TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Club O Refunds?

Club O Facebook has a post from Bob indicating he has made a third request for a refund.

They indicate they are elderly and on fixed income and cant afford to donate their €500 deposit.

Im all for donations..........but im equally all for refunds.

The sporadic internet and bank access excuse after 4 months seems mighty thin especially when $100k plus was received from friends and distributed to the employees. How did they do that without bank access and internet?

And the chair/ beer concessions are running ( not sure if that is Club O or an adhoc group of employees).

Regardless, a deposit is a deposit and reserves should be kept every hurricane season to cough it back up if unable to deliver the goods.

For those who donated, good on ya. They could probably use some more.

I agree, if someone wants a refund, they should get it, it's plenty of time for a refund to be given.

>> Club O Facebook has a post from Bob indicating he has made a third request for a refund.

My first thought is a total lack of details in your post. Was it their third request this week/month/year or?

Secondly, give Club O a break. There is a difference between a deposit not coming, and one that is delayed in
someone's opinion. A very reputable company that has suffered a catastrophic loss might not be the first out of
the gate to refund deposits, but as along as they do I am OK with that.

My 2 cents.

Really? After nearly 4 months? Perhaps you can afford throw 500 euros down the drain, but like 'Bob' I would want my monies back. Quit frankly, with the lack of communications, or efforts to clean up the property, let alone starting to rebuild - and no I don't consider the perch light and a few scavenged chairs to be rebuilding - I seriously doubt they'll ever be back.

Just my $0.02 worth...

I agree, four months is long enough. I have no idea whether they will be rebuilding or not. I assume so. But four months is too much to wait for a refund.

We also agree. We had made 2 separate deposits, one each at Clubs Orient & Fantastico. Chloe emailed my wife saying that the deposit had been refunded - we would have been okay with it being applied to our next stay (sometime in '18). CO had posted a month ago that they would be able to start refunds, but nothing forthcoming yet. When we knew that our Nov. SXM trip was kaput, we decided we would go to Curacao and could certainly use that refund. We'd even be happy to donate a portion of it to the employee fund, but can't afford the entire 500E.

We finally received our refund via international wire transfer on December 22. At first, for several months, we just received the standard email from Club O stating that they were currently closed. I then emailed Florence directly at reservations@cluborient.com on December 8 and heard back from her on December 12 that they were finally able to begin refunding deposits. Once I gave her all the requested bank information for a wire transfer (on December 19), we received the refund directly into our bank account several days later on the 22nd. You might want to try the above email address to contact Florence directly.

We have requested a refund 4 times from Club Orient. The first request was 2 weeks after the hurricane and then 1 request was sent each month since then with the latest being on January 2, 2018. We have received no reply from Club Orient for a refund of our deposit of 500 Euros. We sent the Club O receipt each time to verify our deposit and still no reply.

Club Orient is now acting irresponsibly toward their customers by not even replying to a request for a refund. We have stayed at Club O for over 15 years and now we are not very impressed by the resort, to say the least.

Sorry to hear that. Did you try what Robin and Ed suggested above? I agree this is not acceptable at all.

Yes, sent two emails to Florence at reservations@cluborient.com with no response whatsoever. Not good.

OK, sure hope you get some satisfaction soon..

We've been trying unsuccessfully also to obtain our deposit refund. We only receive the standard email reply. We've been going to Club O for over thirty years. A resort such as this should have the means, in the event of a catastrophe such as Irma, to refund people's deposit after a reasonable amount of time. They posted on their FB page, weeks ago, that they now have internet access, etc. This is just plain irresponsible now. We have an alternate vacation planned for March and we certainly could use the deposit money for that trip. My husband is retired, and we don't have an unlimited amount of vacation dollars. Today, I sent another email, received the same standard email reply, and will give it a few more days. This time, however, I used the reservations@cluborient.com address hoping for a better/quicker response. Initially, I thought we could donate a portion of that deposit to Club O, however, given their lack of responsibility, I have changed my mind.

I too, had but a deposit on a stay to Club O that was to be in October 2017. When Irma came in and destroyed everything in September, I waited a few weeks to let everything get settled down before sending documentation showing I had a pending reservation that was canceled due to Irma. I did receive an email back from them that they would have to wait on insurance and getting all their records before they could begin to refund to those that wanted refunds. I left it at that, and had not inquired about the refund anymore. I was proud of myself for being patient, but after a while, I got to thinking that maybe I was just going to have to write off ever receiving any of that deposit back. However, just last night, I did receive an email from Florence stating that they were beginning to start refunding deposits, and they wanted to confirm my name and address and then they would be refunding the money. I will see if it arrives, but at least they did contact me without me having to continually request the refund. I hope all others expecting a refund will receive what they are owed.

Thank you Wayne and Lynne. I will give it a bit more time!

Under the extreme circumstances why would anybody think they could afford or able to refund? The property like so many others was almost totally destroyed and insurance companies are jerking and everybody around. Many hotels etc are just not able to refund until insurance kicks in and then they will be lucky if the get 25% of their claim. I'm Sure these room refunds are a pittance to what they have already lost and will never recover. I would not want to be in their shoes. The headache to deal with that plus pissed of guests. Travel insurance is widely available and cheap if you don't want to take the risk.

As is business interuption insurance.. A refundable deposit is just that. Refundable.

Sorry, nope. No pass on this one. Club O was asking people to voluntarily donate their deposits to the Club, and then now you say that they shouldn't have to refund deposits?? These are unearned amounts, which should be refunded, period.

And deposits for future stays should not be your operating capital.

We just sent an email to that address and got the response that they didn’t have internet access and so on. No matter what I wanted to do that put a stop sign up to communication. Wondering what to do now.

Agreed, something sure seems amiss.

That doesn't excuse not responding to inquiries. An upfront response goes a long way

I emailed GCBC on Dec 16th for deposit refund. Received a credit against my credit card 2 days later. And they are also on the French side and subject to whatever banking restrictions in place. What's Club O's problem?

Gee, how do you RESPOND to an email and say you don't have email access?? And that excuse works for maybe a couple weeks or a month. In that amount of time, you can do a work around and get access to email, if you WANT to. Looking at the current state of the property, as of January 1, in the video posted in that other thread. I really am thinking that they are not going to rebuild, which I never would have thought, in a million years.

I know there are some people here with some connections to owners. Any comments that anyone would care to make??

[quote=Carol_Hill Looking at the current state of the property, as of January 1, in the video posted in that other thread. I really am thinking that they are not going to rebuild, which I never would have thought, in a million years. [/quote]

I've saying that for some time now, and getting ripped for it (over on FB). If they rebuild it will surprise me... I hope i'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

Hi, my wife Cleta (Rabby on here) was able to get a response from Florence. She said that she thought our "travel agent" said that we would contribute our deposit. I assume she was referring to Jim Ruos, although we never told him that. I accept that in all the confusion there could easily be a misunderstanding. Flo said that we would be put on "the list" for receiving a refund. On a related note: We were notified by our CC (Cap 1) that our Fantastico deposit refund has been applied. Merci, Chloe, and we will be returning in '18 - hopefully sooner than later.

You and I both know that Jim Ruos would NEVER in a million years tell them that, without your direction. Their credibility is slim and none. If you are on "the list" for a refund, it should be done, period..

As with any business, the bottom line is the almighty dollar. Granted there are some businesses that act responsibly to their customers but not all do. If Club O is holding on to the refunds longer, they gain the benefit of any interest it accrues. I would be willing to bet they are also waiting on the French Government to make ruling(s) on setbacks and construction standards along the waters edge before rebuilding, if that is even going to happen. If I owned Club O I would definitely want to know BEFORE I commit to spending millions on rebuilding only to have the government come in later and make me move or remove the structures I had already built. Based on comments from many it seems that the government of France is in no real hurry to assist Saint Martin. I agree it's wrong to keep any deposit that wasn't gifted and to do so might not be criminal in the country of France but it is at least immoral.

I have 99.9% faith in Club O. I'm sure they are just conserving cash until insurance.

That said, customers have different levels of patience and some have run out of their allotment. I'd expect those requesting to be getting their refunds or a good response soon.

As for the rebuild, Club O is complicated, but the demand for their product is high, they are insured to some level and have loyal employees and customers.

I remember when inquiring about ownership, insuring the unit within the "group" was required.

The mess looks horrible, but nothing some heavy equipment can't clear out in short order. The question is what to build.

I think the future requires setback, elevation and concrete. It will be different raising things, but then again the units might get more breeze and more view. Handicap accessibility may become a factor. Perhaps sand buildup around the units, designed to wash away in the surge.

Anyway, I'm sure this thread has gotten their attention and I hope they rebuild ASAP.

Oh, they can afford to refund deposits. No company should be using customer deposits as operating capital. Customers' REFUNDABLE deposits should be placed in an 'escrow'-type account upon receipt for just that reason. It really should have nothing to do with insurance companies or anything else. Club O is just jerking everyone around, and having to wait almost 4 months for a refund is inexcusable. If they have internet enough to know who donated their deposits and who didn't, then they have internet enough to respond directly to a refund request. Sending a computer-generated standard response form over and over for months on end is just wrong. We had booked our trip through Jim Ruos and initially contacted him regarding our refund. Unfortunately, he was in the same boat as the rest of us as far as getting any kind of decent response from Club O. He was the one who suggested we try contacting them directly at reservations@cluborient.com. No doubt they are a bit overwhelmed with emails at the moment, but that's not an excuse to not directly respond to their customers.

As far as travel insurance goes, we had that too and, in fact, initially tried to go that route when we weren't getting any response from Club O. The insurance company told us they could do nothing until Club Orient showed a response that they could not, or would not, refund anyone's deposit. So stuck in limbo yet again. Sorry, but there is no excuse for this type of delay any longer. Internet has been up and running. We just stayed persistent and kept emailing Florence until we received our refund - finally. We suggest you do the same.

Edited to add: this has little to do with patience either. Four months is a long time for most people. Not everyone can afford to lose 500 euros. Some of us booked other vacations in place of our Club O trip and could have used that money to do so. Sorry, this is wrong on so many levels.

Hello,
I was told by Florence to send my bank info and it will be wired back to my account but then just received an email saying it will cost them a lot of money to do that so I was told it will be mailed to me.

well see,

Philly

We were booked at Club O in October after Luis hit. We were refunded without a request within 2 weeks. Understand, the Brinks felt a personal responsibility to all of their guests that were booked. American refunded us with no problem. We know Irma was a more damaging hurricane than Luis, but Club O was still badly damaged by Luis. The Brinks replaced most of the units.

We went to Jamaica and then came back to Club O after it was rebuilt several years later. We spent at least 4-6 weeks yearly at Club O from that point on.

If I had been booked during this terrible time, and had booked within 6 months and wanted my deposit back, I would dispute the charge with the credit card company.

We are heart broken over the destruction of Club Orient. It will be very difficult to re-build this time without the Brinks. I hope to spend another vacation at Club O, but I think the chances are very slim.

Sorry, that doesn't wash. They should know how much it's going to cost for a wire, especially since one person has already said they received a wire refund?? Mailing is not acceptable, as it can take WEEKS for mail from SXM to the US. And I HOPE they are not going to mail you a check on a SXM bank, as THAT is going to cost YOU a LOT of money to cash in the US--like 20%, if it's anything like a check on a Dutch side bank. We did that ONCE. Won't do that again!!

There a sooo many easy ways to send money these days ( if you want to). Paypal, refund your credit card, Western Union, Moneygram, Alipay and even wire transfer. If the CO management made visitors pay by wire transfer CO should refund the money by wire transfer. If the visitor paid by credit card CO should refund by credit card. Never never take a check wrote on a foreign bank. Chances for tooo many problems.

CO management is dragging this out by choice. This can happen when you send money to a foreign country.

Wendell

From years ago I was under the understanding that the Brinks didn't "own" the Chalets. Just Papagayos and the utilities. Individual people bought the Chalets with limited rights. Even if they wanted to use their Chalet they had to pay a discounted rent to the management company ( Brinks). But the "owners" did get a percentage cut of the rental of their units.

So maybe it is not up to the Brinks ( or CO management) to rebuild or not. IF an individual "owner" didn't have insurance on their Chalet there would not be any money to rebuild. Or if the Brinks decided not to replace the water, sewer and electricity. You could rebuild but have no utilities. Kinda reminds me of the old Mullet Bay saga.

Wendell

Wendell, refunding the credit card seems like the logical way to do this. That's what Club F did.
And Carol, I agree that Jim Ruos is an honest businessman. All of our dealings with him have been pleasant & efficient.
We'll let you know when and if we get this straightened out.
Regarding whether or not they will rebuild - this is a prime location. If they don't, someone will. I worry that it would be a big money chain hotel (a la Westin, etc.).

Biturbo,
You may have hit the nail on the head with that possibility especially since there doesn't 'appear' to be much clean-up going on. I was surprised at the number of sinks and toilets around the property from the video posted in another topic.
Club O had no problem taking the donations from a lot of folks, now it is time for them to do what is right and get all the folks who want their refund to get it to them.
Good luck to all those expecting refunds and I truly hope Club O will rebuild!

Club O is holding three $500.00 ($1,500) deposits... Thanksgiving Week, Christmas Week and Feb/March 2 weeks. Emailed In October after generously donating to the employee fund. I am emailing Florence and ClubO Reservations and getting auto response. Any suggestions? Since folks are getting refunds, they must have a system in place. Any help, serious suggestions, would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I thought that was a little strange since I read here someone else had theirs wired to them!
well see how this plays out...

Philly

Did you ask any other questions? Are they going to mail you a US check from the US?? If not, send them back a note and tell them it is not acceptable, if they plan on sending you a foreign check. it will take FOREVER to cash and will cost a lot of money. A wire should cost Club O about $15 and you the same amount. But as Wendell said, there are a million easier ways for them to do this, that won't cost them or you. That is, if they WANT to refund you the money.

Just being Captain Obvious here but they should refund funds using the same method that the was used for the deposit