DavidLedger
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I don’t know how much Belgian probate law differs from the English, but in the UK a recipient can declare to the executors that they do not wish to take up an inheritance. When my uncle died my father passed his share direct to my brother and I so that we inherited rather than him giving us a gift. It was simpler tax-wise in that case. As they are not on the Anfi contract Anfi would find it difficult to prove that they should be. That would involve the Belgian court and so wouldn’t be worth their while trying. I would expect that you can just ignore all of that. The usual problem is convincing Anfi that someone not on an Anfi contract should be by right of inheritance.
On our website at https://anfiukmembers.co.uk/resort-info/ you’ll find the resort reps listed under each resort sub-page.
Of them, Richard Weston and Roger Byatt cover Beach, Monte and Gran, and are also on our committee so should see this thread.
If the sons have ever stayed there, Anfi will have archived scans of their passports anyway, so nothing is lost in sending a copy. I can see that having a passport scan or copy would be a way of verifying their signatures on any signed document they send in. They have the choice: send in a passport copy and relinquish their shares, or don’t and remain on the contract.
As to the 50 years, if you bought after 1998 then you wouldn’t have any legal claim to in-perpetuity anyway. Neither would you have the free extension beyond 50 years if you don’t sign a new contract. So a new contract gives you the free renewal and loses you nothing.
If you bought before 1998 then the in-perpetuity clause is still legal, so a new contract would give you more hassle at extension time (I think you have to apply during the 48th year), and may expose you to any as yet unknown extension problems.
Being a Fixed week owner your apartment/week will be on the contract, so the other legal problem with old contracts doesn’t apply.
Hope this helps.
https://who-called.co.uk/Number/07937946495 gives:
07937 946495 Overall rating
💡 The overall rating for phone number 07937946495 is Dangerous.There have been 604 phone lookups and 11 comments relating to this number. On this page: 7 Users rated it as Dangerous, 3 Users rated it as Unknown and 1 User rated it as Harassing.When I paid the other day I couldn’t find a ‘pay’ button anywhere. Just wandered about the Members’ pages for a bit looking for hints and when I went back the link was there. I don’t think I missed it the first times, but perhaps I did.
David
The cancellation fee seems to depend on who you are dealing with. I cancelled the same two weeks twice having re-opened them in between when flights opened up again before closing again. First time I wasn’t charged, the second time I was.
They have been blaming non-appearance of Points Balance on technical issues when others were told it was because of contract signing. Now I think there may actually be technical issues.
Vouchers may only be relevant to Fixed (and Floating?) owners where there is no Points Balance to reimburse.
David
This looks like a two week extension to the existing closure of ABC due to low numbers. Puerto and Emerald are also closed for the same reason. Even with weeks at those three resorts being re-directed to Monte and Gran the occupancy of those two is still very low – last I heard at around 30%.
It’s all about so called ‘law’ firms trying to scare people into giving them business.
The owner of one of the companies that own Anfi is, or is about to be, bankrupt. Anfi is one of his assets, so his share of Anfi will probably be for sale soon. There are people out there who would like to buy.
If you have the telephone number of the company that rang you please report it at:
https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/nuisance-calls-and-messages/spam-texts-and-nuisance-calls/
This is an official body that should take action. Please say that they are giving incorrect information to try to scare you into using their services.One of the legal problems with the old Floating and Points contracts is that a “right to use” is not sufficient to be considered the “object” of a contract. There has to be an apartment/week. As a result Anfi have added one. Then they have had to add the Flex system to allow you to have the flexibility you originally purchased. My guess is that if they make the flexibility too easy or optionally automatic then they run the risk of the new contract also being incorrect.
There are some at Anfi who seem to regard booking as being conditional on signing. Richard and Roger have been assured that this is not the case. They are investigating.
Anfi’s website is technically very poor. As someone who has managed computer server systems professionally I have talked to their head of IT about it. Normally what you see on a website would be generated directly from the actual data. Anfi don’t do this. Much is automatically generated in-house and manually uploaded to the website. I gather that because many IT staff are either not working or working from home they have abandoned the updating of the points balance pages and have just given everyone a blank sheet.
Assuming that you bought after 1998 and own Fixed week(s) then the only issue in your old contract is the 50 year rule. If this is the only change in a new contract they send you then there would be not problem that we know of. Some early versions of ‘new contracts’ did have other badly thought out changes intended to penalise you if you took legal action, but they would not have had the desired effect and have been removed from the current versions they are sending out. If your contract started before the law changed, then there is no problem anyway. It’s essential to do a side-by-side comparison.
It’s not impossible that once the 50 years is up, if for some reason Anfi needs to ‘reclaim’ contracts by then, that anyone with a post-1998 contract but who has not signed the new on-going extension contract, could be denied holiday rights because of the limit. If they did they would be acting legally. There’s so much water going to go under so many bridges before then that this is all guesswork and highly unlikely if current circumstances continue.
No-one else has answered here so I’ll add what I know.
There seems to be no real solutions other than to hand the weeks back for no compensation, continue to rent out, try to sell, take legal action, or wait and hope the situation changes with new ownership.
Legal action is expensive up-front, takes a very long time, involves attending court in Spain, and many of us don’t want to go that far.
Selling points doesn’t seem to be possible, but it may be, or become, possible to change the points to the underlying weeks that you really own but are not specified on the contract, and sell those. I’m not aware of anyone having done that – yet.
With Santana Cazorla becoming bankrupt with his half share in Anfi as one of his assets we can expect that half share to be sold to help pay his creditors. That means a new half-owner. Much will depend on them. Buy-back or allowing points to be sold are not an impossible thing for the future. We just have to wait and see. The Resort Reps and the National Clubs (like AnfiUK) are having more input than ever before (which isn’t a lot) so we are hopeful that Anfi will become more owner-friendly.
David
Stuart
The questionnaire was to gather responses from members in advance of a meeting with Anfi, which has now happened.
Spanish law does not seem to have any concept of joint action. We do have a relationship with a Spanish law firm that we initiated a few years ago. Our then secretary, who is a retired Solicitor, checked on several and came up with JLCA. They give our established members (for 2 years) a discount, tell you the possible costs up front, and do not take a ‘gratuity’ from any award as some others do. Cases do take several years to progress through the courts and Anfi delay payment as long as possible.
Every case is individual. Every contract is legal, even if contrary to the law, until the courts declare it illegal. If two owners taking action have identical paperwork, each set of paperwork has to be translated individually. If the first to pass through is declared illegal, the second is still legal until it receives its own verdict.
Having a contract that contravenes the law is not really a problem. If you comply with your part, Anfi will comply with theirs and let you stay – at least as things stand at the moment. Anfi could only stop you going by admitting that there is a problem with some contracts. Something they have always strenuously denied. Even if a new owner were to decide to clear the whole legal situation and admit there are problems, it’s still in Anfi’s interest to retain you as holidaying owners.
If you feel that you really want to leave Anfi, email me at chair@anfiukmembers.co.uk and I will pass your email address on to our ex-secretary who is still helping people to make claims. She would then contact you. This club is not trying to persuade people to take court action; we just have a reliable solution for those of our members who decide that is what they must do.
One thing that is totally unknown is whether or not the fact that Anfi is trying to make owners sign new legal contracts would make a difference in the courts. If you have been offered a new, legal, contract and declined to sign it, then that could be seen as accepting the old and reduce any award. A Spanish lawyer may be able to give an opinion of the likelihood of that, but I wouldn’t rely on that opinion.
I hope this helps. If you need to know more, just ask here.
David
From what others have said, Anfi are implying that they will look more favourably on your requests if you sign a new contract. Resort reps from the National Clubs (including Richard and Roger from AnfiUK) have put what pressure they can to stop them doing that, but it’s still variable. When they first started issuing new contracts they included clauses intended to punish you if you sued them. It couldn’t have been used as they intended, but it could cause problems for anyone just wanting to give up a week. Then they then said that they were ignoring that clause. The current version doesn’t include that clause. I’m expecting a new copy of mine in the post but it hasn’t arrived yet. Others on our committee have seen a new version and haven’t seen a problem. At least one has signed. I imagine that Anfi will continue to nag until you do.
If you have an in-perpetuity contract and a new contract (for you) includes the forever renewable 50 year rule and you can still use it as floating then there’s probably no difference, but without seeing it no-one can be sure. If there had been no other versions between the original and the latest we’ve seen and all new ones were the same we would have more idea. Those for Gran and Emerald were always 50 year limited and so those probably don’t include the forever extension. I own at Emerald, so my new one won’t be the same as yours.
So, I don’t think Anfi can make you sign (my opinion), but if there’s no reason not to, why not.David
You do need a Guest Certificate for parents and offspring (Anfi don’t consider siblings, even twins, as close relatives), but they should be free.
I can’t see anything new in those articles other than the Spanish Treasury not giving Anfi a tax refund that it should have.
As we understand it, it is Santana Cazorla and/or his companies who are bankrupt, but that is him as owner of a company that owns half of Anfi. We’ve not seen any indication that Anfi is bankrupt in its own right. What usually happens in the UK when some one is bankrupt is that their assets are sold off to pay the debt. Half of Anfi is one of Cazorla’s assets, so if the Spanish model follows the UK one we can expect his half of Anfi to be put up for sale – much like when the Lyng family put their half up for sale and IFA bought it. His actions in the past have given us the impression that he has been ‘milking’ Anfi for years, in which case this can only be good for us as owners/members at Anfi.
Unscrupulous legal firms like CLA have been using Cazorla’s bankruptcy as way of getting more business. They, or people looking for clients for them, are putting it around that it is Anfi that is bankrupt, scaring people into taking Anfi to court using them.
It is the Anfi Sales company that has been taken to court over mis-selling, and Anfi Resorts and the the Resort Clubs are co-members of Anfi Group (as I understand it). It may be that Anfi Group has been moving money from Sales into Resorts to hide it from the courts. If so, and if the Spanish Court retrieves that money, then they *should* only take that money that doesn’t really belong to Resorts. All the Resort Committee reps have financial statements going back for years that show how much money is ‘ours’, so we should be able to protect the individual resorts and continue to enjoy our holidays.
All this is as I understand it now. Others who have more direct contact with Anfi may wish to correct any of my errors.
If you bought your current contract in 1997 then it is fully legal. The law didn’t change until 1998 and didn’t affect existing contracts.
David
The main change for us is that El Cafe is now Chapter One and does proper meals rather than snacks. They are good too, but prices are Anfi prices. We don’t ‘do’ steaks, so I don’t know what the one nearest to the Spar is like, but it has changed in the last 5 years. I think the French restaurant went long ago and two thirds of that run is Bella Pasta, which can be good or bad depending on staff ratio. Main complaints are still poor service and cold food, but sometimes it’s fine. The Tex-Mex does more non-Tex-Mex now.
We’ll have to keep an eye on that. One free transfer each way has always been a key part of AVC membership.
I think they have changed the way they present it. It looks like a general transfer booking, but if it’s a basic coach transfer then AVC pay for it. They now may ask what type of transfer you want. If you ask for taxi or limousine then you may have to pay something. Ask for ‘whatever is free’. If you are at Emerald then it can be taxi anyway because there’s usually just you.
There are more variants than you would think. I have a scan of a Puerto document that shows that there are eight types there. One kind of 1 bed, 3 types of 2 bed, one type of 3 bed and three types of penthouse.
There are a similar number of types at Emerald, but I only have that in hard copy so it takes longer to find.
David
We used Chapter One twice during our last 2 week stay. Once for lunch and once in the evening. The food was very good on both occasions. Expensive, as are all the on-site restaurants, but about the same as going outside with a taxi.
We used some points to book a day at Maroa – Breakfast, Lunch and a lounger.
The breakfast and lunch were excellent, but the padding on the lounger was rather thin. We could feel the steel frame under the fabric covering. We lounged for the morning but the thought of an uncomfortable afternoon sent us back to the apartment early.
Peter
It looks like that has been put in as a link to our master copy on a Google drive rather than a copy of the contents. We’ll fix it.
David
The new ‘penalty’ clause saying that you pay an enormous amount if you terminate the contract is very badly thought out. As written it looks like it would apply if you just stopped paying maintenance and forfeited your week(s), and in that case any extra payment is not justified in any way. The only situation where they could be justified (although highly excessive) is where the contract is declared null and void by a court and the owner has had free holidays there. (The maintenance fee pays for maintaining and running the resort, whether you are there or not, and not a payment to stay there). In that case, if the contract is null and void that clause doesn’t apply anyway. There are ‘backdoor’ indications that Anfi are reconsidering the wording. You need to be very careful about that clause. Verbal correction to any different meaning will not count.
Correct, unless the particular clause is part of the Resort Constitution or Club Rules that are referred to in the contract and thus become a part of it. These can be changed by a vote of owners. This happened when the ABC, CPA and CMA rules were changed to replace ‘in perpetuity’ with the ’50 years with free extension on expiry’. This is all covered somewhere in our forum (but I can’t find it at the moment).
I’ve only seen the figures for Emerald, and there is no problem there – but it is the newest of the clubs and very little has come up for time-based renewal. The mattresses, sofa-beds, balcony furniture and the pool-side loungers have been replaced, as has the glassware; and the MF is in good shape. It was recognised that the %age going to the MF needed to be increased a little in the next couple of years. Payment into the MF is calculated as a %age of the Maintenance Charge.
