"Hilton timeshare company deceived us, cost us £50,000 then emailed me and called me a clown!"

World's third largest timeshare company accused of deception and customer abuse

'Bonus' weekend stay

Greenwich social worker Raymond Hill, 53 and his wife Anthonia were invited to what seemed like a luxury weekend stay at Hilton's prestigious Craigendarroch property near Balmoral in Scotland for the bargain price of £150. The catch was they had to attend a 'high pressure' Hilton timeshare presentation.

Raymond explains: “During the Hilton Grand Vacations sales presentation we were misled with numerous false promises. We were assured of flexibility in vacation planning, inclusive maintenance fees, and a seamless holiday experience with Hilton Grand Vacations.

"It originally seemed like a great offer," says Greg Wilson, CEO of European Consumer Claims (ECC) the company representing the Hills in this matter. "Raymond and Anthonia signed up to a membership. Hilton even arranged a £20,000 Barclays Partner Finance loan for the couple to pay for the purchase."

'Deception and broken promises'

Raymond reports: "blatant falsehoods" during the Hilton sales presentation such as being promised "guaranteed availability" during peak holiday periods, which he says "proved to be entirely untrue. We consistently faced booking restrictions and lack of availability."

Raymond also says the Hilton representative also misled him that the vacation points he and Anthonia had bought would increase in value over time.

"This was completely false," says Raymond. "In reality the value has depreciated substantially."

Additionally the Hills say they were promised that exchanging their timeshare for worldwide destinations would be seamless and cost free (apart from their maintenance fees).

"Totally untrue," says Raymond. "We later discovered that there were actually very significant additional fees for every exchange requested."

What infuriated the Hills most of all was lack of transparency regarding the 'Resale market'. "Hilton deliberately concealed the fact that identical packages are available second-hand for a fraction of what we paid," explains Raymond. "Knowing this would have drastically altered our decision making process.

"In the four and a half years we owned these Hilton points, we ended up spending around £50,000 in total, including the joining fee, annual costs and exchange fees. Thank goodness we are free of them now."

What Hilton really thinks of their "clown" customers

Raymond and Anthonia, understandably upset with Hilton's sales presenter, assumed that it must be a local issue. "With a huge international brand like Hilton, you'd imagine they prioritised integrity, honesty and respect for their customers," says Raymond.

"Our feeling was that if we took this higher up the corporate chain, someone would be very upset about the way we had been treated. We thought that Hilton would want to fix what had gone wrong and possibly organise some retraining for the staff at Craigendarroch. Never in a million years did we believe it could be a systemic, company-wide issue."

Raymond and Anthonia's pleas for help were met at first with silence, and then with insults.

Self described 'Sales Leader' Keith Saslov, a Hilton executive who has been with the company for over 17 years, described Raymond in writing as a clown, on an email sent to Raymond.

Contempt: Is this how Hilton view their customers?

"We were both shocked and horrified," says Raymond. "The contempt and disrespect Keith Saslov demonstrates towards me as a customer is extremely disheartening. £50,000 might not be a lot of money to Hilton, or even to Mr Sazlov. But to us it represents our security and future."

"This attitude being openly displayed towards a client indicates a corporate culture within Hilton of deception being acceptable in order to maximise profit.

"Clearly this Hilton manager regards us as 'marks', 'mugs' and specifically me as a 'clown'. The friendliness and charm shown by the salespeople during the presentations is purely an act designed to get you to trust them so you will hand over your money.

"They don't view us as human beings. Just clowns to be lied to in order to boost their sales figures."

Click to watch video of Raymond describing his Hilton experience

Help at hand

Greg Wilson comments: "The Hills' experiences with Hilton are sadly characteristic of the thousands of timeshare customers that ECC represents.

"Deception, pressure sales and treating their clients as commodities to be milked for money seems endemic throughout the timeshare industry.

"The contempt demonstrated in this email by Mr Saslov towards Raymond is a serious case of customer abuse, and seems to be a very telling glimpse into the corporate attitudes of Hilton as regards their customer base."