I have been sat on the sideline for a few years now reading everyones disapointments in this farce that no one saw coming.
I have to say that we have been very lucky in the way things have developed, and understand that some of you reading this story may recieve a glimmer of hope and others maybe dissapointed that their saga still continues.
it has been a huge relief to say that we have now recieved our money back from caja madrid eventually.
it all started in 2005 when a friend reccomended us to look at these properties.
my friend now has a property at mazzeron country club, poor chap out of the frying pan and into the fire.
we paid a deposit of 3000 euro's, then first stage payment of 31000 euro's, then second stage payment of 19000 euro's.
we were very late in realising that there were problems at ACC due to lack of information from aldeas and parador.
When we contacted aldeas and asked them about our money they informed us that only the first stage payment of 31000 euro's had been forwarded.
Ok where is our money now we asked.
in our non interest bank account was the answer. yeah right non interest my a***
so for over 6 months not only did they not inform us of the problems but also took the liberty of holding our money without our consent.
needless to say we were angry and relieved at the same time,we demanded that we have the money transfered immediately back to us.
in typical aldeas fashion after many e-mails and phone calls they returned our money 26th june 2006.
we asked for it back on 9th may 2006, you can do the maths,we realised at this point that our advisors did not provide the type of service that we are all used to in england,and we questioned their integrity too.
we calculated that we lost £248.00 in interest, our mortgage being increased to pay for this property.
But not a chance of reclaiming this back from aldeas.
we then started reading on this forum about bank guarantees and demanded aldeas sent us a copy.
thankfully they had one,we had no idea how lucky we were, not only did we have one but it lasted untill the property was built,meaning it had no expiry date.
When then complained to aldeas very stronlgy accusing them of unproffesional conduct and theatened to report them to the colegio de abogados.we contacted another solicitor who was going to act on our behalf and asked for all documentation to be transfered free of charge.
Hey presto result an very comprehensive e-mail was returned appollogising and offering a half price fee and free service executing our bank guarantee.
we decided to execute the gaurentee in aug 08.
needless to say using aldeas as our now free legal advisors has been like pulling teeth.
the best way i have found when you ring up to speak to in our case carmen gutierrez,normally she is out of the office or with a client or on lunch ........just tie up the phone.
ring...... can i speak to carmen please .......answer no she is out.
ring again......... can i speak to carmen please i wont stop calling untill she speaks to me, i done this untill surprise surprise she suddenly appeared.
the result was that i interrupted their buisiness, they got so fed up with me hogging the phone they had no choice but to deal with me and provide me with the answers i wanted.
i only had to do this twice, they knew that if she did not speak to me then the outcome will be interuption.
this may have been petty but short of flying out there i didn't know how else to make them act.
some of you may want to try it. ?
after almost 1 year from initially telling aldeas we want to execute the gaurantee we have finally got it in our english bank account.
Cam bank in spain were also slow releasing the money.
It took more phone calls and e-mails every day to get them to do the transfer.
i was livid, it took 9 days for them just to do the transfer this was after confirmation that the cheque had cleared.
i did not expect this from a bank neadless to say i complained to head office.
im not sure whether its the service the spanish give the english, or the spanish operate like this normally,either way it is crap.
any way i am pleased to tell you that the money which was transfered was 37,512 euros, which meant that we actually got 5792 euros recouperated costs.
i was told by carmen that she picked up 5 cheques that day related to ACC.
plus the exchange rate was in our favour converting back euros to sterling.
all in all the timing was good,when you consider that we are now up approx £7000 minus 3000 euro deposit that we paid.
im not sure it is worth the hassle and expense to start proceedings to recover this.
I have read that its approx 1200 euro's minimum to recouperate 3000 euros.
my experiance in this has been one that i never wish anyone to go through,but i know that there are far worst cases still going on.
i wish everyone the best in fighting their corner, and hopefully one day the country club will be built and the law system changes for the better, for the sake of investers in spain.
if it doesn't then i think the country deserves to suffer in its econemy of housing purchases.
as we have all experiaced and continue to experiance spanish law is shockingly poor in protecting what is was set up to do in the first place.
protect the innocent.
i will always be on the sidelines untill this farce is over.
best wishes
MICKYO