Sunday, November 07, 2010
Our Time-share Presentation
Shelly and I took the family down to Williamsburg last weekend in response to an offer to listen to a time-share presentation in exchange for three nights' accommodations now and two nights' later on (we did have to pay $198 for the accommodations, $100 of which was refunded after the presentation). We went into the ordeal expecting the worst, as we'd heard several horror stories from others, but it turned out to be not that bad.
After getting the kids squared away downstairs in their child care center, we sat down at a table in a noisy room full of little tables with our sales agent, Clarissa, a nice old Swedish lady. I thought that perhaps the room was so crowded and noisy in an attempt to make sure we leaned forward to be able to hear what Clarissa was saying, thus engaging us and making us more likely to buy.
She explained some of the basic parameters of Diamond Resorts' time-share opportunity. You buy an ownership interest in a group of resorts throughout the US, but you get a partnership with other resorts worldwide, and there's a couple of other partner programs you can participate in, for example, to claim other people's fixed timeshares that they can't use for a particular week. The presentation, to tell the truth, was unnervingly disjointed. Clarissa kept pulling out all sorts of different brochures and not letting us take a close look at any of them, explaining all the different programs that we would get to participate in, but in the end, I don't think I could have correctly listed the programs we would be a part of. Instead, the presentation focused on just getting us excited to vacation more. We saw a video of beautiful childless couples golfing and sitting under a Hawaiian waterfall and so forth (I did note that most of the people in the movie who were giving testimonials were at least in their 50s), and we took a quick tour of an updated unit at the resort there in Williamsburg - it was nice, and I'd love to stay there.
I found myself falling for the pitch just a little bit. It would be fun to have access to all of these vacation options, I thought. But it would depend on how much we'd have to pay. Is it a good deal?
When her presentation was finally to the point where it was time for her to tell us how much it would cost, Clarissa got up and then came back to the table with a little flyer with some dollar figures on it. About thirty seconds later, Terelle, our "closer" who had been coming in and out and telling us how much he loves giving stuff away to people, swooped in and gently reprimanded Clarissa because he didn't want her to show us those prices. We are entitled to a better deal, we were told. It was totally and obviously staged. I rolled my eyes. Terelle came back with the actual offer: $10,800 up front, plus $770 per year for the rest of our lives and the rest of our children's lives and the rest of their children's lives, on and on for eternity.
I was actually surprised at the near-reasonableness of this price. The way the system works is that you get a certain number of "points" each year, which you then redeem for vacations. You can buy more points, of course, but we were looking at the lowest level, which was 3,000 points. The points, we were told, could even be used for airfare, rental cars, or even merchandise at Best Buy. Clarissa told us several times how convenient it was for her to fly her granddaughter from LA to Stockholm using her points. I asked her the logical question: What is the exchange rate between points and dollars when you use it for airfare? She said, "You know, I don't have any idea." Red siren lights started whirling over her head. You don't know whether it would have been a better deal for you to pay cash? I asked Terelle that question as he gave us our offer, and he indicated that for most things, one point converted to about 15 cents, but it also converted to 2.5 air miles. I don't know what an air mile is worth, but I do know that he was asking me to pay $10,000 plus $770 a year to get points that are worth $450 a year.
When he said, "How do you want to take care of the down payment today?" I laughed and said we need a moment to talk about it. I told Shelly I was surprised at how tempting the offer was. I said I wouldn't mind if they eliminated the up-front cost and only charged us the annual cost; Shelly said she wouldn't mind the annual cost if they only charged us the up-front cost. But when you put the two together, given how much we usually spend on vacation lodgings in a year, we figured it would take us at least 15 years to break even. And yes, we would have this for more than 15 years. But it just didn't feel like it was worth it. Particularly when the benefits weren't explained to us logically, and we had not yet seen a piece of paper listing out the contract we would be making. So we said no.
Terelle came back with a second offer that he claimed to "need to get an exception for." (Yeah, right.) 3,000 points per year for $8,500 or so up front and $660 per year. That's a better offer. And Terelle had thrown in (from the beginning) two free week-long vacations and a three-night cruise and $1000 in "travel vouchers" (whatever that is). But we still said no.
To their credit, the only slightly mean thing the Diamond Resorts people ever said was as Terelle was walking away after our second rejection, he said, "That [meaning the $8000] is the same amount you're going to pay for one trip to Disney [World]. One trip!" He may be right, but I'm not locked into paying Disney several hundred dollars a year for the rest of my mortal life.
We spent a total of four hours at our allegedly "90-minute presentation."
When we got our voucher for the additional two nights' stay, it was so full of restrictions that we thanked our lucky stars we hadn't made another deal with these guys without seeing all the fine print. The farther away we get from the presentation, the more sure we are that we made the correct decision. They touted the main selling point of this timeshare program as its flexibility - you can go just about anywhere and do just about anything. But you know what is even more flexible than Diamond Resorts Points? Cash. And I think in the end, we'll go on all the vacations we want, and we'll spend less cash than we would have had we signed up. It was a good experience to have, and I don't regret the deal we made to listen to them in exchange for lodging, but I'm not so sure I'll ever do this again. Maybe when I'm old and rich like the people in the movie they showed us.
After getting the kids squared away downstairs in their child care center, we sat down at a table in a noisy room full of little tables with our sales agent, Clarissa, a nice old Swedish lady. I thought that perhaps the room was so crowded and noisy in an attempt to make sure we leaned forward to be able to hear what Clarissa was saying, thus engaging us and making us more likely to buy.
She explained some of the basic parameters of Diamond Resorts' time-share opportunity. You buy an ownership interest in a group of resorts throughout the US, but you get a partnership with other resorts worldwide, and there's a couple of other partner programs you can participate in, for example, to claim other people's fixed timeshares that they can't use for a particular week. The presentation, to tell the truth, was unnervingly disjointed. Clarissa kept pulling out all sorts of different brochures and not letting us take a close look at any of them, explaining all the different programs that we would get to participate in, but in the end, I don't think I could have correctly listed the programs we would be a part of. Instead, the presentation focused on just getting us excited to vacation more. We saw a video of beautiful childless couples golfing and sitting under a Hawaiian waterfall and so forth (I did note that most of the people in the movie who were giving testimonials were at least in their 50s), and we took a quick tour of an updated unit at the resort there in Williamsburg - it was nice, and I'd love to stay there.
I found myself falling for the pitch just a little bit. It would be fun to have access to all of these vacation options, I thought. But it would depend on how much we'd have to pay. Is it a good deal?
When her presentation was finally to the point where it was time for her to tell us how much it would cost, Clarissa got up and then came back to the table with a little flyer with some dollar figures on it. About thirty seconds later, Terelle, our "closer" who had been coming in and out and telling us how much he loves giving stuff away to people, swooped in and gently reprimanded Clarissa because he didn't want her to show us those prices. We are entitled to a better deal, we were told. It was totally and obviously staged. I rolled my eyes. Terelle came back with the actual offer: $10,800 up front, plus $770 per year for the rest of our lives and the rest of our children's lives and the rest of their children's lives, on and on for eternity.
I was actually surprised at the near-reasonableness of this price. The way the system works is that you get a certain number of "points" each year, which you then redeem for vacations. You can buy more points, of course, but we were looking at the lowest level, which was 3,000 points. The points, we were told, could even be used for airfare, rental cars, or even merchandise at Best Buy. Clarissa told us several times how convenient it was for her to fly her granddaughter from LA to Stockholm using her points. I asked her the logical question: What is the exchange rate between points and dollars when you use it for airfare? She said, "You know, I don't have any idea." Red siren lights started whirling over her head. You don't know whether it would have been a better deal for you to pay cash? I asked Terelle that question as he gave us our offer, and he indicated that for most things, one point converted to about 15 cents, but it also converted to 2.5 air miles. I don't know what an air mile is worth, but I do know that he was asking me to pay $10,000 plus $770 a year to get points that are worth $450 a year.
When he said, "How do you want to take care of the down payment today?" I laughed and said we need a moment to talk about it. I told Shelly I was surprised at how tempting the offer was. I said I wouldn't mind if they eliminated the up-front cost and only charged us the annual cost; Shelly said she wouldn't mind the annual cost if they only charged us the up-front cost. But when you put the two together, given how much we usually spend on vacation lodgings in a year, we figured it would take us at least 15 years to break even. And yes, we would have this for more than 15 years. But it just didn't feel like it was worth it. Particularly when the benefits weren't explained to us logically, and we had not yet seen a piece of paper listing out the contract we would be making. So we said no.
Terelle came back with a second offer that he claimed to "need to get an exception for." (Yeah, right.) 3,000 points per year for $8,500 or so up front and $660 per year. That's a better offer. And Terelle had thrown in (from the beginning) two free week-long vacations and a three-night cruise and $1000 in "travel vouchers" (whatever that is). But we still said no.
To their credit, the only slightly mean thing the Diamond Resorts people ever said was as Terelle was walking away after our second rejection, he said, "That [meaning the $8000] is the same amount you're going to pay for one trip to Disney [World]. One trip!" He may be right, but I'm not locked into paying Disney several hundred dollars a year for the rest of my mortal life.
We spent a total of four hours at our allegedly "90-minute presentation."
When we got our voucher for the additional two nights' stay, it was so full of restrictions that we thanked our lucky stars we hadn't made another deal with these guys without seeing all the fine print. The farther away we get from the presentation, the more sure we are that we made the correct decision. They touted the main selling point of this timeshare program as its flexibility - you can go just about anywhere and do just about anything. But you know what is even more flexible than Diamond Resorts Points? Cash. And I think in the end, we'll go on all the vacations we want, and we'll spend less cash than we would have had we signed up. It was a good experience to have, and I don't regret the deal we made to listen to them in exchange for lodging, but I'm not so sure I'll ever do this again. Maybe when I'm old and rich like the people in the movie they showed us.
Comments: Post a Comment
