A timeshare owner who went to a meeting to discuss how she could sue for compensation was asked to hand over £4,700 to save her family from being ruined by spiraling charges.
Customer Anne MacDougall was warned that the £250 annual maintenance fee on her timeshare in Gran Canaria was likely to increase to £28,000 in a decade unless she bought her way out of the contract.
Mrs MacDougall told a jury at Exeter Crown Court how they became suspicious about what was happening at a meeting with an Exeter based consultancy.
They refused to hand over any money to Devon Based Associates, which operated out of serviced offices in Marsh Barton.
Former timeshare salesmen Michael Girvin and Niel Mendoza are on trial accused of running a scam in which they overcharged desperate owners to get them out of timeshares they no longer wanted.
Both men had previously worked for St Francis Marketing, of which Girvin was director and Mendoza sales manager.
The jury have been told that Girvin admitted three offences after the collapse of the company and Mendoza was not prosecuted.
The Crown allege they went back into business with a scam in which they got unhappy timeshare owners through their door with the promise of legal action but then overcharging them for a service in which they bought themselves out of their contracts to avoid future service charges.
Mrs MacDougall said she wanted to get rid of her timeshare because her two children had died tragically, one from cancer and another in an accident, and the holiday home held painful memories.
She said she was contacted by an organisation which claimed to be organising a class action against timeshare companies and travelled to Devon to attend a meeting in Exeter.
She was told any court action would have to wait until 75,000 claimants were registered and not to expect any money from it for three years.
She and her husband were then joined by a man who took their contract to a back room where he said it was studied by lawyers. He returned and warned them that their family faced an indefinite financial millstone from maintenance charges.
Mrs McDougall said:"He said if we died our children would be responsible in perpetuity. I was a bit annoyed and told him they would be hard pressed to get money out of my children because they were both dead.
"He said there were other relatives they would go after and he did calculations for the maintenance charges and came up with a figure of £28,000. I could not see how it could go up from £250 to £28,000 in 20 years.
"By that stage we had been there for two hours and we were feeling a bit brainwashed. He said he would go away and speak to the people on Gran Canaria.
"We thought that was odd because we knew they did not work at weekends and this was a Saturday. When he came back he said they had confirmed the maintenance fees but said if we handed over £4,700 he could get us out.
"My husband said something to the effect he was daft. My husband was quite angry. We had given up the whole morning and he thought it was a lot of nonsense and said so.
"He said we just did not believe it and he was adamant there was no way we were going to pay then any money. I knew there was a catch. If we knew we were going to be asked for money we would never have gone there."
Girvin, aged 53, of Salterton Road, Exmouth, and Mendoza, aged 59, of Cordery Road, Exeter, deny fraudulent trading and three charges of breaching consumer protection legislation.
They say they were offering a genuine business service and did not mislead customers at any stage.
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