Give me the dope on the timeshare hard-sell presentations

Factual Questions
1

A friend of mine (not me, really!), who in spite of being fairly worldly in other ways, is also a bit gullible. He got suckered into one of those “free weekend in the Wisconsin Dells”, the only catch being, of course, that he has to sit through a sales pitch for a time share. His logic (as I suppose every guppy’s is) is “hey, free vacation; how tough can it be for us to sit through this presentation? How could we possibly buy, we don’t have the money?” [Not particularly relevant to my question, but I’ve seen him and his wife talk themselves fairly easily into other useless big-ticket purchases.]

Now, I “know” these deals are not only generally a rip off, but that it’s enough of a pain in the ass that it’s not even hardly worth it to attend. But of course I’ve never gone to one, and have no first or even second-hand accounts to try to dissuade him it altogether.

So what’s the real deal on what he can expect when he goes?

2

I’ve never been to one, but from what I’ve heard, it’s nothing more than a hard sales pitch.

Lots of people are selling timeshares. I think you can even buy them on eBay. And they almost always go for a lot less than what they were originally purchased for – like 20%, or even less.

Here’s what I would do:

Do some on-line research, and print out a bunch of ads (eBay?) from people who are trying to unload their timeshares for pennies on the dollar. Give these ads to your buddy before he goes on the trip. Hopefully, this will make him think twice before signing on the line.

3

I have been to one and will never go to another one, my parents have been to numerous and go to every one they can, and my brother went to one last year and actually bought a timeshare!

So I think the answer is that it drives some people crazy (me), it entertains some people who get some kind of premium out of it (my parents), and some people actually buy what they’re trying to sell them (my brother).

In my case it was almost two hours of constant brow beating for a “free vacation” that turned out to be good only during certain weeks of the year and there were associated fees that you had to pay. So it wasn’t really a free vacation, and I never ended up taking advantage of it.

I basically wasted 2 hours of my life which I will never get back… but YMMV

4

The point is, it’s hard sell - no matter what your reason for saying no, they’ve got a response to try to persuade you; don’t think you have the money? Why not apply for our credit package; just think of the money you’re going to save!.

Things might be different in your part of the world, but here in the Uk, timeshares generally are a ripoff and they have a terrible reputation; for this reason, they salespeople will try anything to get you to sign.

I attended one -advertised as ‘a holiday presentation’ on a promise of a free holiday, no obligation. Turned out to mean 'sitting at a desk for hours in a dingy rented office listening to some desperate and dishonest salesman. Sales tactics included:

-false extrapolation of figures (in my case, “What’s the most you’d ever spend on a dream holiday?” - I answered maybe £5k or so (it was worth more back then) for a once-in-a-lifetime cruise - he replied “Right, so 5000 pounds, multiplied by the next 25 years… so you’re going to spend 125,000 pounds on holidays, assuming no inflation. I’m going to save you so much money!”)

-Plain fraudulent balancing of figures - apart from the above, the sums he scribbled on paper for me just didn’t work the way he said they did; he was trying something akin to the missing dollar trick. My job at the time was in the field of audit and security; I told him I’d seen his trick before; he tried to pass it off as an honest mistake he had made because he was writing at a slant so I could see it. Didn’t wash with me.

-He tried the old “Just sign up anyway, you can cancel in the cooling off period”. Nope.

-When everything else failed, he actually tried the pity card; he got all sad and sniffly and said he had wasted his whole evening and wouldn’t get paid unless I signed up. I had seen this one before with a fitted kitchen salesperson, so I just let him cry me a river.

-He briefly tried anger, but at this point, I called the proceedings to a close and demanded my prize - we had, after all, been sat there for three hours or more.
The free holiday turned out to be a book of vouchers for accommodation in a vacant unit in their (not yet fully built) timeshare complex; one of the contractual conditions for taking the holiday was that I would have to buy at least two meals per day in their restaurant, also, I could either book the time I wanted to go and pay my own airfare, or get free flights, but with their choice of dates at only 24 hours notice.
The vouchers went straight in the bin when I got home and I chalked it up to experience.

Other people I have talked to have had similar experiences; the prize is hardly ever what it is made out to be. My mum has managed to gain a few half-decent prizes, mostly because she’s married to a lawyer, who just started threatening legal proceedings when they tried to bait and switch the prize for something inferior.

And I do know one family that owns several timeshares and loves them. For most other folks, ‘timeshare’ evokes the same kind of joy as ‘sinus infection’.

5

Though it seems that in some cases you get more sales pitch than free time (though the cases I’m thinking about where intended to sell various stuff, like say mattresses. Maybe in these cases the margin isn’t high enough to make sure the potential customers will enjoy their stay), I used to know a guy who made a habbit of chasing these opportunities.

He thought that a free week-end in say, Ireland or Spain was well worth sitting through their sale pitches (it always was in foreign countries because under french law, the buyer had a week to change his mind after signing, which would defeat the purpose, getting people to sign on impulse).
So, to each his own, I suppose… (as long as you don’t buy anything of course).

6

It depends where you go, I think. (There’s a thread open now that seems to show telemarketers in the 'states being way worse than anywhere else - this might apply).

My parents got invited to Fairmont Hot Springs once a year for a while. We got to stay free in the regular hotel part, passes to the pools, etc. For going, they’d give you a free tv, BBQ, gold bar, or whatever to entice you. The ‘trick’ being you aren’t getting the high-end stuff. (I know the ‘gold bar’ was real, but one of the smallest you can get.) Things we got were the BBQ (a little portable fold-out job that we never opened), and the TV (the parents could have got a mini 2’ colour one, but opted for the slightly larger 5’ black and white one). Nothing worth over 50$, really.

They eventually bought, and instead of invites now get certificates to give friends - if they stay for the sales pitch, they get 100$ and we get 100$.

I personally got an invite to some place in the states, but reading over the fine print would have had to rent a car from a specific company, fly a particular airline, etc., so the cost of my ‘free’ visit was really much more than 0$.

7

I’ve not been to any in Australia but I did go to one when I lived in New Zealand. The presentations were held in a hall just down the road from my house, so I popped in one night after dinner. The deal was: attend the sales presentation and then get a free meal for two at a rather good restaurant in Wellington. Not a hugely valuable prize I suppose, but still reasonably OK, especially given that I didn’t actually have to do anything. The presentation was divided into two parts. First there was a “general” session where we all sat and listened to several speakers extolling the virtues of the timeshare resort. The second part was one-on-one sessions with individual salesmen. I listened to the bloke’s spiel. He tried most of the tactics that **Mangetout ** outlined earlier but I just kept repeating that I wasn’t interested and was only there for the free dinner prize. In the end he realised there wasn’t much point in continuing and gave me the prize voucher. A couple of weeks later a friend and I had a very nice dinner.

8

Before answering, I had a friend once who used to get the invitations to attend a free dinner from outfits selling real estate in Florida. He was a hardnosed type, so always went and took his entire family for the free meal. He was able to just sit through the pitch and tune it out and not be bothered at all. Tougher than I! :slight_smile:

Anyway, about 20 years ago went to a timeshare presentation near Tanglewood, MA because we were mildly interested. They offered a bunch of prizes to anybody who took the “tour.” First, a hard sell presentation, then a tour of the places (which were not bad, but not worth the price). I finally just told them was not interested, and asked for one of the free prizes, which was a 12-inch TV.

They took us to where all the prizes were spread out, and the TV didn’t look too bad. The salesman must have had some qualms, as he quietly told us that the set worked all right, “…but it only received one channel.” :eek: No tuner! So, as where we lived we only got about four channels, asked him which channel it did get. He had no idea.

So, we took the set of luggage, which really was not bad and it lasted for years. Was it worth it? Sure, good luggage for about two hours of pitch…had nothing else to do tht day.

Would I ever do it again? Nah!

9

My advice to anyone going to these presentations is to be as rude as you possibly can. Look at your watch, insult the place, spit and fall asleep. You want the sales person to very quickly realize that they are wasting their time with you. Most people will be polite and even mildly interested because they don’t want to appear rude. That attitude is like blood in the water. They won’t let you go.

I don’t have any recent experience with these, but I went to some when about 15, 20 years ago. I would not go again, mainly because I value my time more now than I did then. Even then, it usually wasn’t worth it.

10

I’ve been to a couple and this is my formula:

During the required amount of time, be curteous, answer questions (who cares what you answer, make it up, pretend like you like it, whatever).

At the end of the required amount of time, politely state the following:
“I’m not interested and it’s time for me to go. Can I please have my …(whatever the gift is)?”

There is nothing else you need to say. When they ask questions or press hard to have you stay longer , etc. etc. etc., repeat the above phrase, politely. No explanations about where you need to go, no information about what time you need to be where you are going, don’t offer anything more than the above phrase.

After you have stated that enough times, so that you feel like you have been polite (hint, no more than 3, this includes the extra times you need to say it due to their stalling tactics where they appear to be going to get your gift but they come back and try again), inform them that they better damn well get the gift out ASAP.

The trick to the finish is to be firm, and if you must appear mad to get action, do so, but don’t feel mad inside, otherwise it’s not worth it.

11

VeryCoolSpouse and I (before we adopted the little ones) went to one of these for the Ramada timeshare condos. Same schtick as above–1+ hour general “how great it is” presentation, then one-on-one time with sales droid. We were polite but firm. When the time was up we took our 5-free-days certificate and left. We took the 5 days in Hawai’i, used my frequent flyer miles for the flight and had a lovely, darned near free, vacation.

Note #1: The “new” price is horribly inflated (as others have said) to cover the sales people, the free time they’re giving out, etc. If you decide you want to buy, buy on eBay, from your local paper, etc.

Note #2: The quality of the place was unimpressive. If you’re really looking to buy, check the place out first.

I have friends who own a timeshare and love it. They vacation a different place every year. They have no kids and steady jobs, so planning a specific vacation to a particular place years in advance is no problem for them. YMMV.

12

I’ve been to two of these. Mangetout pretty much nailed it. The company has you as a captive audience and they push hard. My favorite part was the bit of amateur theater where the salesman went around the corner and had a stage-wispered conversation with his boss. Did anyone take that ploy seriously? Probably – I know there are some gullible folks out there – but it seemed obviously set-up.

I wouldn’t have gone to another, but we were down at Disney in Orlando, and Pepper Mill had signed us up to sucvh a session on our vacation (!), the price being a free meal. We earned it, though. The salespeople didn’t say so, but they were obviously Disney folk – they paid you off in Disney Dollars. No amateur theatricals this time, but still the relentless pressure.

Go if you want to – you will get a free something out of it – they have, in my experience, held up their end of the bargain. But be prepared for hours of sales talk, and you’d better have pretty high resistance to persuasion.

13

I remember a lovely ski vacation years back, with free (or very cheap - I don’t recall) accomodations in a brand new condo in Vail. The true price was the sales pitch – half an hour in the sales office. It wasn’t that hard a sell, because the condos were nice enough, the winter season was available for timeshare, and the cost wasn’t unreasonable. However, the lady I was seeing was the one with the money, and she already had a timeshare in Mexico that she’d been unable to unload for years, and she wasn’t about to get saddled with another one.

14

A friend sat through one of these, and while they had no trouble getting a voucher to take down the hall to the Prize Redemption Center, all they had left was a pile of disposable cameras. The flyer did say that a “35 mm camera” was one of the options - never did claim to be worth more than five bucks. Presumably, the first person there that weekend snagged the color TV.

15

Tips on Timeshares

16

Thanks all, I’ll be sharing your experiences and tips with my friend.

17

I went to one of those a couple years ago with my SO. It wasn’t a bad deal actually, we got a cheap trip to florida along with a 2 day cruise to the bahamas. it wasn’t free, but it was a good price. The timeshare spiel was held during the trip, it was a couple hours but that was at their resort in west palm beach. It was a beautiful place with a private beach. (gotta love that gulf stream!!) We didn’t buy anything and yes, they used a hard sell approach. Even to the point that after we told the saleslady we weren’t interested, she brought her ‘manager’ over and told him ‘they really hate the hotels they stay in and want to buy!’. I don’t think she liked the fact that we told him she was lying. hehe. Anyway, point being…depending on what they’re offering in exchange for listening, it can be worth it,

Russell

18

Yeah, that one’s a classic standard sale-closing technique; they start high and offer a progression of false discounts, often selflessly offering to waive their commission; when these don’t work, they’ll make a fake plea to higher authority for more fake discounts. If you’re actually dead-set on buying the specific product, you should hold out at least until the salesperson has applied severl layers of ‘discount’, made the bogus call to base and has begun crying.

Another one that my timeshare salesguy tried on me was that he opened with “sorry if I’m a bit vague on anything I tell you tonight, you see, I’m not actually a salesperson, I’m a member of the management team; I’m just covering because one of our sales guys called in sick”.
Well, all I can say is it must have been catching; what this guy didn’t know is that I’ve always had the ability to tune into several conversations at once in a noisy crowd (we were at one small desk out of about a dozen in the room); several of the people at other desks were being told exactly the same thing.

19

If you go on one of these, wouldn’t it establish a relationship with the company which would exempt them from the Do Not Call List, permitting them to make telemarketing calls to you for months afterward?

20

…and we might briefly consider why the timeshares are overpriced. I figured this out for my own self some time after I was pulled into buying a week in Lake Tahoe. …And the timeshare itself is nice enough, which is really what sold me on it at the time, but it was overpriced.

It’s the advertising costs, dummy! – er, that’s me trying to yell at my younger and more foolish self. The timeshare developers spend a lot of money hiring sales staff and putting on sales parties and giving away “free prizes” – and the timeshare developers are not non-profit companies.

Anyhow, at the time, I did manage to get $50 off of the sales price, because one of the pieces of bait thrown out was a gift of that many gambling chips. I gambled them, managed to hold on to my stake, and quit before I lost any of it. I at least did something smart that day.