Agreements”  binnen 90 dagen na datum RDO response letter of binnen 1 jaar na het aangaan van de timeshare overeenkomst. Kosten £ 75.00 voor de eiser en £ 245.00 voor het RDO lid met een challenge fee van  £ 150.00

1. Stap naar de rechter

E.e.a. overziende moeten wij tot de conclusie komen dat de RDO eigenlijk gewoon bevestigt dat de handelswijzen van Anfi niet ter discussie staan. Tegelijkertijd geeft men dus zonder enige gene toe dat door constructie als contracten van 35 maanden en aanbetalingen aan 3^e partijen, de geldende timeshare wetgeving ontdoken wordt.

Zoals de Chief Executive van RDO zijn afwijzing afsluit:

The choice is yours…..(vrij vertaald: ZOEK HET MAAR UIT…)