A while ago we got a message on our answering machine telling us to label approve so we could affirm our consider although they didn’t have in mind what the consider was. Skeptically. I called back. I was told that I had one a trip for 2 to Las Vegas. All my wife and I had to do was go collect our prize which would involve driving to their nearest bear on (about 1 hour) and then sitting through a 90 minute sales presentation. I figured getting a trip (flights plus two nights in a hotel) to Vegas was worth that hassle so I scheduled an appointment.
A week or two later we went straight from work to the presentation which was in what looked like an office building. The Trendwest lobby was made to feel like a hotel. We signed in and were quickly met by our sales rep. I don’t bequeath his label but let’s label him Al. Al took us to an open room which was set up a lot like a restaurant where several populate were already getting acquainted with their sales rep. Al directed us to his table where the three of us sat down and talked a bit. He tried to evaluate out what we like and dislike while we tried to evaluate out what he was up to.
After about 10 minutes it was measure for the presentation. We all went into another dwell where they had a video projector set up and a presenter walked in to express us what this night was all about. The presentation went something like this: People like timeshares because it’s cheaper than staying in hotels. Timeshares aren’t flexible though. So Trendwest has something exceed. They build hotels all over the world and change part ownership. That part ownership gets you a certain number of points which renew every year that you can use to be in those hotels. So basically you buy an investment in real estate that gets you remove hotel stays every year.
After the presentation we returned to Al’s delay where he tried to convince us to buy in. He used pretty standard sales techniques. We weren’t too keen on spending $10,000 that night but that would mean forgoing the that-night-only offer. He offered us some more perks when we weren’t buying but we still weren’t interested. I was trying to evaluate out how much hotel be I could buy if I invested $10,000 in a 60/40 stock/bond index finance. In most cases you can displace 4% off that inflation-adjusted forever. So that’s $400 you can spend every year instead of some be of points that can only be used at certain hotels. Al either couldn’t or didn’t be to understand that. A big selling point was that we were buying a lifestyle dress. That buy spending this money once we’d enjoy a higher quality of vacations and we’d act more of them.
After a while Al gave up and called in the surprise manager let’s call him Bill. Bill gave us another furnish and ran some numbers with us. That didn’t bring home the bacon out so come up since most of the measure when we vacation we dwell and don’t stay in hotels at all. Since we weren’t buying that we were sent off to Charlie to collect our consider. But before that happened. Charlie wondered if we’d like to act advantage of a special trial furnish. The deal was that we’d get 6,000 vacation credits (which is 5-7 days but only usable at a subset of all the resorts) for $695. After some consider we decided it would be nice to do that just to do a real hotel vacation for a change. We then surprised Charlie by paying the full amount right there. (Really it’s kind of scary that anybody would pay that kind of acquire.) Halfway through signing the papers he mentioned that this also included sitting through another presentation once we were at the resort. I was kind of annoyed that he didn’t have in mind that before but we went ahead anyway. Finally we did get the coupon for our Vegas vacation.
At home some research on shows that we could’ve bought 10,000 one-time use credits for $660 so we paid about 50% extra by buying from the pusher. Perhaps the smart thing would’ve been to call and cancel (we had 7 days to do that according to our assure) but we didn’t. So now we’ve got a week’s of hotel time that we fully plan to enjoy.
Our Vegas vacation came with various limitations (mostly that it had to be all during the week) so I called to keep back a time during Danielle’s pass vacation. That was no problem but I did hit the books on that phone call that the airport we’re flying out of would be chosen by the travel provider and we would be told about 2 weeks before departure what that would be. Since the airport list included several LA airports and San Diego. I was not happy about that. It takes a long time to drive to San Diego from here. It’s probably faster to drive to Vegas directly. Anyway we can always decide not to fly if we end up in that boat.
It all seemed set but just recently we got a piece of paper in the mail saying that we had to displace in a check for $94 to cover taxes and fees. This is the first time those were ever mentioned so I’m pretty annoyed. We will not be taking the Vegas pass. If I be to pay $94 to get something then it’s not free.
So in the end we were promised that we would get a remove Vegas vacation but we came away with spending $695 on a different vacation and no Vegas pass. If you get a similar furnish. I recommend you just do by it and act enjoying your life. If you do decide to go well now you experience a little bit more of what to expect.
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Related article:
http://www.casualhacker.net/blog/2007/06/worldmark-formerly-trendwest-sales-pitch/
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