More Corporate Crime, This Time In The Time Share Industry

The NY Times has an article today outlining the four year fight of a whistleblower against Wyndham Vacation Ownership, finally resulting in a $20 million award against the company. Needless to say, the company immediately announced its intention to appeal. Patricia Williams was a seasoned worker in the time-share industry, having worked in it for over a decade. In 2010, she was fired when she complained about unethical sales tactics at a time-share in San Francisco. Sales tactics at the property included opening unauthorized credit card accounts without buyers’ knowledge and flat-out lying to prospective buyers that Wyndham would buy the property back if, at some point, the buyers needed or wished to sell. Another sales representatives testified that the sales goals assigned by the company were virtually impossible to meet and pressured sales agents engaged in “TAFT days” which stood for “tell them any frigging thing”. When customers complained, the sales rep would dispute those claims and the case would get filed as unsubstantiated. A senior sales executive testified that he saw tens of thousands of customer complaints in his time at the firm, so it was pretty clear that senior executives had to know what was going on or were willfully blind to it.  It sounds remarkably like what was also occurring at Wells Fargo at the same time.

Williams, of course, was fired for reporting these abuses through the process that most companies have to encourage whistleblowers to report abuses. But, like most of those processes, there is no promise of anonymity, despite what employees might be told. Williams was let go for essentially not being a team player. Williams then sued the company and even offered to settle if the company changes its sales policies, recording all sales encounters and providing a simplified form that described the contracts buyers were agreeing to sign. The company refused. As the case went on, Williams was essentially blackballed from the industry and found work difficult to come by. Finally, six years after being terminated and four years after she brought her suit, Williams won the $20 million judgement for lost earnings and damages. My expectation is that the amount will be substantially reduced on appeal.

It shouldn’t take six years out of a person’s life to stop such egregious and unethical behavior by a company. More importantly, is their any regulation of this kind of company and, if so, where are the regulators. I don’t believe that the CFPB has jurisdiction on this, but it will hardly matter as Trump and the Republicans gut that agency and reduce regulation across the board. I’m pretty sure that Wyndham looks at this lawsuit as merely the cost of doing business. In fact, during the case, they settled with other employees who had initially joined Williams in the suit. As I’ve said time and time again, the only way this kind of illegal and unethical activity will stop is when senior executives actually end up in jail for the criminality they oversee. It is well past time that happened.