European Consumer Claims (ECC) launched in 2016 to challenge widespread mis-selling, consumer abuse and has successfully claimed tens of millions of pounds worth of financial compensation for people who have been unfairly treated by both timeshare and holiday park consumers. Recently ECC has turned it’s expertise to seeking financial redress for people that have lost fortunes to retirement community property developers.
Many of the issues that plague timeshare and holiday park buyers are also rife in retirement property sales.
Retirement community property consumer abuse is not a matter of someone losing a chunk of money on fake holiday promises, although those situations can be devastating in their own right.
Buying a retirement community property is a graver and more consequential decision. It determines the quality of the final part of an often vulnerable person’s life.
It usually involves making the best possible choices with the close family member’s life savings, in order to cater to their increased dependence on outside help in the daunting sunset years of life when bodies and minds begin to let their owners down.
Often timeshare companies or holiday parks have a less than savoury reputation. On hearing about people losing money because they trusted salespeople in these industries there is sometimes an attitude of complacency. A feeling that, the victim is somehow foolish and possibly even partly to blame for putting their trust in an industry so well known for fraud.
Those of us involved in the claims industry know that nothing could be further from the truth. Timeshare and holiday park victims are no more nor less intelligent than the rest of us. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
With retirement community property mis-selling there are no such misconceptions. It is inconceivable to most of us that anyone would enter into such an important transaction without a seriousness of purpose and after having researched every aspect. The stakes are simply too high.
So when we hear about consumer abuse including shocking annual fee increases from well known UK retirement community developments, we understand that it could easily be ourselves in this position. We all have elderly relatives. Some of us ARE elderly relatives.
Annual fees spiralling out of control are only an issue if we were given incorrect information on this possibility before making the purchase. Or if the true information were withheld.
Out of control fees can cause the market value to drop like a stone costing people, in many cases their whole life savings.
If the salesperson is upfront about the prospect of losing a lot of money, then very few people are interested. Generally speaking, properties are expected to make money, so why should retirement community properties be any different?
Nobody wants to buy a property which has expensive costs, and those costs have no capped increase rate.
Consumer expert Greg Wilson, CEO of European Consumer Claims (ECC) says: “At ECC we feel strongly that more robust legislation is required to protect vulnerable families being misled (or not fully informed) about the contracts they are signing.
“There are currently avenues open to seek financial redress. However the existing legal framework does generally require expert assistance to navigate.
“With the sizeable sums of money involved in retirement property litigation, always seek expert advice before committing to a course of action.”
