Marriott Vacation Club Reviews

I am writing today, very upset with the experience I have had as Marriott Vacation Club Timeshare owner. Marriott used fraudulent and deceptive trade practices to persuade me into purchasing timeshare with them. Marriott lied about the true value of the timeshare, they lied about the availability of the units, they lied about the length of the presentation and they lied about the annual maintenance fees and how they operate. Based off of the referenced lies, I was persuaded into purchasing timeshare, 4/17/2021, under the advertisement of your sales executive, Mr. Richardo Martinez, who stated at the time that “Marriott was currently running some incredible owner packages & specials with amazing benefits and additional perks to the owner, since timeshare purchases have been down (low) are due to Covid-19. A year later and a half later, two failed attempts to book a stay in Aruba, due to unavailability, I have come to learn that much of the information given to me was false. Mr. Martinez made this program appear to be fun and easy to use, unfortunately, the timeshare has caused my life unnecessary anxiety and stress. I thought I would be able to go on vacation more often since I was a member. Unit availability and member annual dues are extremely important factors to be aware of and Richardo Martinez kept these crucial details from me. One of my many questions &/or concerns to Mr. Martinez was, “would becoming an owner could guarantee me at least 7 -10 days in Palm Beach, Aruba every year for my birthday in June?”, where I have spent my birthday for the last 6 years celebrating at the Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, where I have a great relationship with the resort manager Leslie Prea and where I intend to spend my birthday, each year, for the rest of my life, in OCEANFRONT accommodations the same or very close to the accommodations I received from the Aruba Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino each of the six years I stayed? And are there any annual fee requirements? I explained to him 1. The timeshare was only being purchased to be ONLY used in Aruba and 2. That if he could match this arrangement – I would become an owner; but if he could not – I was disinterested in becoming an owner. He said, “Absolutely Mrs. Harris – and no, no annual fees”, I bought and it was all lies. I have paid all of my loan payments on time each month since the purchase and have also paid my annual fee on time but I have yet to successfully book my annual trip to Aruba from June 9- 18th, as promised by your staff. Each time I call into book – the timeframe is unavailable. I had added my name to the waiting list hoping a cancellation would possibly make the dates available and no luck. Every attempt to utilize this property has been a complete let down, and continuously reveals more of the lies that have been told me. They altered the information to make this ownership seem like it was a good match for my life. It’s unfair that year after year I am expected to pay into your program that I 1. Was lied to and misinformed about the true in’s & outs of ownership and the way the program TRULY works and 2. I have not been able to utilize my ownership since purchasing it due to the fact that Richardo Martinez sold me was a “pipe dream”. What your representative promised me that the Marriott Vacation Club ownership would deliver – has been impossible to achieve to date and that is not fair. I am unhappy that I have been misguided by your staff. I do not appreciate the faulty sales tactics used in this circumstance and the fact that I have been exposed to fraud. This level of deception is unacceptable, and I need you to take accountability for what I endured during the sales presentation. WE NEED TO ALL COME TOGETHER AND START A CLASS ACT LAW SUIT...text me @ 973-727-1095 if interested. What Marriott is doing ought to be ILLEGAL!!!!

Our experience with Marriott Vacation Club started when my husband received a call offering us a free trip to Orlando. We were excited to visit somewhere that we had not traveled to before, so we said yes. When we attended the sales presentation, which we were told would only last about 1½ hours, we were kept in that room for the entire day! Our 4 children were in the hotel room waiting for us, so we finally agreed to the smallest package that we were offered so that we could leave and start the vacation that we had promised to our family. Over the course of that meeting, their employees told us that we could book anywhere at any time, the unit could be rented out as an investment property, and that if we ever decided that this purchase was not for us, the company would purchase it back. These factors gave us the reassurance that this purchase was in the best interests of our family. However, we now know that booking vacations with them is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE! There is no opportunity to rent out the unit since we cannot even use the timeshare when we want to travel AND, since they have now told us that this has zero resale value, there is no opportunity to sell it back. We thought that we were making the best decision for our children and instead have spent close to $20,000 on something that is worthless with no end in sight. Do not take any of their offers! Nothing is ever free!!

We travel for work and stay at Marriott properties, so it made sense to purchase their timeshare offering and become members while we were vacationing in Florida! This decision became one of the worst we have ever made. We had no idea that the Marriott sales personnel are permitted to pitch a timeshare as a real estate investment. An investment that increases in value. We were assured that we would have no problem with booking as there are many resorts. Booking a reservation for us was almost impossible. There is no investment, only a mountain of debt…don’t believe me? Go to eBay and check out what timeshares are selling for, it’s a joke! Yes, we believed what they told us because we believed in Marriott. Once was what an enjoyable experience with Marriott has now become very unpleasant and has forever tarnished the name of Marriott.

If I could give zero points, I would do it. Do not sign up for any Marriott vacation clubs because you spend a ton of money and you are not able to book anything. Your destinations are constantly booked and they’re telling you you can use the points next year, but you can’t . Biggest scammer.!

This is the worse vacation plan that one can purchase. They promise you the world at you presentation and once you pay your fees you are at mercy if they useless staff members

I am a senior citizen and have been taken advantage of by the sales representative at Marriott Timeshare in Manhattan, New York. I have owned a timeshare at Harbor Point in South Carolina for the past 15 years and I have never been able to use it… which is the same case with Marriott! Regina convinced me that merging my week with the Marriott point system would encourage me to travel more often. After I realized this was not going to work for me, I asked Marriott twice to buy back my ownership or cancel the contract and I would take the loss. One of the selling points, when I bought, was that Marriott has a buyback program, which put me at ease. For someone my age, it is difficult to travel and to continue paying high maintenance fees for something I was duped into buying.

I’m a new Westin Club owner, purchasing a deeded week at Westin Nanea Maui this year with equivalent 6,265 (Westin) Marriott points plus my existing 4,000 Marriott point, totaling 10,265 total equivalent Marriott points. Therefore, my status should have been moved from Executive to the Presidential Marriott. Plus, my Bonvoy status should be titanium rather than platinum. I have contacted Marriott Vacation Club and Marriott Bonvoy about this issue on several occasions and the only information that I am receiving is that we are working on it. I also had a MVC Supervisor tell me there are no plans to convert and/or combined the points. I was shocked, totally different than the what I was told by my salesperson in Nanea. In addition, my Westin point conversion date is October 31st with no way to transfer Westin point if I wanted to. Frustrated beyond words. Currently, I’m not able to take advantage of any of the rewards that the Bonvoy Titanium or the Marriott Presidential status benefits. When I made the purchase. There was an offer, there was acceptance, (which I have paid) and there has been no consideration. They (Westin & Marriott) have received my money on time but are unwilling to provide the status and benefits they’ve promised. Plus my annual fees are coming up soon, and I got Butkus for my purchase. I’m so frustrated, this purchase should have been fun. It hasn’t been fun. I’m not happy. Ed

In a word...horrible. I wish we would have never purchased into Marriott Vacations. We just purchased points last year and had our very first point vacation at Marriott in Marco Island and Hurricane Ian hit and our reservations were cancelled. This is understandable. We were set to check in on 10/11/22 and had wedding plans on 10/16/22 on Marco. Marriott was unable to work with us to allow us to shorten our stay or even just stay the night at their resort on the night of our wedding. Marriott even went as far as telling us the beaches were closed, they were not closed when they told us this. Our wedding reservations never cancelled. We ended up staying in Siesta Key (not through Marriott) and when we were on Marco for our wedding we went by the resort and the resort was open and people were swimming in the pool and the beach, but they would not accommodate us at all. Then we returned home from our wedding we asked Marriott to extend our 2400 points that were due to expire on 10/31/22 to at least the end of the year. They would not allow us to do this, and said we should have purchased vacation insurance. Well we had never been told about this insurance and why would we even think we would need insurance when we are "owners"???!!! I understand that the reservations where cancelled and I can almost understand the fact that they could not even accommodate us for one night, but why could they not just extend our points?? We DID NOT cancel - the resort cancelled! I wish we would have never purchased this and I would advise anyone DO NOT DO IT!!!!! It is absolutely not worth it. They get money from you coming and going! Our very first vacation with Marriott using our points and it was horrible, they customer service was horrible and a when asked for a supervisor to call me back - no one ever did! They would not even allow us to use our points to purchase car rental vouchers!!

Marriott has been very difficult to work with and have lied to us on multiple occasions regarding our timeshare. We have not been happy with our timeshare whatsoever. When we had purchased, we immediately felt buyers’ remorse and so we called to cancel the timeshare within the 30-day recission period they told us in case we changed our mind. Turns out, we only had 10 days in New York to rescind the deal and they intentionally lied to us about the length of cancellation. We were also told that if we were not happy with our purchase, that Marriott has a “buy back” program where they buy our points back, and we can get out of the continued maintenance fees. If this were true, I would not be sitting here writing this review. When will the lies stop from Marriott? We really tried to work with them - they were invisible during Covid, then we found out we lost days during the period of Covid! They gave us a complete runaround when we tried to work with them to get out. They passed us from person to person, their goal was simply to wear us down! Each person had the same line after hours spent talking on the phone, "I completely agree with you... but I'm soooo sorry I'm NOT the decision maker... Let me pass you onto so and so - I'm sure they can help you!". All lies, and they clearly have a method to frustrate anyone that objects. We can't even stomach staying at a regular MArriott anymore this experience has left a terrible taste in our mouths...

I would never ever suggest anyone to purchase a vacation club APPARTMENT. Marriott are extremely bad at customer service, and could not give a damn about loyal customers. STAY WELL AWAY FROM MARRIOTT!!!!!!!!!

The worst vacation club ever never buy and useless customer service with arrogant service staff never ever deal with this company utter useless and awful company to deal with.

Absolutely the worst investment of my life. You pay so much in initial investment and annual dues and finally you get nothing back. Almost impossible to reserve and finally you always need to make an international call to be put in a queue which never ends. You hear an endless loop recording about how important your business is, but you never get a result. You can leave a number to be called back, but they never call back. My advice - don't buy.

I have been an owner with Marriott since the early 2000’s and they invite us to the Owner Update meetings all the time. At every update meeting they have pressured us to upgrade our status because they promised us better quality vacations and readily available reservations. We upgraded our contract by buying points and we wish we hadn’t. It didn’t solve any of our problems and is costing much more than it is worth. No wonder they apply so much pressure because if they were up front with all the costs we would not have upgraded. All we received are higher maintenance fees and mortgage payments for little in return. We have paid over $17,000 in just the last two years to pay for our points. At this rate we will be paying $70,000 over the next ten years just in maintenance fees. It is not worth it. It’s sad to see the measures Marriott will use to profit from innocent people.

If I could give zero stars I would. My father was a Marriott timeshare owner for 20 years. He was an executive level with many timeshares. When my mother passed he decided in his grief and with his disability of a recent Parkinson’s diagnosis limiting his travel to sell back the timeshares. He somehow didn’t bank the points even though he always banked his points and they took the timeshares (multiple) back without paying him a cent. They refused to give home back these lost points. He had some points that were previously banked left in his account. I went to book a vacation for my family 60 days out to get the executive level discount on the points and was told I had no status. So they took 7,000 plus points from the man, took back his timeshares to sell to someone else for no money, and wouldn’t give me the discount nor the 100 points I needed for a full week. They are awful human beings. They told me my dad had no status and they could only help him if he had a status. If this is how they treat widowed disabled loyal customers, they should be ashamed of themselves!

We bought a timeshare with Marriott Vacation Club, and it has been an endless nightmare. These timeshares are difficult to get out of, so we have continued to use it. Recently, we took a trip to New York City and stayed at the Marriott Vacation Club Pulse. We stayed from 11-16 August 2022. The service was terrible as usual, with surly front desk personnel. But the experience got worse: Our room was burglarized and two iPads were stolen. The security team denied that any staff "would do this and risk losing their job." The detective on the case said this happens often in NYC. Further, we used "Find My" to ping the two iPads: one was in Harlem and moved to Flushing; the other was still somewhere in the hotel. Security has done nothing to alleviate or solve this case. They sent a claim in to Liberty Mutual in August, and the claims agent just continues to say, she's investigating. The police report was filed, and Marriott has done nothing. AVOID BUYING INTO MARRIOTT VACATION CLUB. This organization has bad reviews for many reasons I agree with. Horrible!!!

Do not waste your money nor your time on MVC. We are a new customer and already want our money back. We were misled as the MVC sales team mis-represented their offerings during their 90-minute presentation we sat through, as well as during subsequent phone and email conversations. Their website is a "user-unfriendly" mess; constantly being changed, resulting in inconsistent performance and poor usability. Their customer service people are marginally equipped to help and answer questions. We've had numerous problems finding properties that we would like to stay at (lack of availability) and in some cases it would be CHEAPER just to pay the nightly rate at their resorts instead of using MVC Points. The ROI on the $50,000 that we paid is not there and we are hearing that they are constantly raising their annual maintenance fees. WE TRUSTED THE MARRIOTT NAME when we signed on here, as we are decades long Marriott Rewards members (including at the Titanium Level) and never once thought that we would get screwed over like we have been here. J. Willard Marriott should be rolling in his grave if he knew how upset his long time, loyal customers are about the MVC. If Bill Marriott truly cared about his dedicated customers like us, he would have their customer support team respond and refund us as we had requested (and they rejected). This has been a horrible, stressful and anger-filled experience for us, and we felt compelled to inform others so that they can avoid what we are going through.

Sadly, we had a very unfavorable experience this year at The Marriott Monarch in Hilton Head Island SC. This was our ninth stay there over the past 12 years. Units were updated about three years ago. Pools and beach access also improved. Roach infestation was the issue. In kitchen and bathrooms! We called on Sunday morning then on Monday. Orkin sprayed. But they were still there on Wednesday. “Sorry about that” was the only response from Front Desk. Threat of Hurricane Ian meant all pool furniture etc was removed early Wednesday morning. We decided to cut our week’s vacation short and leave Thursday morning due to roaches and hurricane threat. Our last visit to Monarch!

SCAM. They sell the package but then never answer the phone to actually book the dates! Run.

NANEA OCEAN VILLAS--TIMESHARE SCAM Vistana and Marriott company I am a victim of a scam by a timeshare company Vistana Portfolio Services they are part of Marriott and I used to be loyal Marriott customer but no more. We had a timeshare interest on this property that we occasionally used and it was affordable, but in Dec. 2019 my daughter was travelling without me, and was approached and offered a complimentary dinner certificate to go to an owners update meeting. The truth is this was a high pressure timeshare upgrade presentation and the Nanea agents pushed her to agree to upgrade and basically triple the amount we had been paying. They told her that she was getting no value out of the current timeshare, that she needed to upgrade so we could have ocean view and more access. There were multiple misrepresentations made about how the timeshare would increase in value and was a good investment. They told her that the loan payments and maintenance payments would be about the same as the original contract, and that was a total lie. My daughter was not the decision maker, I am the one who would be paying and the agents did not disclose or discuss the upgrade program terms with me. Instead they agents pressured my daughter to call and convince me that we needed to do this and they had her sign the paperwork that day even though I had not yet agreed to this. I told them to send a hard copy of the contract for me to review before I would agree to this deal. When received I was shocked because in this deal we went from having our mortgage loan paid off with maintenance fees of $1100 a year to a new loan balance of $30,813 with monthly payments of $532.28 with annual maintenance fees of $2800. This is not what was promised and I told my daughter I would not sign this contract and that we should cancel. However she told me that the agents set up the contract so that the 7 day rescission period began the day SHE signed the contract, even though I had not even viewed the paperwork on the day the cancellation period ended

Marriott Vacation Club harassed and pressured us into purchasing a timeshare after we repeatedly said “NO”. We explained we were not interested. Take our advice, whatever free gifts Marriott Vacations throws at you just say “NO” and run away fast! While using my sister’s timeshare in Hawaii, they offered us a free catamaran cruise for attending a sales presentation. Unfortunately, we were stuck there over 4 hours with rotating salesman and constant pressure. They promised we could sell back the timeshare if we decided, so we felt some security in our purchase. They lied to us just about everything. Like how we were purchasing real estate as an investment, and we could rent for a profit too. Complete and utter LIES! We had no intentions of buying a timeshare, but they used deceptive and dishonest sales tactics to manipulate us into signing the contact. They rushed us through the contact signing and did not tell us about the 10-day recession period. We only learned we could cancel within 10 days after we received the contract documents in the mail a month later. Unbelievable! When we tried to book our timeshare in Hawaii, we soon learned we had insufficient points to get an ocean view room as promised. We also were told we could not book in advance with our points, and it was impossible to find any availability. We sent a letter stating the dissatisfaction we had with their service and the disappointment we felt every time we wanted to go on vacation thanks to Marriot, we also wrote in the letter everything we stated here and asked to be let out of our contract as we felt we had been lied to numerous times by Marriot. They wrote back saying our arguments weren’t true and basically called us liars. They told us they would not let us out of our timeshare and then proceeded to write that we should go on a vacation using our Marriot timeshare and maybe that would alleviate our frustration. This was a condescending and rude reply to our original letter. They do not care about ours or your experience and they will do everything in their power to make it difficult if not impossible to get released from your contract after the initial 10-day recession period that no one knows about to begin with. Don’t make the same mistake we did and don’t let Marriot Vacation Club sink its teeth into your wallet.