Sherry Henry S.
Horrendous Trade out in Massachusetts
Am sharing a letter I just sent to RCI, after a horrendous experience in a time share trade out through them Rci October 8, 2019 To Whom This May Concern: This complaint, the very first, in twenty five years of world travel, that my husband Michael F Scheidle, and I, Sherry A Scheidle, are sending you, is in regards to a VERY UNPLEASANT trade out stay we recently had in a RCI establishment in Massachusetts. The name of the establishment is The Harwich Port Resort. Address, 558 Main St, Harwich Port, MA 02646, USA. Resort ID 5008 We checked in on 9/21/2019, checked out on 9/28/2019. Our Timeshare we own is at Garza Blanca, Puerto Vallerta, Mexico. Upon arriving at the Harwich Port, we were initially appalled at the dirtiness and lack of maintenance of our studio. We unpacked and just as I (Sherry) was starting to take a shower, the toilet started backing up, NOT from our use, and raw sewage began coming up into it....then the toilet overflowed, threatening to reach the carpeting, near our bed. We grabbed all towels and put them around the toilet. I (Sherry) immediately called the office.....they were closed, but gave an emergency number....I called it, told them what was happening....asked if at least they had a plunger....no they didn’t...I then told them the sewage was getting on the carpet, and asked them to call a plumber, they said they had no authority to do that. I then called the RCI emergency number.....they could find nothing for us to move into. About twenty minutes after the calls, someone from the office appeared and brought us keys to another unit. There was no offer of help to move our things to the other unit....by this time both my husband and I were furious....the next unit was worse than the first as far as the maintenance and dirt were involved. The vertical window blinds were broken, the second closet for clothing could barely be used as the dirty sectional couches they had in it were blocking it, and it was obvious no one had cleaned well, lots of dirt and dust and cobwebs everywhere, and it was evident that the corners of the room had not been vacuumed in who knows how long.......filfth was abundant in the corners of the bathroom, I (Sherry) personally used wet wipes I had with me to clean this....the refrigerator door handle had major back up of grunge, the paint was peeling from the bathroom ceiling, the mattress on the bed was ancient, and had a piece of memory foam on it with other people’s hair imbedded in it. The carpet had stains on it, and the bed appeared to have been used, with sand and pubic hairs on the sheets,,,,,we used some extra sheets in the closet to change the bed......it was disgusting. This establishment had the gall to put in the form we signed upon arriving, that we could incur additional charges for any dirty dishes or food left in the refrigerator We had things on our agenda for sight seeing, so we decided to stay, and live with what we had, after we cleaned up the unit ourselves a bit. There was NO housekeeping service whatsoever, we had to empty our own trash, and if we wanted any clean linens or towels or toilet tissue or kleenex or soap, we had to call during office hours and meet an office person in a sordid laundry room, between 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, which interfered on two occasions with our ability to change towels due to sightseeing trips. This caused us to have to use hand towels and wash cloths to dry off with after showers in the evening. When we did exchange dirty linens and towels, for clean replacements, we had to carry them ourselves to the laundry room, and count out what was brought, and personally bring the clean ones back to our unit. We found out the following day upon arriving, that 4 total units had sewage backup the same as we had, and the occupants had to be given new rooms. It took this establishment 2 days to get someone in to fix the problem and clean the units....and we are sure the carpet area where the sewage was, did not get professionaly cleaned. This exchange was supposed to be an equivalent to Garza Blanca. It was far below that. We have a nice home with nice amenities, but Garza Blanca is even superior to our own home. We receive clean linens and towels professionally every day at Garza Blanca, along with daily housekeeping. If we should leave dirty dishes in our sink there, they are washed and put away without us asking. Garza Blanca also uses first quality towels and linens, Harwich Port Resort uses towels and linens that are so old and worn we would not use them for cleaning rags. We sold out a timeshare we had with Marriott, to Garza Blanca, and bought in to RCI through Garza Blanca and were told how much better an experience we would have with RCI. This is our first trade out with RCI. To even get this trade out we had to upgrade to a Platinum Membership, what a joke. We had much better trade outs through Interval when we had the Marriott timeshare. Bottom line is, we feel extremely cheated by RCI in what we got as a trade for Garza Blanca, we have stayed in places in the jungle in Costa Rica, that were better maintained and cleaner. Harwich Port Resort needs to immediately be taken off the RCI list of places to exchange for. It would be really nice if RCI could give us back the week we traded for. Sincerely Michael F And Sherry A Scheidle