** Trying to contact Great Blue Resorts and the woman who sold him the trailer still — in progress:
We can't run this without detailed comment from Great Blue Resorts and I remain unclear exactly what his complaint is –KM
NAME??? Mikus or Markus??? where is he from?
Stephen Markus spent Friday afternoon protesting Great Blue Resort’s “corporate greed,” he said.
He parked on Niagara Stone Road across across from the plaza at The Village, in direct line-of-sight from the rental company’s corporate office.
Markus said he wants the owner of Great Blue Resorts to know he’s not going to stop talking about what he calls the company’s attempt at skirting HST laws and taking advantage of the absence of tenant protection for trailer owners in Ontario.
“I just wanted to get their attention at the head office, to make them aware that I haven’t put the issue down. I’ve been doing this for three months,” he said.
Markus bought a 1981 trailer at Golden Beach Resort near Peterborough in 2018. He said when he purchased the trailer for $9,000, he was assured by the current owners that they had owned the park for more than 60 years, and he would be left alone.
“Unbeknownst to me, they were selling at the time. This guy (Great Blue Resorts) only allows 2020 models, that he sells you,” he said.
He said once Great Blue Resorts took over the trailer park, the old trailers were replaced and upgraded. He was worried that he would be made to pay much more than he initially agreed to under previous ownership, he said. "I knew that I would eventually be forced out or into a new trailer."
He was given notice of eviction due to harassment, he said, after a brief ??? email interaction with the company.
“My email chain was very simple. I said to the woman who sold me my trailer, 'I need you to help me facilitate the sale to another site and get me out of this situation.' The first reply was that she gave my trade-in number to the other site,” he said, adding that she gave him two options: accept the trade-in offer or leave.
He said he was willing to pay for an upgraded trailer at another site, but the company wouldn’t communicate with him to find a solution.
“I was saving everyone a ton of problems. I get out of my old trailer, I get a new trailer, they sell my unit as a new trailer. That is what they deemed harassment. Because I said to her after, 'You dropped the ball. You sold me this trailer, you can’t just ignore me,' ” he said.
Now he says he’s trying to make sure what happened to him won’t happen to others.
“Many resorts in Ontario are run by one person. That one person cares, the one person stays there, the one person doesn’t want you to leave, the one person wants you to be happy. This guy has decided he doesn’t care if you’re happy,” Mikus said.
He said he’s concerned that more people will be taken advantage of under the business model of Great Blue Resorts, which he said doesn't care about indivuduals, "they just want to make more sales."
“Some of his terms are so extreme that he’s got people spending $60,000 to sell their trailers. When you’re in for $150,000, you’re stuck,” he said.