Dear Dom
We feel so embarrassed about this story I'm about to tell you we've never been able to tell anyone until now.
In April 2005 while holidaying in Tenerife and strolling through playa de las americas my wife and I were approached by a 'time share salesman' having never seen a presentation before we decided to have a look, and guess what, we were stupid enough to purchase into the fantastic holiday of a lifetime club run by 'Carpe Diem'.
We spent the next few months on our return trying to book a holiday with the holiday system somewhere where WE wanted to go, at the time WE wanted to go, when we made our dissapointments known to the booking agent at Carpe Diem we were given a free holiday at a fantastic new resort in Tenerife. Again when we returned to England we tried booking holidays again and then saw the news article regarding 'Carpe Diem' warning people about this holiday company that could never deliver - can you imagine how sick I felt having parting with £14950.00. I could never tell anyone about this, not even family, how stupid were we?
Then in September 2011 we were given a lifeline, a chance to get some of our money back, A man who introduced himself as Michael from A&L Services, told me about our Carpe Diem membership and the possibility of getting our deposit back for a up front fee of £375 and on completion we would have to pay another £375, we were then contacted by Michael who further explained the process and gave us three telephone numbers of previous customers who confirmed the deal when questioned. We paid the £375 and sent the requested copies of our membership of Carpe Diem, in due course received a letter confirming our payment and A&L Services intentions to pursue claim for our deposit of £3000. We were next contacted in November by Ray regarding the membership we had taken with Carpe Diem giving us a 'True Income Return Programme' and to pursue this they would need a further payment of £1495.00 explaining that this was a payment insisted by three solicitors posted in England, Spain and Gibraltar who were dealing with the claim. Alarm bells were starting to sound in our heads and we expressed our concerns, we were then contacted by Stewart who introduced himself as the Owner/Director of A&L Services, and went on to explain what the money was for, and when we should see some return, he confirmed that he would not be able to pursue the claim without this payment and said that we should expect a return of approximately £29900.00, me and my wife talked about it over Christmas and in the new year decided to pay the money by opening a post office account and transferring the money into their account as suggested by Ray and Stewart at A&L Services. In February we received another telephone call that the claim had been accepted and an 'Authorisation Letter' to allow A&L Services to act on our behalf was required at a further cost of £2500.00, my refusal to pay and an explanation of why was met with a proposal from Stewart that he would be willing to pay this amount as a gesture of good will and on completion of the claim, with no guarantee, we would pay the amount of £2500.00 and £375 which was invested on our behalf.
The date we were told that we should see some return by came and we still had not received an authorisation letter from A&L Services so I contacted Ray who telephoned me back and explained that the claim had been accepted and was waiting for my signed authorisation letter, but was now in the hands of Stewart. The authorisation letter was sent to me attached to an E-mail on 11th May 2012, the letter did not look official so we decided to have a look at the solicitors address mentioned in the letter, which appeared to be an unlabelled door in Taunton.
WHAT DO I DO NOW
We decided to write to yourself - please help if you can, we are aware we should not have let it get this far, but that doesn't alter the fact we are now £16820.00 out of pocket and if this is broadcast perhaps we could stop it happening to someone else.
Waiting in hope Kevin and Janet