The Case Of The Mysterious $1,000 Bribe

Last week, a Diamond Resorts owner reported that she was offered $1,000 off of her annual maintenance fees if she and her husband attended a 60 minute update regarding Hilton’s recent acquisition of Diamond. 

You know where this is going, don’t you?

Let’s start with the fact that timeshare salespeople know about as much as I do about the details of the Hilton/Diamond deal. Meaning nothing. Nothing has been publicly announced. Timeshare salespeople have absolutely no inside information. 

Now let’s ask if this owner got this offer of $1,000 off their annual maintenance fees in writing. I know you’ll be as stunned as I am to find out that nothing was in writing. By stunned I mean of course about as stunned to find out that the sun rose this morning. 

At the end of the update, which of course was nothing more than a sales pitch revolving around the ‘fact’ that these owners would be at a lower level once Hilton fully took over-which could be alleviated by buying thousands of dollars worth of more points today-no one including the Quality Control person and the VIP Lounge person had any idea about this $1,000 offer. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop laughing/crying at the titles of those people. Quality Control?  VIP Lounge?  Just another example of how nefarious companies use these titles to give off the air of importance to their customers when in reality, there’s no quality control and no one is a VIP. 

Let me say that the person who offered this offer that doesn’t exist should be fired. Immediately. 

But again, some of the burden falls on the consumer. This person is an owner and already has experience with this timeshare developer promising things that never materialize. And yet, they took the hefty and quite unrealistic bribe without demanding it in writing. 

While the owner in question refused to purchase additional points, they should never have attended the pitch at all. 

The problem of course, as with so many timeshare related issues, is that no actual laws are being broken to my knowledge. Lies are being told, but the only recourse seems to be shining a light on them. Which is exactly the point of this post.