Better Business Bureau studied more than 700 complaints it received over the past three years.

Among those, 350 complaints were tied to 10 Springfield timeshare exit companies.

Springfield is a national hotbed for victimizing timeshare customers who want out of their contracts, a Better Business Bureau study released Thursday shows.

Branson is not far behind.

The BBB studied more than 700 complaints it received over the past three years. They were filed by timeshare owners, many of them elderly, who hired so-called “timeshare exit” companies to free them from their “vacation ownership” obligations.

BBB said the exit companies took customers’ money, charging between $1,000 to $30,000 for exit services, then failed to help clients get out of the timeshare contracts.

The “vast majority” of the 700 complaints pertain to timeshare exit companies operating in the Springfield area, BBB said. Many of these timeshare exit companies have been established in the past three to four years, BBB said, and many are tied to people who formerly worked in timeshare sales in the Branson area.

Since Jan. 1, 2017, 350 consumer complaints could be traced to just 10 Springfield-area businesses that received the most complaints. Those 10 companies alone caused consumer losses in excess of $2.2 milllion, BBB said.

The bureau believes that the total number of consumers, and the dollars they’ve lost, is greater than the number of problems they’ve reported. Timeshare is a $10.2 billion industry nationwide, according to the American Resort Developers Association.

BBB researchers said they examined documents tied to 400 consumers with complaints. They conducted more than 70 in-depth interviews with consumers, and they presented a report with five case studies detailing the types of business practices coming from an industry known for high-pressure sales tactics and “frustrated and desperate” consumers.

At a Thursday morning press conference at BBB's Springfield office, Willard area resident Janice Mitchell recounted a three-year ordeal with Relief Solutions International, a timeshare exit company with listed addresses in Branson and Springfield.

Mitchell said she and her husband, Gary, paid the company $6,000. She said the couple made the decision because they have disability conditions and were less able to travel than in previous years; meanwhile, her husband is often busy with their cattle operation.

But they're still not free from their timeshare, which Mitchell said her family bought from a company called Festiva.

"We just want out," Mitchell said. "We just want our lives back. They've done nothing for us in three years, and that's why we are pairing with the Better Business Bureau, to help someone else."

Following the press conference, two part-owners of Relief Solutions International, Russell Turner and Burt Cummings, told the News-Leader that they disputed the BBB's account of their business dealings with the Mitchells. They said they waited for months for necessary power of attorney documents from the Mitchells, which they needed to begin negotiating with Festiva through an attorney.

BBB: Travis Dibben is still at it

One of the BBB case studies covers a Springfield entrepreneur who’s made headlines in the past for allegedly bilking customers, along with a cocaine-trafficking conviction and a failed downtown economic-development loan.

Travis Dibben, owner of Escape Resolutions, is now also tied to CCS Group LLC. BBB said that between March 2017 and March 2019, Dibben’s companies took more than $280,000 from more than 60 customers for work not completed.

BBB first warned the public about Dibben in October 2017, citing 32 complaints received from 20 states, the News-Leader reported.

In July 2018, BBB warned the public about Dibben’s firm a second time, this time in connection with a study on Branson timeshare exit practices. A couple working with BBB said they paid $5,000 to Escape Resolutions that was never repaid.

In its latest report, BBB said Dibben was still at it. According to the report, Escape Resolutions billed an Indiana woman $8,250 in October 2018, three months after its second warning. And Dibben told an Arkansas man to pay $2,650 to CCS Group as recently as January.

Meanwhile, court records show Dibben failing to pay up with other parties: He told the Greene County Sheriff’s Office in February he was unable to pay an $8,500 tax levy owed to the state of Missouri.

On May 28, due to vacant real estate, the sheriff’s office was not able to deliver court paperwork to Dibben tied to a $9,500 debt he owes Gray Television, the owner of KYTV and KSPR.

On May 29, the office did not attempt to serve paperwork regarding a lawsuit from a debt collector, LVNV Funding LLC, which sued Dibben April 19.

On Wednesday, the News-Leader reached out to three phone numbers associated with Dibben; to an attorney tied to Dibben in court records; and to a former registered agent for one of his companies.

An attorney for Dibben, Stuart Huffman, contacted the News-Leader on Thursday morning and said they would examine the BBB report. Huffman said Escape Resolutions no longer operates.

More than $670,000 in losses tied to one man

Two more Springfield-based companies, Vacation Consulting Services and The Transfer Group, are linked to almost 100 customer complaints involving $670,000 in losses since February 2017, BBB said.

Both firms are tied to entrepreneur Brian Scroggs, who disputed BBB's findings in a statement sent to the News-Leader on Wednesday.

"My companies had an A- and a B+ rating (from Better Business Bureau) through midway of 2017," Scroggs said, which was later changed to an F. He said of 4,000 customers served by his companies over the past four years, 79 customer complaints were logged on the BBB website.

"That is a 98 percent satisfaction rate," Scroggs said. He said his companies have contacted all 79 of the clients who complained "and are working to fix any of their issues."

Scroggs criticized BBB, citing a 2010 ABC News investigative report documenting issues with the nonprofit's operations in Los Angeles and Connecticut.

"The story shows that if you pay the BBB a larger fee, they will change your grade," Scroggs said.

"For years," Scroggs said, "timeshare resorts have put clients into contracts with perpetuity clauses, and they control whether or not you can transfer out of your contract. They literally control the client's ability to exit their timeshare, which, in my opinion is a restriction on alienation."

Scroggs disputed a Wednesday-night CBS News report outlining allegations by BBB that one of Scroggs' companies charged an elderly New Jersey married couple $18,000 for timeshare exit services.

Thursday morning, Scroggs said the couple had paid for a travel club membership that they received "immediately," along with exit services related to a separate Marriott timeshare. Scroggs added that the couple had requested a delay until April to deal with exiting their timeshare and that he had attempted to contact them Thursday morning to resolve their concerns.

Michelle Corey, president and CEO of the St. Louis BBB office, which oversees BBB activities in southwest Missouri, said that Scroggs' pay-to-play allegations against BBB don't fly.

"Any of these companies listed (in the BBB report) would not qualify to become a Better Business Bureau accredited business," she said at the Thursday morning press conference. "They must meet a code of ethics."

BBB ratings are based on customer input, she said.

The newspaper was unsuccessful Wednesday in attempting to contact David A. McKeown and Michael D. Thomas with Capital Consulting Group, blamed by BBB for more than $250,000 in consumer losses; and Luke McKinley with UDI Consulting, blamed for $220,000 in losses. They were all listed among BBB's case studies in its Thursday report.

Former timeshare attorney speaks out

An attorney who formerly worked with Last Resort Fee, owned by Jeffrey Heith Shaver and blamed for $270,000 in losses in BBB's new report, responded to a call from the News-Leader. (The newspaper was unable to reach Shaver on Wednesday.)

Joshua Neally has had a solo law practice in downtown Springfield for the past six years. For six years before that, he said he was a staff attorney for a Branson-area timeshare and a co-worker with Shaver, who worked as a salesperson.

"I knew him, but not anything other than I knew that he worked there," Neally told the News-Leader, in comments that parallel information he gave to the BBB for its study.

Shaver reached out to Neally for help with a "handful" of timeshare customers.

"He didn't pay me for them," Neally said. He ended up having to call Shaver to collect outstanding debts for billable hours.

"After I stopped hearing anything from Mr. Shaver, we'd periodically receive phone calls from people who said, 'you're supposed to be my attorney.'"

Neally said he didn't have records of these folks. He believes Shaver obtained a copy of his letterhead in the form of a draft engagement letter and sent out letters to Last Resort Fee customers purporting to be from Neally Law.

Neally told the News-Leader that he's seen the timeshare industry from the inside.

"You can't fix the (timeshare exit) problem without fixing all of timeshare," he said. "If there's a need for something, people are going to pay money, and somebody will take the money, rightly or wrongly."

Neally said in his personal experience, and according to a much-disputed University of Central Florida study, some 80 percent of timeshare customers are dissatisfied with their purchases.

Neally added, "The law has not caught up with the fact that it's a deed in an association. You can't fix this with legislation without fixing the fact that when you have a deed, you can't get out of this unless the resort says yes."

Resorts, Neally said, have learned that it's easier to sell existing timeshare customers on a "constant" stream of new vacation ownership features — for example, he said, transferring vacation ownership from Hawaii to Las Vegas to Branson, each with an upcharge — than to get new customers to buy into a timeshare.

"It's just constant," he said. "What the resorts want is for you to be an owner forever and to constantly in-house you, sell you more points, more points."

"Without using the scam word, I would say timeshare as a whole needs to be much better regulated," Neally said. "It needs to have people be able to just walk away without hitting their credit."

'Nobody's first call' is to an exit company

Critics of timeshare exit companies echoed Neally's comments.

On a Tuesday call from suburban Orlando, Lisa Schreier, who bills herself as "The Timeshare Crusader," noted that where tourism happens, so does timeshare, and so does timeshare exit.

And timeshare exit companies exist because the resort developers who sell timeshare don't make it easy to get out, she said.

"No one, nobody's first call is going to be to an exit company," Schreier told the News-Leader. "Everybody's first call is to the developer, because that makes sense: I bought it from the developer, for whatever reason I want out, my first call is to the developer."

If, Schreier said, the developer has customer-service staff willing to handle a timeshare owner who wants to stop being a timeshare owner, the staff will want to know whether the timeshare is fully paid off, with maintenance fees up-to-date.

"Some developers, if the timeshare is paid off, do have a program," Schreier said. They go by names like "Transitions" or "Ovations," and the developer exit programs may not be heavily advertised, Schreier said. Resort developers usually charge a fee. She cited one prominent resort network that charges $1,000.

Contending with developer exit programs, and claims or promises made by resort developers, isn't easy for consumers, Schreier said. "They just say things sometimes which — incredulous is the right word," she said.

On a Tuesday call from Clearwater, Florida, Greg Crist, CEO of the Association of Vacation Owners, said that states such as Florida have tried legislating on this issue because of a "massive surge" of consumer complaints to state attorneys general in recent years.

Crist supports the creation of a licensed secondary market for timeshare owners to dispose of unwanted vacation ownership. He's formed an entity called the "Global Secondary Market Coalition."

"In a nutshell, this all comes down to a couple of things," Crist said. "This timeshare exit thing has really exploded on the scene, and it's absolutely because we have no secondary market to speak of. We would not need these types of companies in the marketplace, A, if the developers would have created a secondary marketplace and B, if they hadn't turned out their (timeshare) owners to these (exit) companies."

Crist said that the main industry group for timeshares, the American Resort Development Association, generally wants to keep timeshare free from regulation.

“You haven’t seen any (federal) legislation come from ARDA because they like it down at the state level. They like being able to work 50 separate timeshare acts as opposed to a national timeshare act.”

Neally, the Springfield attorney who used to work for a Branson timeshare, said in a separate interview that timeshare is not highly regulated.

Missouri law on timeshare? "It's about four paragraphs long," Neally said, and much of it is devoted to gift and sweepstakes rules and the rescission period, or the number of days timeshare customers have to back out of a contract after initially signing it.

In Missouri, you get five days to change your mind after putting down your John Hancock.

Schreier, the "crusader" in Florida, says that three-, five- or seven-day rescission periods are problematic because they're as short as most people's vacations, when people aren't contemplating timeshare contracts they may have signed in between Branson shows or trips to Silver Dollar City.

Why is it this way?

"I think what you have is a strong ARDA, a strong lobbying presence," said Neally, the Springfield lawyer. "I think they go out there and they lobby and I guess I can’t think of any other reason. There’s no consumer protection lobbying group that’s on the other side that helps regulate it."

Missouri Ethics Commission filings show that ARDA employs nine lobbyists in Missouri's capital. That's a relatively large number: Uber, which leaned on Missouri lawmakers heavily to bring ride-hailing to Missouri, has five.

Combined, the city of Springfield and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce have six.

The industry's take

ARDA officials dispute pretty much everything the timeshare crusaders and experts have to say.

That study that says 80 percent of timeshare owners are dissatisfied?

"It's interesting, it's quite the opposite," said Jason Gamel, president and CEO of ARDA, on a Wednesday call from Washington, D.C. They have research showing 85 percent of timeshare customers are satisfied.

ARDA, Gamel said, is celebrating its 50th anniversary and has spent a lot of that time advocating for a well-run timeshare industry for both resorts and the timeshare owners.

"ARDA has been behind or part of every piece of timeshare legislation all throughout the United States," he said. "ARDA believes in good consumer regulation and good regulations for industry in general."

They have strong relationships with every regulatory agency, he said. They require ARDA member resorts to offer a minimum of three days of rescission.

"Every state varies," Gamel said. "Some states require up to 10 days. There's plenty of opportunity for people to reflect ... there are not many industries when you get 10 full days."

He added, "I think that's an awful lot of regulation right then and there, and I think that it works."

ARDA supports resorts offering their own exit programs for timeshare owners, Gamel said. They've also warned the public about exit companies as recently as April 24.

"As people's life circumstances change, if timeshare no longer fits their vacation needs or lifestyle, developers have started to respond," he said.

He encouraged timeshare owners who want out of their obligations to consult an ARDA-approved website for the purpose, responsibleexit.com, and to call their resorts. They have customer-service staff answering the phone who do nothing but customer service, he said.

Springfield and Branson respond

Melody Pettit, public information officer for the city of Branson, said BBB contacted city government at the onset of its study and that Branson supports its efforts.

Branson Mayor Edd Akers provided an emailed statement saying that the municipality “will always seek what is best for our citizens and guests.”

Akers added, “This report will be taken seriously and the city will do whatever we can, to protect our citizens and the economic effects on our community. Unfortunately, we as a city have limited ability to do so from specific industry bad faith operations. We will cooperate within our means to help solve any of these issues.”

In another statement, Branson City Administrator Stan Dobbins noted: “we believe this is a state issue, as many of these timeshares are not in the city limits of Branson but do affect our residents and guests.”

Dobbins called for Missouri to “look at a licensing system for this industry, similar to how the real estate industry works.”

Two Springfield City Council members reacted to news of the study by criticizing the timeshare exit industry.

“It sounds like it’s sort of like a lot of other things going on in America in marketing,” Councilman Mike Schilling told the News-Leader on Wednesday. “It’s sort of shady, like the loan-sharking in the payday loan business. It’s desperation capitalism. Dragging the net around to get money and not being ethical or moral about it, ripping people off. It’s a bad trend. Whether we can do anything about it, I have no idea.”

Schilling has sponsored a city ordinance that would regulate the payday-loan industry in Springfield by slapping an enhanced business license fee on payday lenders and requiring them to be more transparent about their business practices. Critics, among them Faith Voices of Southwest Missouri, regard payday lenders as a predatory industry.

Asked if slapping a fee on Springfield timeshare-exit businesses would be a viable solution, Schilling said he didn’t know.

“I’d need to know more facts about what’s going on,” he said, adding, “The best thing is if people quit buying that kind of stuff.”

Councilman Craig Hosmer said that in his view, “most businesses in the city of Springfield are very ethical and do their work the right way.”

But the city should at least look at regulating this industry, Hosmer said.

“I think it’s always better when you do it through state and federal government,” he said, since bad-actor companies can just move across city limits to escape regulation.

But, Hosmer said, municipalities have been in a “predicament” over the past few years.

“The state doesn’t do a lot of regulatory action or consumer-protection action, nor has the federal government,” he said.

Corey, the BBB CEO from St. Louis, said BBB recommends that the timeshare sales and exit industries "develop a self-regulating code of ethics."

One way to help people who want out of their timeshares would be for timeshare exit companies to place upfront fees in an escrow account, to be held until all of the exit services can be rendered, Corey said.

She also said that legislation extending rescission periods would be helpful, as well as provisions designed to protect seniors from unethical business practices.

What consumers can do

Amy Haywood, chief counsel in the Missouri Attorney General's Consumer Protection Section, said her office has had a "dramatic increase" in complaints about timeshare exit companies over the past year.

"Most of these consumers recognize they're a victim of fraud when it's too late," she said.

She offered consumers tips:

Before entering a timeshare agreement to begin with, carefully review the contract. What's affordable now may not be affordable in two or three decades.

Contact your current timeshare operator if you want to end your timeshare obligations.

Recognize that "there are no tricks to this," Haywood said. "No company is going to wave a magic wand to get you out of your timeshare."

"If you believe you're the victim of any kind of fraud," she said, contact the attorney general's office through ago.mo.gov.

Haywood said the attorney general's office actively reviews complaints and often asks companies to issue refunds or otherwise resolve consumers' issues.

Sometimes, they take companies to court, but at the press conference Thursday, Haywood did not have a number on how many timeshare exit companies have faced recent legal action from the Missouri attorney general's office.

Missouri timeshare news:

Bass Pro sues timeshare kiosk company for claw backs, 'high pressure salesmanship'

Amid lawsuit, Bass Pro kicks out vacation rental kiosk company

Here are 7 things you must know about Branson timeshares — before you buy

Better Business Bureau report: Branson timeshare industry 'deceiving consumers'

Better Business Bureau warns public about Springfield businessman Travis Dibben

Better Business Bureau issues warning about another Springfield timeshare liquidator