Finally – a Developer who takes Online Timeshare Complaints Seriously January 25, 2011
Posted by John Stephens in : News & Events, Timeshare Resale , add a commentThe Internet is a wonderful thing. After all, if it wasn’t for the Internet, we wouldn’t have a company and the thousands of people who advertise their timeshare for sale with us wouldn’t have such an effective tool to use to sell timeshare.
But there’s another side to the Internet – a side where people can anonymously write whatever they want to without repercussions; thereby becoming a nuisance or, worse, causing unwarranted damage to reputations. It is this side of the Internet that has had resorts and developers running scared for years.
Call it the “Trip Advisor Effect”.
This is when people go onto sites such as Trip Advisor, or any site that allows resort reviews without accountability for the reviewer, and cause damage to the image of a resort without the requirement of a single piece of evidence to support their claim. To be fair, Trip Advisor has made recent strides to clean this up due to questionable reviews in the past.
I’ve heard some pretty wild stories from developers. One mentioned to me that a woman went online and wrote an unjustified complaint about his resort. She later admitted that she made up the whole review because she was upset that her husband had an affair at the resort and wanted to take it out on them.
No wonder you can see the frustration in the eyes of developers at the mere mention of online reviews.
This is what makes Festiva Resort’s recent customer service outreach all the more impressive. Over the weekend, Festiva announced a new Complaints Resolution Center, an online area created to give consumers a place to resolve problems, submit complaints and read frequently asked questions and resolved complaints from other guests.
In a statement, Festiva gave the following rationale to explain the need for their initiative, saying “the timeshare industry’s online reputation has been inundated in recent years with various ‘consumer scam’ and complaint sites, claiming to help consumers solve their problems. In reality, these scam sites are set up to produce ill-gotten advertising revenue for their owners and offer little value to the consumer trying to open a dialogue that ends in their complaint being resolved or to obtain more information about their issue.”
Amen to that.
Festiva is taking on the industry’s 800 pound gorilla in the room – the need to counter the “consumer advocates” that, in reality, are only out to pad their own online wallets at the expense of legitimate businesses trying to serve the consumer.
“We’re trying to make a proactive effort to meet online complaints ‘head-on.’ We are able to resolve an overwhelming majority of the issues that our guests bring to our attention, and we constantly strive to improve our methodology and service as it applies to consumer complaints,” says Sara B. Little, Festiva’s Director of Corporate Communications.
We’ve seen this pattern for years in the timeshare resale business. Make no mistake – we support efforts to clean up the industry, root out rogue operators and improve business practices. However, there are proper channels that can be taken through state agencies in order to do this in an environment of accountability where allegations need to be confirmed before a reputation is called into question.
At BuyaTimeshare.com, we have a full-time customer service staff in place to help with issues that may arise with our advertisers. And potential owners looking to buy Festiva timeshare now know they have a great way to contact their customer service team to resolve complaints as they arise.
Festiva operates a chain of resorts located in destinations across the United States and Caribbean. To find one of the terrific Festiva timeshares for sale or rent on our site, click here.