Well, this incident happened to my bf's parents. You see, they bought this membership club at Sentosa years way way back. Every month, they got to pay some kind of maintenance fee. All these sum up to 5 digit figures.

Recently, this club, let's call it Club A, had sold off its premises and everything to a buyer, Club B. Members of Club A thought, WOW so good, got new club & facilites liao! Thoughts and Reality are really 2 different things, especially when it involved some shrewd businessman.

The mgmt of Club A had sold off everything to Club B. However as Club B had not received any membership fee from the existing Club A members, the mgmt of Club B had revised the maintenance fee from $50 to $250 per month. That's not all. The existing members also need to pay a nominal fee to remain as a member of the new Club. It's like paying membership fee all over again.

In other words, Club A mgmt had abandoned its members without providing any compensation (e.g buy back the membership from its members before selling away) and just MIA.

Apparently, the existing members now have only 2 options:

(A) Forget about the whole investment, just take it that the money has been flushed down the toilet bowl

(B) Continue to dump money into the new Club. However, once bitten twice shy. Ya never know when the new Club will just abandon its members and sell off to somebody else.

Both options are not favourable to the existing members. Yet, the members are at a losing end as no compensation can be sought from both Club A & Club B. In the T&C, the maintenance fee is at the discretion of the Club A. Whereas Club B had already paid a sum to the Club A mgmt, it has no obligation to "take care" of the orphans aka existing members from Club A.

Frustrating right? It sounds so morally wrong for Club A mgmt to just leave like that, yet the law has ironically protected them from any liability. So is the law helping the innocent or just the smart players? I guess it's a lesson learnt. My bf's parents had bought the membership, thinking that it should be a good investment. If there is no use for it, maybe can sell off when the value has increased.

Especially in this case, they got to pay $300 ($50 x 12 mth) every year. What do they get? Just free stay for 2 rooms in the resort for 3 days every year. Worth it? I leave you to judge
.

This is all the faults of those cunning businessman!! HUMPT! #@$%!$&

Anyway, this will be discussed in Channel 8, 前线追踪, 10.30pm this friday. Repeated telecast on next tue 1.30pm. Tune in if you are interested...