Law Dawg
Junior Member
Registered: Apr 2008
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GeoHoliday
I am responding to the various negative postings on this blog denigrating GeoHoliday. I am a Toronto business lawyer and a certified specialist in civil litigation with 30 years experience. I am well able to spot "scams" and I have no legal interest in GeoHoliday or any related or affiliated businesses nor do I have any non-arms length relationship with any individual who works with or on behalf of GeoHoliday.
As appears to be the case with most of you on this blog I am cynical about all telemarketing. I received a call last week offering a three day "get away" to various locations with both accommodation and airfare covered; the only out-of-pocket expense (beyond discretionary spending during the get away) is a $50 airport tax. Normally when a telemarketer calls I ask one or two questions and then politely withdraw from the telephone call. As an aside, I want to say that there is no excuse for being discourteous to the telemarketer; they are ordinary people just trying to earn a living like the rest of us. In any event, GeoHoliday had one of the most effective and professional telemarketing programs I have ever heard and so, contrary to my normal practice, I agreed to attend with my wife which we did, yesterday. I found the people at GeoHoliday to be thoroughly professional and I did not feel that we were getting a particularly hard sell routine. GeoHoliday Is a vacation club in which you buy a specific number of points that are allocated to you each year for a term of of either 20 years or 45 years. by way of example, if you buy a 40,000 point plan you receive 40,000 points on January 1 of each year of the term of your plan (i.e. 20 or 45 years).The points can be used for a wide variety of vacation costs but are typically utilized to acquire one or more weeks of accommodation and/or airfare. GeoHoliday Is not an old style time-share scheme although they do have an arrangement with RCI whereby you can use GeoHoliday points to access RCI timeshare units. GeoHoliday, itself, has a wide and impressive variety of resort destinations all over the world. The GeoHoliday points plan has huge flexibility; you can use the points yourself, you can rent the points to nonmembers, you can give points away to, for example, family members. If there are unused points in one year those unused points are carryforward into the ensuing year but the carryforward of points is limited to one year. Any unused plan years do not evaporate when you die; they can be willed to your children or any other beneficiary you choose. Note, however, that there is an annual maintenance.
I took care to read every legal document that was part of the enrollment and I was pleased to discover that the legal documents are entirely consistent with the representations made by GeoHoliday. Finally, the contract itself, at least in Ontario, includes a 10-day "cooling off period" during which you can cancel the contract without having to give any reason. This right is extracted from the Ontario Consumer Protection Act and exists whether included in the contract or not. Furthermore, all travel agencies in Ontario are subject to government regulation and policed by the Consumer Protection Branch. I hope that people considering investing in a vacation club will find my foregoing comments to be useful; however, I am legally obliged to state that my comments are not intended to be comprehensive, do not constitute a legal opinion and are not a substitute for consulting a lawyer before investing in any form of prepaid vacation plan whether GeoHoliday's or otherwise.
James Kerr
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02-26-2007 12:11 AM
