Stay Clear of This Sales Tactic

So, you’re sitting with your timeshare salesperson who has just shown you the price of $52,000 for ‘your week of paradise.’  You politely say ‘no’ adding ‘we already have a timeshare and we can’t afford maintenance fees on both of them.’

Wouldn’t you know it, the sales manager has a DEAL for you!  He comes back showing you that they’ll take $20,000 off the price of the timeshare they’re pitching because they’ll take your present timeshare as a ‘trade in’, bringing your price down to only $32,000. HOW can you possibly say no to this?

Here’s how and why you need to say ‘no.’

>Unlike car dealers, timeshare developers don’t have methods of off-loading other timeshares. 99 times out of 100, if you say ‘yes’ to this offer the manager will either have a last minute change of heart and tell you that they’ll honor the $20,000 ‘trade in discount’ but generously allow you to keep your other timeshare. 

>That $52,000 was a price they picked out of a hat, as was the $20,000 ‘trade in discount.’  In reality, you have absolutely no way of knowing what the ‘base price’ of the timeshare actually is. (Note that there is at least one developer that is transparent with prices, that being DVC.)

Don’t fall for this sales tactic. Tell the salesperson at the onset of the presentation that you’re setting an alarm for the promised time frame. Promise them that you’ll give a straightforward answer to their questions as well as give them a definitive yes or no answer to the buying question if and only if they promise to show you ONE price and ONE price only for the timeshare. No negotiations. 

You Won’t Believe This Language

I recently found some rather interesting language buried within the mounds of paperwork that consumers are forced to sign on the spot without having the chance to fully read and/or comprehend what the heck they’re signing when purchasing a timeshare. 

I’m reprinting it both for your review and as a caution. 

The purchaser promises to neither slander nor cause harm to the reputation of the seller by any means naming in an enunciation manner, but not limiting to pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, Internet websites, blogs, television or radio. In virtue of the above, the purchaser will not issue degrading statements in respect to the services provided or not provided by the seller nor will he use pejorative adjectives when he publically expresses any opinion, oral or written, related to his experience while practicing or not practicing the membership issued by the club. 

The parts agree that in case the purchaser does not fulfill his obligations established in this numeral, damages will be caused to the seller who will have the power to appear before the competent authorities to practice the corresponding actions with the purpose of being compensated for the damage caused. 

You read that correctly. Even if the developer does not hold up their end of the deal, I.e. ‘services provided or not provided’, the purchaser can’t talk about it or face monetary and assuming criminal charges!!!

What exactly are these guys trying to hide?

Warning! Don’t Sign Anything

Yet another sad, disgraceful example of horrible tactics used by this timeshare developer. Thankfully, these people realized they were being hustled. 

How many don’t?

We went to an owners update in Williamsburg. When it started we were told that NAME REDACTED could now consolidate the 2 loans that we have with them into one and at the same time lower our interest rate. He said several times that no purchase was necessary, only that it was a win-win situation for us!  

Obviously we had to sign paperwork for them to run our credit.  When the salesman came back into the room, he said it looked like we would save $200/month but they were waiting on the paperwork to print.  He went back out and came back with the finalized paperwork.  

When we were presented the paperwork,  they had us rolling our maintenance fees in for the next 10 years into the loan!  I THINK THEY BELIEVE WE WERE BORN YESTERDAY!  I asked the salesman where our straight refinancing and consolidation paperwork was.  He said this WAS the proposal!  

I told him it was garbage and we were lied to in order to get us to sign for the credit check!  I asked for a supervisor and instead got the manager of hospitality.   I asked for his name and the name of the salesman.  I want to make a complaint as this put a hard inquiry on my credit! This is a horrible sales tactic and they should not be able to get away with it.  Yes, I turned into a witch there with a capital B!

The moral of this story is don’t sign anything, don’t provide your Social Security Number, don’t provide credit card information to anyone. 

I’m Fed Up With The Excuses!

I think it’s high time that the so-called ‘license to lie’ clause be taken out of contracts. Consumers aren’t given a chance to do any research during a sales pitch, so they must rely on what the salesperson says. 

I’ve redacted the name of the resort. Clever readers will no doubt know who is behind this horrendous story. 

We were defrauded by NAME OF DEVELOPER for $15,500 on 11/18/2016 in NAME OF CITY, Virginia. What happened is that their salesperson made representations to us which were not in the written contract we signed. We found out later that virtually nothing he represented to us at the sales presentation in order to induce us to buy was true. Details follow.

We only went to the presentation to receive the 'attendance reward'. After a few hours of listening to the usual hard sell spiel trying to get us to buy more anyway even though it made no sense for us because we wanted to "sell" what we already owned (for zero, which I have always known as the industry standard practice) , we made our position clear and started to leave.  

At this point our salesman offered us this "great new deal" NAME OF DEVELOPER could offer members who bought more points to become 'silver' members. The deal was that if we became silver members, after three years we would have the option to sell all our points back to NAME OF DEVELOPER for $108,000. He also put this phoney deal in writing (which I have). I was extremely skeptical because I had never heard of a timeshare buying back points. However, after he repeated this 'new deal' for about 5 times we finally decided that he couldn't possibly be flat out lying to our face,  (or if he worked for a reputable company they would rescind the contract), so we signed.  

When we later (6 months) found out that the deal he had offered us was totally fraudulent, we asked NAME OF DEVELOPER (repeatedly, orally and in writing) to rescind the contract because we had been defrauded. 

Their response...."it doesn't matter" what the salesman told us or even wrote down. The only thing they care about is that we signed their written contract. So they don't stand behind whatever the salespeople are claiming. Basiclally, we were told over and over again that "well, you signed the contract", even though the only reason we signed was because of what their salesperson told us which turned out to be a fairy tale. We are talking about major phoney representations, not minor. 

Obviously when salespeople know that when their company doesn't care if they make up a pack of lies to elicit a sale, if they are unethical they will say anything to get a commission. These people are totally unethical if not criminal. We want our contract rescinded and our money back! 

THE KEY HERE WAS THAT THE OWNER NOT ONLY THOUGHT THE SALESPERSON WAS TELLING THE TRUTH, BUT THAT HE WAS WORKING FOR A REPUTABLE COMPANY. TURNS OUT BOTH WERE FALSE. 

An Open Letter to Timeshare Developers

Dear Timeshare Developers:

I’d appreciate an honest answer from any of you. 

Why do you not buy back your own product when it’s being sold for $1,000, $100 or $1.00 on the secondary market when you can turn around and sell it the very next day or week for whatever grossly inflated price you do each and everyday to unsuspecting consumers?

It’s not like we’re talking about a product that deprecated due to rust or even the fact that it’s outdated. You maintain the product with the owners money and you determine the usage rules. 

ARDA just reported that the average price of a timeshare was $22,180. 

In under a minute, I was able to find these listings on a reputable resale site:

Marriott’s Desert Springs $4,295

Orange Lake North Village $3,000

Sheraton Broadway Plantation $500

Summer Bay Orlando $0 (not a typo)

It seems to me that you guys could turn a nifty profit by snapping these up and selling them for $22,180 or whatever your salespeople try to get. 

But you don’t. Why is that?  Are you trying to give the impression that these timeshares aren’t worth anything?  Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. 

A Cautionary Tale

This is yet another timeshare sales horror story that came to me last week.

I’m reprinting it here, complete will spelling and grammatical errors, and have added my thoughts on what the clear red flags were in the hope that they serve as a warning to you. 

My wife bought a sampler package for Diamonds out of sympathy for a old lady who was selling this for 140 USD package.  MISTAKE #1 DON’T BUY ANYTHING OUT OF SYMPATHY 

She lives in Texas and I am in Europe for the time being, we are from India. We used the package for Las Vegas, where we got an email that we have be in a meeting with them for 2 hour or else we have to pay 1200 USD fine. We had no choice and we agreed to be there. We had no idea what were getting into. I had never heard of Time share or Diamond resorts before. MISTAKE #2 DON’T GET INTO A SALES PITCH WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL

In the meeting they were trying to sell as this Diamond resort points, which we denied as we don´t have the money or time to enjoy it. To give you a perspective, my wife widowed mother is suffering from breast cancer, currently living in India and all are money and time goes in travelling to India and bearing the expenses for the Chemotherapy. On hearing this the sales agent lied about the scheme completely. Understanding our situation, he told us that with this scheme she can save money on travelling. Every time she will buy a return ticket to India,she will be provided with an extra air ticket just for the price of 50 USD that she can use within 6 months. He reiterated that she did not have to necessarily use this scheme to enjoy the benefits of luxury resorts; in fact, she could use it for air travel to India and back. On asking the prices of tickets, he showed documents that the prices of tickets would be same (as we pay now) based on points and instead of two times I can travel four times to India. After he showed us those documents, we kind of agreed with his argument. MISTAKE #3 IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS

We spend almost 6 hours arguing with them, but they simply kept on lying about the scheme and got us to buy this 7500 yearly points (loan 27 Thousand USD).  MISTAKE #4 IT WAS TO HAVE BEEN A 2 HOUR SALES PITCH, WHY WOULD YOU SPEND 6 HOURS?  GET UP AND LEAVE

We now realize this was lie when she recently wanted to book a ticket to India through them. They told us that 7500 points are not enough to buy air ticket to India ( one way) and there is no such scheme of getting extra free ticket. MISTAKE #5 DO NOT BUY ANYTHING THAT YOU DON’T GET ACCESS TO IMMEDIATELY SO YOU CAN VERIFY

We are not in a financial position where we can afford paying for this (which is 400 USD per month) as well as expenses for the medical treatment of my mother which is necessary. This scheme is completely useless for us if we cannot use it for the purpose it was sold to us. 

We were sold this scheme on a false pretext which is shameful; trying to reap off a person in our situation who has already enough personal and financial troubles.

YES, IS SHAMEFUL, DISGRACEFUL AND DESPICABLE FOR ANY SALESPERSON OR ANY RESORT TO USE THESE TACTICS. 

UNLESS OR UNTIL SOME LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY DOES SOMETHING TO SHUT THEM DOWN, CONSUMERS MUST TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY

Double Points? How About Multiple Lies

I like to think that I'm a creative writer. I could not, even on my best day come up with such an outrageous story as this timeshare sales pitch that was sent my way. 

I’m not using the couple’s real name for reasons that will soon be evident. These people were promised "double point usage" if they upgraded by buying 15,000 additional points. They already had 50,000 points, which gave them more than what they needed to meet their travel needs.

Back in February of this year, they met with their sales rep who informed them of "big changes" in the program due to the company being acquired by a private equity firm some time ago and "to thank them for being members for over 5 years."  

The so-called "double point usage" pitch went something like this:

50,000 points already owned

15,000 points purchased today

65,000 total points

65,000 ‘double points given’

130,000 total points owned annually 

The sales rep casually mentioned that they would be responsible for a whopping $86,310 in maintenance fees over the next 10 years if they didn’t take advantage of this offer. Of course, he had a 'solution' for that.

The ‘solution’ was to purchase 15,000 more points, giving them 65,000. But the developer would then ‘give them’ an additional 65,000 making 130,000 annually. 

Using the original 50,000 would leave them 80,000 which would then be ‘translated’ into $8,000 annually to be used to pay off maintenance fees. Are you as confused as I am?  The $8,000 comes from a ‘redemption’ of $.10 for each of the remaining points. I TOLD you these guys were creative. The $8,000 would be given to them either on a check or a reloadable debit card. I kid you not!  

Believe it or not, this couple fell for this BS.   Their annual maintenance fees are now more than $11,000 and they have new loans totaling $57,000!

Astonishingly, this story gets worse. Flash forward to May when the couple went through yet another sales pitch with the same salesperson. 

Ah, now the program had some changes according to the dear, sweet, trustworthy salesperson. The reloadable debit card had been discontinued due to ‘problems.’

The ‘bonus’ 65,000 points were to have appears on a ‘split screen’ on the couples online dashboard. The developer was still ‘working on’ this split screen feature.

The ‘double points’ never made it to the consumer’s account of course. 

The developer’s answer to this nonsense?  

“I definitely agree that your confusion of that process is warranted. I have spoken to our legal team and sales team and we agree the double point explanation is definitely something that could have been misconstrued or seen as confusing by members or purchasers.

We have made changes to the way that information is given at the time of sale but we have to say the stance we take on this is: because there may have been some confusion on how you may use those points to create a savings for yourself doesn’t make the explanation illegal.”

As reprehensible as this sales pitch is, I find it equally, if not more astonishing that this couple fell for this. The red flags in the pitch are EVERYWHERE!

If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

If something is important to you, get it in writing and ask to see exactly where it is in the contract.

Do not purchase anything today based upon things you're getting in the future.