[Resolved]  Club Mahindra Holidays — Cheating, harassment and mental trauma because of Club Mahindra!

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

I have been cheated and harassed by Club Mahindra. Since mid August I've been liaising with them for assistance with travel bookings. I was told booking cannot be done so early for December and that I must contact them in September. When I reached out in September and asked their agent Divya to send me the details on mail, I was told they are not permitted to send mails. Being a working person and I cannot spend time during my working hours discussing a holiday plan. Somehow I pleaded her to send the details on mail. She sent me a mail with documents which I could not access since the files she sent were in a non readable format. I again requested her to send the same to me as a word document, so that I could read it but she simply refused! I told her to close the membership because it was of no use to me if the Club Mahindra staff are so uncourteous and cannot help. I have made payments of over INR 2.5lacs to them but have not used a single holiday and now when I wanted to make use of it, I'm treated like this! I then reached out to one Mr Lalit (supposedly the store manager), at their outlet in the atria mall from where I had purchased this membership and asked him to get this cancelled. I was once again convinced to give them a chance. So he said he'll get the details for me and help me organise my trip. Most places I asked for I was told I cannot a avail of the booking or there was some problem or the other. So I changed my plans and gave him alternate options to get the details for me and also to let me know how many more installments are left to be paid. He told me he would find the details and get back to me by 8Sep14. However, after that meeting with Lalit on 6th September, he went absconding. I have not heard from him till date. Neither did he call, nor did he answer my repeated calls! Highly unprofessional and irresponsible behaviour from a Store Manager!! I realised that I was just given a rosy picture at the time of the sale and that I have been duped and cheated by Club Mahindra. So I requested them to close this membership, immediately stop the EMIs hitting my credit card and refund all the money that I've unnecessarily paid Club Mahindra. I wrote in to their member relations team, copied one Ms Roma Balwani, copied their group communications teams, spoke to their call centre agents but to no avail. They kept telling me that my case had been forwarded to the relevant team and they kept deducting my card account, despite me asking them not to! This is absolute CHEATING! I once again wrote to them, as none of their executives would ever be available on the phone and their call centre people would only say 'we'll get back to you'...which would never happen. I finally got a call from one Ms Preeti, mid October, who finally confirmed telephonically that she had got the EMI debits stopped but refused to close the membership and refund the amount to me. She insisted on a meeting in November 2014, to which I agreed. When she visited me on 01Nov14, she again tried to convince me to continue with the membership, however, not solving my problem, but instead insisting that this is how Club Mahindra functions and that if I want to use their services, I would have to manage on my own and use their website and do the hotel booking and that none of their staff would be able to assist with the same. She also stated that they do not help with any complete holiday plan. This is contradictory to what I was promised when the membership was sold to me! So I told her that if this is their attitude, then I am forced to close the membership, for which she got me to sign some form requesting for withdrawal of the membership. She had confirmed that she will get back to me with the refund amount and confirmation of the closure by Monday, 03Nov14, but I did not receive any mail or call from her. Finally she sent me a mail on Friday, 07Nov14 in the evening stating that they would not refund any money to me and since they are not refunding any money, I should rethink about the closure! This is disgusting and pathetic treatment of customers! If Club Mahindra was genuine, they would have apologised about the way their staff had fooled me into buying this product and then not helping me with my holidays, but this just shows that Club Mahindra is only interested in fooling and duping people like me! At the time of selling the membership to me, I was given a very glorious picture. I was told that I would be helped in planning my entire holiday. I was then asked to upgrade to Red Studio so that I can avail of the facilities in December which is peak season. I was told that I can take guests with me too, only that my no. of nights would be reduced basis the extra person joining in. But all of these are false promises. I'm now told they can't help in planning an entire holiday, I cannot avail of RCA and not get bookings in their hotels at locations I want to visit, I cannot take more than 3 people (including me) when I had clearly enquired at the time of signing up if I can take 5 people along with me. My ask from Club Mahindra is to REFUND all the amount I have paid so far to Club Mahindra, as I have not used the membership facilities at all. In her last mail, Preeti has also stated - That they would charge me 60% cancellation charges (INR 299, 400/-) - how can they charge me this amount when I am closing this membership because of harassment and mental trauma that I have had to go through because of their mismanagement and false promises and cheating. In fact, because of them I had to make last minute bookings from elsewhere and have had to pay double the amount. So in fact they should be paying me for all this trouble and money I have had to spend because of them! She has also charged me for some holiday cost (INR 15000), but this I have been repeatedly telling her were free vouchers given to me by their staff at the promo they ran at PVR and this I would have got even if I had not signed up for this membership. So then what is she charging me for?! She has then added an RCI enrollment cost of INR 2000/- - RCI at the time of taking this membership, I was told was a 2 year free membership and if I wanted to continue after that, then I would need to enroll. But here I want to cancel my Club Mahindra Membership itself, so where does this enrollment cost come in from ?!! Then she speaks of Cost of Gifts dispatched (INR 6500) - what is this for I wonder??? She has also stated a charge of INR 24, 160/- as ASF overdues. Why must I pay an Annual Subscription fee when I am withdrawing the membership! So as you can see, this is how they have arrived at their conclusion of not refunding my money back to me. Club Mahindra staff and the organization itself are cheaters and have duped me! Please help me in resolving this and getting back the money that Club Mahindra owes me!