[Resolved]  Club Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Limited — Cancellation and refund not allowed within 10 days

I agree - they are liars and cheats

I need my money back - please don't cheat us Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy and Ms. Arsheen. We signed on a paper that said we are entitled to a full refund if we cancel within 10 days. How can you lie to us like this? How can you openly tell us that the termination clause is not applicable to us - just to suit your convenience?

Even after we explained our desperate situation Ms. Arsheen was rude to us in our own house. She was only concerned that the sale going bad should not be held against her. Instead of helping us out - she spent 20 mins pleading with Mr. Jayant convincing him that the sale going bad is not her fault. And together they continued to lie and tell us there is no cancellation refund applicable to us. They never even informed us about the clause.

After I started crying and read the form in detail - I pointed out the termination clause - and then they came up with a new story saying it is not applicable to us

They made me beg for my own money in my own house. What sort of people are these? They have no ethics. Club Mahindra representatives will go to any extent to make a sale and meet a revenue target. They have no compassion, and Club Mahindra representatives are frauds and have no basic ethics. How can they say that I am not eligible for a termination clause that is part of the agreement terms and conditions we both signed. Ms. Arsheen and Me - both o[censored]s signed this.

Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy lied to us - he made up some story that the Club Mahindra termination clause is not applicable to us because they have highlighted us under the 1st 25 early bird members and therefore we are entitled to a Samsung LCD 22' inch TV and some other freebies. The total freebies come up to 17, 700 + 5000 + 14, 900. For this they want us to pay 3 more moths EMI... what part did they not understand? We are in a sudden family emergency - we will not even be able to do up our home, we will not even be able to afford our honeymoon... we need the money... and they want us to pay 3 more EMIs of Rs. 8, 000 each... are they mad?

Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy - Team Manager at Club Mahindra Holidays and Resorts - how do you sleep at night? If we tried something like this - cheating our customers - in our workplace - we would lose our jobs on so many counts. We would be black-listed in our industry and no one would hire us.

But you obviously have been promoted - I guess that speaks volumes on behalf of your organization. And given all the other comments I have seen on this site - all the other innocent people you have cheated and harassed - God help me. Maybe I will sell my wedding ring to pay you bloodsucking, lying thieves.

How can my husband and I even take leave and come tomorrow - let alone on all the days we expect you to make us dance by calling us to your office and avoiding us... we will put our jobs at risk also now...

Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy - Team Manager at Club Mahindra Holidays and Resorts - we are simple, hard-working people. We do not have the time and money to chase you.

This is our hard-earned money. Please give it back to us. Please do not make us run around for it. Please do not invent clauses that we never signed and were never informed about.

Please give us our money back.

Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy - Team Manager at Club Mahindra Holidays and Resorts - to tell you the truth - we were very sad when we called Ms. Arsheen back to cancel the membership.

We were so excited to enjoy your Club facilities and in an instant we had to give this up because we suddenly were in an emergency situation. We had promised each other that we would take the package again when we were in a position to do so.

But instead o[censored]nderstanding our problem, you tried to cheat us. You lied to us about the termination policy.

Now we are so disgusted - we will never do business with you again. And we will carry the message to ALL our friends.

Congratulations, sir, on losing a customer forever in your bid to make a paltry 26, 570/- for Club Mahindra.

Believe me - if you try to steal from us anymore - and deduct anymore EMIs - we will cancel our credit cards, and will close that bank account... and will rebuild everything to keep you out.

If we don't get our money back from you nicely, we will leave no measure to make sure your company pays heavily for this. Of course, we are simple hard-working middle class people - so we will not resort to your unethical and illegal practices like you. But we will employ every legal method to bring you down for this.

And we will make sure EVERY SINGLE person on our social and professional networks knows what you have done to us...

Dear Saurabh,

Thank you for your reply - I sent that mail to Ms Indira at the address you suggested at 5:15 am and have received a system generated response for the same.

Will diligently follow up till this is sorted and trust to receive the same attention and action from your side. Bottomline being I want our hard-earned money back.

Best,
Josceline D'Costa

To everyone who has supported us on this forum, thought we owed it to you to send an update.

Firstly, we had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy. He tried his best like a true sales manager to ensure that we stayed on with the membership and re-listed the benefits for us - Club Mahindra is lucky to have such an aggressive and committed sales person. When we confirmed our decision to withdraw the application he tried to understand why we went for that package (because Ms. Arsheen initially gave us to understand that the free 3D-4N offer if taken from 10Jan onwards could be taken only within the White days and only after we took the plan and had the money transferred did she explain that we could have taken this free holiday on any days - if we knew this we would have taken the Blue package because the only immediate call to action for us was our honeymoon being sponsored). Anyway once he read our letter detailing the personal reason for withdrawal, he started to listen to our point of view.

Secondly:
1) Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy has accepted our written letters and confirmed with a company stamp and signature that he had accepted them. In these letters we have recounted our experience and asked him to forward to the correct department within Club Mahindra our request for application withdrawal and refund of down payment. We have also given a copy of the letter to him intended for the attention and action of Branch In-charge Mr. Rajeev Nair, further to an e-mail sent by me earlier today morning around 1-2am to Mr. Rajeev Nair. Separate Club Mahindra representatives have also written to us via e-mail twice today assuring us that action will be taken.
2) Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy has throughout our face-to-face discussion maintained that we will not be refunded the down payment as we were part of the 25 early bird consumers and therefore the termination clause is not applicable to us. And that this is because COA (cost of acquisition) is high for the early bird consumers and therefore it is a special package, and in event of cancellation they need to cover losses. (Here I beg to differ and argue - if we have left the slot vacant without consuming a single freebie, then there is another customer they can get. What COA is being recovered from us exactly? the justification provided does not make any professional, business, logical, or ethical sense. We just added to the MHRIL top line without being serviced on any count. That being said, a sales demo is an operational cost and translates into COA only if we sign up and stay members beyond the Rescission period. Otherwise, it's just an operational loss expense.)
3) Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy of Club Mahindra has also expressed that Ms. Arsheen would have never accepted our membership application if we had asked for some time or a day or two to think it over, because in their experience such clients are not stable and are prone to changing opinions. We explained that at the time of taking the membership application, we were certain we wanted it - but the sudden information about my father's surgery and the realization that we would no longer be able to afford this, changed our decision. We have no control over such situations and cannot be indirectly labeled as fickle consumers for this - that is very unfair. It is also a very personally implied statement. You will appreciate that in this situation, we expect Mr. Jayant to treat us professionally as he's doing his job, while we are seeking to retrieve our hard-earned money and our representing ourselves in an outside-employment situation.
4) Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy has also assured us that EMI ECS will not be activated further to our written request,
5) Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy has also assured us that he will forward our letter to the concerned department within MHRIL, who are empowered to make a decision about return of funds on withdrawal of CMHM application. In good faith, we trust he will forward our request to the correct department. And since he is the point of contact for us as consumers, we will keep following up daily with him and Mr. Rajeev Nair on e-mail and call till we get a favorable response confirming our payment return date OR till we get a written communication informing that we will NOT get the money with justifying reasons. At that point, we will decide and act on a further course of action accordingly.

Thirdly, after he saw our early morning e-mail to Mr. Rajeev, Mr. Jayant personally called up to discuss the mail:
1) He expressed that he was offended at the tone of our mail and expressed that he felt it was unprofessional, not very mature, and personal in tone of writing, and uncalled for. He did not expect us to stoop so low.
2) I have explained to Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy that the mail was not meant to be a professional one - it is a personal mail, because it is our personal money that stands to be lost due to mis-information and thereby misleading and incidental cheating on the part of the sales representative sent to our residence (whereby we signed a form with a clause that entitles us to full refund of payment upon withdrawal of membership within 10 days from signup. But when we actually opted for withdrawal, the representative Arsheen informed us that this clause we signed is not applicable to us since we had been selected for early bird prizes for being among the first 25 customers to sign up for the particular Club Mahindra service. How can we be bound by something we have not signed and how can something e have signed in good faith be declared null and void without any prior written or verbal communication at the last minute?).
3) Also it was a personal mail because with the distress caused by losing our hard earned money due to Club Mahindra sales executive Arsheen Khan's misinformation, we stayed awake all night unable to eat or sleep. And writing these mails was the only consolation - even though it was like clutching at straws.
4) Further, when we had initially recalled Ms Arsheen Khan and expressed our helplessness and desire to withdraw the application, it was she who was rude to us getting personal by saying that the amount was "peanuts" and it wasn't like we earned "peanuts" so it shouldn't be a problem. As young professionals who worked very very hard days and nights to get where we are, it was very hurtful to hear such things from a person who was refusing to refund our money under misinformation and was refusing to respect our wishes as consumers. I guess at some level that registered with us on a very personal note and added to our distress. That may have contributed to the bitterness and helplessness in our letters, comments, and e-mails.
5) Also, each time we typed in keywords like "club mahindra down payment breakup", "club mahindra customer care", and "club mahindra membership fee" to seek additional information about the situation we were in from Club Mahindra, Google only threw up negative comments and reviews from consumers. That made us really scared. In fact when you Google for "Jayant Ramaswamy Club Mahindra", the second result, even before his linked in profile is that of some consumer complaint. so you will understand why our distrust and bitterness and fear of losing our hard-earned money, and our feeling of hopelessness was compounded. I can provide screenshots of Google search results to support this.
6) That being said, we apologize to all representatives of Club Mahindra if they have felt hurt at our tone of communication. Our intention was not to hurt, we were not even considering anyone's feelings when we wrote those mails, comments, and posts - all we were focused on was getting our hard earned money back, and with that, our peace of mind.

Finally, we have not only submitted our request in writing to Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy towards him and Mr. Rajeev Nair; we have also to be on the safe side, sent via courier a similar copy of the letter (minus the modifications requested by Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy) to Mrs. Usha Pillai at Chennai - we shall track receipt of the same via courier POD and airmail number. We have also e-mailed Mr. Arun Nair who drives social media optimization, when we were confused about who to contact last night (i.e. in the very early hours of Oct 25)

We are grateful for the time shared by Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy, and the 2 customer care representatives who sent us e-mails. We hope this goes beyond an expression of regret and verbal discussion, and translates into a hard action resulting in the rightful refund of our down payment as per the termination clause no. 6 which we signed against on the application form. After all, in line with this clause, we have honestly satisfied the condition of withdrawing our application and requesting the same in writing - and we have acknowledged letter copies signed by Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy and stamped with the MHRIL seal to support this written submission.

We only want our money back, and will continue to follow up with our customer contact point Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy until we get this resolved i.e. we get our money back. Because he is no longer a faceless entity to us - he is someone we have met and have an established comfort level with. After all that is what good customer engagement is all about.

Thanks Club Mahindra team, in advance, for a favorable resolution - i.e. giving our money back to us.

Best,
Josceline D'Costa

We've submitted the paperwork and are awaiting a confirmation on the cheque release date

Club Mahindra have been really cheats, I have dropped idea of buying Scorpio 3 months back, which I had shrt listed, I had seen a house in Bhandup Mumbai by mahindra, had 3 rounds for discussion for finalization and suddenly realized it is Mahindra company and went for another project in last week opposite to Mahindra.

Mr. Jayant Ramaswamy & Ms. Arsheen will be promoted by Club Mahindra Management, their KRA ( target ) for increments and promoitions is how many customers do they fool . Shame Mahindras

We have been informed by the Relationship Manager Ms. Kainaz Pardiwalla to expect our cheque in December, and will now peacefully await the same. Thanks Club Mahindra team for helping us out.

Best,
Josceline D'Costa

Club Mahindra... STAY away from the company... I am a (un-happy) member too, even after paying so much, I do not get my holidays, they ask us to plan 6 months in advance, all services in their resorts are to be paid extra, dining charges are too high, ASF (annual subscription fees) to be paid extra each year in addition to membership fees (the ASF charges increase every year), not all resorts have kitchenettes... long list of issues which the management doesn;t care for, all they want is to make new members. A review is also posted at http://shib4u.blogspot.com/2009/04/club-mahindra-review.html

Saurabh/Indira - please stop posting the same old lines on all the complaints, whatever the resolution, please post it here so that everyone should know what CM is doing for the complaints.