Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2014-06-22, 15:43:25 | version 1.31.00
19The English Newspaper for Gran Canaria TheCanaryNews.com News, Views & Sunshine Summer 2014 Mr Kaiser suspects is solely interested in the destruction of a competitor’s business, having been employed by the very com- mercial enterprises that Kaiser’s legal teams have gone after on behalf of their clients. Five members of the police force have been accused of acting unlawfully and called to give evidence before the magistrate alongside the labour inspector who was key to the initial hours of the operation. A grim outcome. Mr Kaiser for his part says that he can no longer ignore Mr Garcia’s singular focus on his activities, especially, he says, as he no longer even deals in the “Timeshare” market. He is, he says, a registered travel agent, and the products he sells are no dif- ferent to those found on websites like Booking.com. His busi- ness, he tells us, simply provides privileged access to a range of luxury holiday resorts around the world at prices lower than those attainable anywhere else. Aware, as he is, of the fine line between “Travel Discounts”, “Discount Holiday Clubs” and “Timeshare Organisations” Eugen Kaiser’s companies Voyager, Compass and Orbit, among others, are freely accessible to anyone who contractually buys into the discounts he achieves from a comprehensive list of global busi- ness relationships and holiday resorts, where you do not, we are told, need to be a member to receive benefit. Furthermore, his partner companies such as ReclaimGC and Canarian Legal Alliance (CLA) actively pursue, for their clients, “fraudulently obtained” contracts by “rogue” operators in the timeshare industry and already claim more than 43 victories in the first instance, which they say has returned €1,730,568 back to their clients, and with well over 200 criminal cases outstand- ing against resort properties in Tenerife and more than 400 civil cases outstanding against all kinds of resorts and Timeshare operators, business appears brisk. They’re cleaning up. Mr Kaiser has, as of last year, launched his own website blog (EugenKaiser.com) to counter the accusations and efforts of Mr Garcia, whose own site (Mindtimeshare.me) appears very vocal, and some have certainly said “libelous”, about a huge swathe of complaints about various operators in the timeshare industry, with the notable exception, it seems, of any who are members of RDO, the self appointed “trade association for vacation own- ership across Europe” in whose employ Mr Garcia has admitted being. This is all part of the battle to clean up an industry. With huge shake ups going on, right now, in an industry whose long-tarnished image has been nothing short of dis- graceful in the wake of scandal after scandal for more than a decade, it is instructive and comforting, particularly for those on whose livelihoods it depends, to see these types of battle being played out in the public eye, with judicial oversight and reforms that require all agencies of authority to visibly work within the laws of the land. The industry itself is in a drive to clean up its image. Consumers will not accept being lied to. Through our more than 2 years of research on this subject we have seen a vast number of accusations levied, of criminal activities, from various sides of the timeshare industry, and it appears there are very few with clean hands, untouched by less than admirable instances. Where a once sound idea, stemming from, of all places, the likes of the Butlins holiday camps that gained such huge popularity in post-war Britain, morphed into package holiday resort developments which were intended to be partially owned by all those who visited them, then taken over by extraordinarily sharp sales practic- es, which took advantage of the disparity between languages and laws allowing unscrupulous operators to get away with, in some cases it’s been suggested, actual murder. Gran Canaria itself was in the past also deeply affected by the encroachment of criminal and borderline criminal activi- ties, until really quite recently when greater parity has been achieved with Europe-wide legislation that has made it hard- er and harder to operate in ways that harm the consumer or indeed the destination market. There is still a long way to go. It is the responsibility of all who work in the industry. Timeshare, and its modern re branded equivalent, Vacation Membership, in itself, is not a bad product. There are several operators of the highest calibre offering very high quality products, such as Anfi, Holiday Club and Hapimag, to name just a few, all of whom seek consumer satisfaction as their very raison d’être, but it is the “anti-consumerist” practices that have been all too often employed by lesser scrupled sales agents and brokers, sometimes dealing on behalf of quality providers, that have contributed most to the destruc- tion of an industry. Lack of effective regulation has in the past, particularly in Europe and much of Spain, allowed many players into the client facing end of the industry, where the written contracts were far too often divisive and unfair and verbal contracts were simply just not worth the paper they were not written on. Gran Canaria deserves better, we all do. ANINDUSTRY “Five members of the police force have been accused of acting unlawfully...” Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... By Edward Timon