Just had an awful but educational timeshare presentation experience

[cantdrv55]

You guys will probably say there’s no such thing as a wonderful timeshare presentation experience. Anyway, right off the bat the sales rep lady starts lying to us about costs and benefits of ownership. Then she proceeds to throw out numbers to purposely confuse us. She refused to take no for an answer and even called her “manager” over to talk some sense into us. Her approach must work on a lot of people since her picture is on the wall as sales leader of month for four months straight. After an hour, they finally relented and gave us $150 for sitting through the presentation. It was quite an education for me but sure tired me out. Now on to Disneyland for some family fun.

[pwd72s]

The ads placed by legal firms to get you out of timeshares were enough to convince me. Never went to a sales pitch thing.

[aschen]

Dont know how those people sleep at night, but why bother going life is too short

[masraum]

Originally Posted by cantdrv55

You guys will probably say there’s no such thing as a wonderful timeshare presentation experience. Anyway, right off the bat the sales rep lady starts lying to us about costs and benefits of ownership. Then she proceeds to throw out numbers to purposely confuse us. She refused to take no for an answer and even called her “manager” over to talk some sense into us. Her approach must work on a lot of people since her picture is on the wall as sales leader of month for four months straight. After an hour, they finally relented and gave us $150 for sitting through the presentation. It was quite an education for me but sure tired me out. Now on to Disneyland for some family fun.

Based on experience, I believe the only good education to come out of a timeshare presentation is 1 Don't fall for it and 2 never do it again. You never get that time back.

[fintstone]

They are pretty sure they will sell you when they invest that kind of money in you.

They paid for most of cost of a week in Hawaii for my family including airfare, car, and place to stay...then gave us a significant cash voucher to attend a meeting with a salesman. We chose not to buy, but the presentation was fantastic...and tempting. It was a beautiful place and we had a great time.

We went back to Hawaii and stayed elsewhere a few years later and the resort was not nearly as nice. They had eliminated much of the landscaping, pools, and tropical restaurants/bars and added additional skyscrapers in their place (with more rooms). It was a bit run down as "owners" seemed to have grills and junk everywhere there was an inch of beach/land. Glad we passed.

The same people call me often and offer other "vacations" that sound much the same. Maybe a retiree with not much to do could take advantage of this a few times until they stopped calling.

[wilnj]

Did one of those a few years ago. When they wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept trying to kick me up to the next level closer, I retaliated by not trying to control my 3 bored kids who were 6, 8 and 10 at the time. When they started running laps around the office, we got our voucher.


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[HardDrive]

Why the hell you waste your life on sitting through an hour of that crap. You really need the $150 that bad?

[Baz]

[unclebilly]

That got all mad at me when I told them we would not be buying a timeshare because I know how to do ‘math’…

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

Why the hell you waste your life on sitting through an hour of that crap. You really need the $150 that bad?

Lol. You think that's bad for 150 bucks.

Imagine the girl making 2 dollars over minimum wage to perform Brazilian waxes all day.....

I guess you haven't made 14 dollars the hard way! ����

[cantdrv55]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

Why the hell you waste your life on sitting through an hour of that crap. You really need the $150 that bad?

We were staying at a timeshare deal my wife found for our Disneyland trip.

[stevej37]

I sat through one once about 20 years back in Puerto Vallarta.

It was less than an hour and they gave us a fifth of Bacardi Rum for listening.
Easy to walk out when done...they didn't ask a question.

[island911]

Originally Posted by unclebilly

That got all mad at me when I told them we would not be buying a timeshare because I know how to do ‘math’…

LOL, yes. I did the math on a time share during "presentation.". I said, so you are telling me that this one unit is worth 20 million? She snapped "we have financial planners invest in these all the time." Yeah, I laughed. I found the whole thing fascinating.

[look 171]

We honeymooned in Cancun. We had lots of time to burn for three weeks, so we decided sit for 45 min and get free dinner vouchers. How bad can it be, right? It was wonderful seeing the house type on the beach with hot tubs, looking at Cuba? I almost pulled the trigger thinking how great would it be when kids come along and go down there yearly or somewhere for a week with a guaranteed nice place to stay. We were young and dumb but I pulled out in the last minute. Oh boy did I see price drop fast. That's when I knew I needed to walk. My mama didn't raised no fool!

[McLovin]

My wife and I also went to one in Cancun or Mazatlan, somewhere down there, over 25 years ago.
I told the sales people up front that they shouldn’t waste their time on me, it’s better spent on others, because there was no way in the world they could get me to sign anything.
They did try for a while. I could see they were highly trained and pretty effective. They used every psychological and salesman trick and angle in the book (identify objections and have a ready answer for all of them, good cop bad cop, peer pressure, etc).
I used very short answers, like just yes or no, or ridiculous responses (“Do you like to save money? No.” Do you go on vacations? No.)
I did also often remind them that I told them up front that I was just there for the free stuff and had zero interest, and they said that was ok.
They were more persistent than I expected, but did give up, but they definitely took their pound of flesh by becoming pretty nasty, and also making us stay until the very last agreed upon second. Actually, they tried more, in that they vaguely implied we weren’t free to leave. And I wondered if they were going to not give us what was promised, but to their credit they did.
Never again though!

[KevinTodd]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

Why the hell you waste your life on sitting through an hour of that crap. You really need the $150 that bad?

Yeah, that's almost as bad as having a wife that refuses to tip in restaurants.

[Jolly Amaranto]

Back in the 1980s my wife and I sat through a sales presentation at a timeshare on Lake Conroe, just north of Houston. Some annoying, hot shot 20 year old kid had the high pressure routine down pat. The most miserable hour of my life. The bait was a "stereo sound system" that turned out to be little more than a cheap battery operated portable radio with a flimsy head set.

My brother bought a week in February at a time share in Vale, Colorado back when they were building it in the 1970s. He still has it and we use it about every year. It is one of those rare places where it seems to work out as its value keeps going up. We rarely ski at Vail any more as the lift prices are outrageous, but there are other areas close enough where we go. When we can't use it, that week gets snapped up real quick. The property is getting dated but they have done a good job of maintaining it. We figure it won't be long before he gets bought out and the place is bulldozed to build a new high end place. The real estate values there have skyrocketed.

[twobone]

I have a family member who spent over $500k over 20 years plus $8000 a year in annual dues to achieve platinum status with these bastards. It’s all sunk costs now that he has passed away. It can’t be sold. They are scum of the earth in my view. They prey on people hungry for status and those who are susceptible to “used car sales” pitches. If I ever met the leadership I would spit in their faces

[masraum]

Originally Posted by kevintodd

yeah, that's almost as bad as having a wife that refuses to tip in restaurants.

lol

[Seahawk]

The history of "timeshares" is really fascinating and a relatively recent business - early 1970's is when the ball really got moving. One of my finance courses in college had a two class focus on the business side and it was awe inspiring just how silly the concept is unless you really work at it.

But, there are plenty of people who plunked down a bunch of money...

A guy I played HS football with started selling timeshares in the late '70's and just retired a few years ago...to his house on the beach in Newport Beach.

The last time I was in California I met Ted and a few other friends for dinner. Ted said that he would be retiring soon because the internet really "hurt" the business (people could read negative timeshare website reviews); that and AirBNB like groups have really made the timeshare industry difficult.