Read my post *"Evergreen Resorts, a company which markets travel and camping clubs and sells lists of potential customers to other marketers, deceived consumers by displaying a truck it never intended to give away. The brand-new pickup truck appeared in malls, fairs, and recreational shows as a major draw prize award.
They would call consumers who filled out the entry slips and congratulate them, saying they had “won” if they attended a sales presentation for travel, camping or timeshare services or memberships. Attendees found they won a secondary prize, not the truck.
And although they advertised that a truck would be given away yearly, an investigation revealed that no trucks were given for two years and then only because the Attorney General was contacted. Even then the truck finally awarded was not the same as the one displayed.*"
That was a scam, yes. But not all timeshare pitches are scams, and not all prize offerings are scams. Can you say definitively that the OP will be scammed?
No, he can’t, because the OP isn’t buying anything, and after years of working in banking resolving (among other things) people’s complex checking and credit card fraud issues, he sure as hell isn’t giving the timeshare hucksters information that could be used to scam him.
Thanks for the info as well, atomicbadgerrace; it’s been interesting reading. I’m still not buying a timeshare, though.
Nor was I suggesting you should. It surprises me that I’ve sat through probably a dozen presentations, yet keep getting called. You’d think they’d all get together and organize a blacklist of folks not to invite.
First line of the OP “*A few weeks ago, I dropped my name into a mall “Win A Car!” box on a lark. *” He *has already been scammed. * True, in this case that scam has not cost him actual cash.
In my experience:
-It’s harder to keep saying ‘no thanks’ constantly - for three hours - than you think it might be. They will make you feel an absolute bastard for finally refusing.
Fortunately, they caught me on a day when I felt up to being an absolute bastard - but they’ll try every trick (including breaking down and weeping) to try to make you sign.
-The ‘free gifts’ consist of good ones that you won’t be offered, plus shit ones that sound impressive (such as free holidays/cruises, where the accommodation is free, but you have to find your own flights, or worse, are obliged to buy meals at a specific restaurant).
And you know for a fact that this particular marketing gimmick is not actually giving away a car, how?
I don’t doubt that a great many of these promotions are bona fida scams, but it seems hardly fair to criticize the entire industry. My experiences have been net positive so far, while some folks have indeed been scammed out of money. Caveat emptor, of course, but the OP hasn’t done anything but drop his name in a box at this point. It’s hard to cry “scam!” based solely on that.
Oh, another thing to be ready for. After the salesman does his full pitch and you say no, he’ll go get his ‘manager’. The pretense will be something like, they want to make sure I did my job or that he has to sign off on you getting your gifts. The manager will then go over then plan again and offer you a cheaper deal. (usually with less points or time or something). After you say no to him you’ll be sent to another person to pick up your gifts and they’ll probably want to do a survey. They will offer you another even cheaper deal.
You can be pretty sure that at least 2 but possibly 4 different people will offer you deals. Different companies vary the name, it might be the salesman,manager, corporate representative or something else.
Going off on a tangent here, but when we visited Vegas with an American mate, we agreed that any timeshare person trying to engage us would be greeted by me.
As soon as I’d open my mouth and say anything, the pitch immediately turned to ‘…Oh, you’re travelling? That’s lovely. You have a nice day, now’ or something to that effect - it was quite amusing in its instantaneous leap from aggressive sales to polite brush-off. I guess it’s illegal to sell to furriners. Or they couldn’t understand me. One of the two.
It was kind of entertaining though, especially since they’d always try to greet me as part of a couple, which meant a second or so of eyeing up both of the men with me to work out which one was the partner. (Success rate was less than half.)
Oh, come on. I was well aware that filling that thing out meant that my name and address would be sent to every marketing company on Earth. Does the OP read as though I didn’t know what I was getting into? I decided I didn’t particularly care, especially since 95% of those companies probably already had my information anyway, and was hoping to get an offer for a timeshare vacation and possibly something more. Inasmuch as that was my goal, it worked.
How could I possibly have been scammed out of something I was perfectly willing to give away?
Antinor01, thanks for the heads up, but no worries. I’m quite familiar with most of your major sales techniques; like I said, I spent a good deal of time last month dealing with various car salesmen, and they wrote the book on cheap bait-and-switch tricks. Even if I weren’t, though, I’m not buying anything, regardless of who’s selling or what the offer is. Going in with that in mind makes these things ridiculously easy to handle.
Many variants of this tactic involve a scripted argument between the different supposed levels of management - with the salesman whining to his boss “But if you don’t give him a discount, he’s going to walk”, or some such bullshit.
Timeshare sales may not always be a scam, but it nearly always is very high-pressure sales - which, in my opinion, is quite often very nearly as sociopathic, fraudulent and evil as if it were a scam.
I’ve never attended a timeshare presentation. I’m too stingy with what little vacation time I have. However, I own a timeshare in Maui. I bought mainly because we go to Maui most years and I was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find rentals that met my specific criteria. So I did a lot of research and bought a resale unit, sight unseen, from one of the resale websites. Now I don’t worry about where we’re staying. I have no regrets, mainly because I bought on the resale market.
For the OPer, I’d strongly advise visiting one of the timeshare resale websites, such as MyResortNetwork, Tug2, and/or SellMyTimeshareNow and getting data together about how much a resale unit costs at the location you are traveling to. Even though you are absolutely convinced that you would never buy, arming yourself with data on how much the unit is worth on the free market will help you say “No.”
Also, since you know you’ll be pressured to buy, prepare yourself with some canned responses, such as “I’ll have to discuss this with my financial advisor to see if I can liquidate some stocks before signing.” or “I am visting the Marriott Cypress Harbour tomorrow so that I can compare the two resorts before committing.” to give yourself a graceful exit.
And, finally, make your appointment near the end of your trip. Most states, including Florida, allow a recission window (usually 7 days) where you can rescind the contract. If you do cave, attending the presentation late in the game will give you adequate time to prepare the recission letter once your return home.
The last one I did was in Vegas at the new Westgate resort at Planet Hollywood. I knew what I was in for with regards to the sales pitch. The gave me $40 slot comp and 2 buffet comps for the buffet at PH, which is rated as one of the top buffets in Vegas, for attending. I could have chosen show tickets for almost any show running at the time. The buffet comps were $25 each. I listened to the presentation, told them no several times, went to the closer, told him no, then the final closer and told him no. It was totally worth it. I turned that $40 slot comp into $300.
Both of my parents have time shares that they not only use, but they love. If I were in a position to afford it, I would probably get one. As long as you know what you are doing by going to the presentation, you can definitely work it to your advantage.
My advice on the prizes for going: if it’s a trip other than a weekend stay at their own resort, don’t do it. Those trips are extremely restricted, and generally not worth the paper they are printed on. If it’s for a weekend stay at the resort you are touring, those are a lot less restricitve, though you may have to listen to another presentation. What you described in the OP, the “you have won one of these four prizes” would be a pass for me. I will go to a presentation where the gift is outlined clearly upfront.
By the way, the Westgate resort at Planet Hollywood is stunning.
See, that’s the problem I have with high-pressure sales techniques. If your product is any good, why aren’t you letting it sell itself? Why navigate an eyelash away from fraud with the music and the scripts and the emotional entanglements?
Both times were high-pressure and longer than we wanted to spend.
First time we got a $50 restaurant gift certificate, which is what we expected.
Second time we got a trip – however, we would have had to pay a non-refundable $50 reservation fee, they picked the flights, they picked the hotel, and the fine print allowed them to book us on overnight flights which would count towards the 3 days of the vacation. So conceivably we could fly out one evening, get there the next morning, spend one night in the hotel, and fly back the next night. We passed.
We also got a $100 gas gift certificate – except for 10 months straight, you had to submit gas receipts by mail, at which point they would send you the redemption form for the next month. If you missed a month, you were done. They were not responsible for lost mail. We never bothered to even try it.
The point isn’t that you don’t intend to be scammed. The point is that they are trying to scam you. When you go to this presentation, see if their “office” has permanent signage outside that indicates that it has been there for awhile, as opposed to temporary signage that would indicate that they are ready to skip off to the next town if too many complaints reach the local regulatory agencies. Also, a lot of these offices are positioned far away from the main part of town so that, when people are asked for personal information(name, address, phone number) and two forms of ID for confirmation(they just want to look at your credit card to confirm your identity-rrriiight), they’ll hesitate before deciding to vacate the premises-“But Honey, we drove all the way out here-lets at least stay long enough to get our prize!”
I don’t know if this is the same thing, but timeshares are an incredible scam in Thailand, perpetrated largely by Westerners on Westerners. Tourists are stopped by innocent-looking Thai “tourism representatives” and asked to fill out a form, to help them gather tourism statistics. (The Thais don’t SAY they’re with the government, but that’s the implication.) Where the tourist is staying is one of the blanks on the form. In appeciation of the tourist taking the time to help out, his name is placed in a drawing, and invariably he’s contacted a very short while later saying he’s “won” a timeshare. When the tourist goes into the office, he receives an incredibly high-pressured sales pitch from a Western agent, lasting a good part of a day in some instances, I’ve heard. Not how I’d want to spend part of my vacation. The ones who cave always end up paying a bunch of money for something substandard.
So my advice would be just assume it’s a scam and pass it up. It’s probably just not worth the hassle.
BTW: The Thais who stop the tourists seem to get paid per person filling out the form, and I know at least one guy who always stops and fills it out, pretending to be a tourist, but writes in a fake hotel name. So they can get paid something.
