Posted on 05/11/2010 3:46:57 PM PDT by SamAdams76
OK, so the wife and I are vacationing in Las Vegas. Great time by the way, I highly recommend Las Vegas as a travel destination...just leave the kids at home, OK? Despite what the travel brochures say, it's NOT a place for kids.
Anyway, our first day there and we are walking through some of the massive casino/hotels on Las Vegas Boulevard. Caeser's Palace, Bellagio, Treasure Island, Monte Carlo, etc. Well, we pass through New York New York (awesome roller coaster by the way) and head on over to Excaliber by way of the pedestrian overpass. As soon as we enter the casino, some sharp dressed young man steps in front of us and asks us if we are interested in free show tickets and some free gambling chips.
Rubes that we are, we allow ourselves to get steered over to a counter where three fast-talking people start bombarding us with questions as to where we are coming from, how long we are staying, blah, blah, blah.
It comes down to the fact that yes, the free show tickets to a show of our choice and $150 in gambling money is all ours if only we would attend a "short" sales presentation they are holding the next morning at some new resort they are building further up the strip regarding vacation time shares. No obligation on our part, just show them that we have a major credit card (to show we were capable of putting down a deposit should we decide to buy one) and we will get our free stuff...after the presentation, of course.
Well right away my radar is lighting up and I'm suddenly reminded of how I was scammed back in the 1980s with some multi-level marketing scheme. But my wife is whispering in my ear "free stuff, free stuff, all we have to do is show up and say NO!"
But I'm still not sold on the concept of spending a morning of my vacation listening to fast talking sharpies rattle on about their confounded floating weeks, points systems, deeded properties, investment-of-a-lifetime spiel. So I say to them absolutely not, I'm here to be on vacation, not to sit through high-pressure sales pitches and whatnot. So now they up the ante, not only will I get show tickets but I will also get free dinner for two at one of their "swank" restaurants and instead of $150 in gambling chips, they will make it $250. By now, my wife is ready to clobber me over the head if I walk away.
OK, so it's my wife's vacation too and I really didn't want to see her disappointed. Also, I saw an opportunity to to have to pluck down another $300 for Penn & Teller when I could get them for "free" and $250 will get me a decent ride at the $10 blackjack tables, so I finally gave in and said "OK, I'll show up for your darn sales presentation, just tell me where to show up." I figured I'd show up with a bad attitude and they'd let us out of the presentation early so I could just pick up our prizes and get the hell out of there.
Well, that was the plan, anyhow.
So they told me that I could come back to the Excalibur in the morning at 8AM and they would provide a shuttle to take us to the resort. Well I wasn't having any of that, we had our own rental car with GPS and I told them just give me the address and we'll show up ourselves. They frowned at that, evidently they really wanted us to take the shuttle so that they could hold us captive as long as they needed to. But they did yield the address and we were finally on our way.
Next morning, we show up at the appointed place bright and early, as they promised free breakfast and lunch (after the presentation was over). Well, the breakfast ended up being nothing more than day-old bagels and donuts, overripe bananas and mushy apples as well as some pretty awful coffee with nothing but "imitation dairy product" and clumpy sugar to put in it. Should have walked out then and there but I'd have forfeited the prizes so I decided to suck it up and get through it.
Once some preliminary paperwork was filled out, we were accosted by an over-eager sales rep who proceeded to spend the next hour being our best friend in the whole wide world. Now I'm used to this glad-handing crap from my experiences buying cars and such, so I politely put up with it for a while. Everytime we said something, he'd exclaim "Oh, that's my favorite too" or "My mother-in-law was the same way!". Eventually even my wife started getting annoyed because it was getting on to be 10 in the morning and we were hoping to be out of there well before noon.
So after a brief overview of the time-share offerings, we get taken on a walking tour of the place. I forget the name of the resort now...Grandview, Westgate, South Point, who the hell knows. Then he shows us the "sample unit" that supposedly is an exact repica of the unit we will recieve for one week per year should we decide to buy today (and only today because in the high-pressure sales world, there is no tomorrow). This place had jacuzzi, flat screen TV in every room, the works. Now I'm really regretting coming to this because I can tell that my wife is already getting visions in her head of bringing her mother out on future trips to show the place off.
After taking the long way back to the sales area, we start getting the sales pitch full force. The guy shoves a legal bad in front of us and proceeds to start writing a bunch of numbers UPSIDE DOWN. I asked him if learning how to write upside down was part of the sales training and my wife gave me a dirty look. Finally, after a bunch of graphs showing that Las Vegas is the number 1 destination in the world and that Las Vegas has the highest time share property value in the world, etc., etc., we come to find out that $41,000 is all we have to pay to own one week a year at this new Las Vegas resort (that is 7 miles off the strip). Of course, he already has financing all worked out for us at 18.5%! When I bark at the interest rate, he tells me that I am free to get it refinanced when I get home from vacation (knowing full well that no bank, not even Fannie Mae, would be stupid enough to issue a mortgage on a time share).
Then of course, there are the annual maintenance fees and it was fun to see the sales guy dance around that one. I finally forced a number out of him (somewhere around $1,500 a year) and I told him that for the maintenance fee alone, I could take that money and stay at a casino hotel right on the strip so why would I pay that every year plus an additional $41,000 for a place where I would have to rent a car to get anywhere? Well he didn't have much of an answer for that and before I knew it, he was gone and some perky Carly Fiorina type woman sits in front of us and proceeds to launch into a whole new spiel at something like 500 words per minute. It was as if she just got back from the Starbucks after inhaling a quadruple double-espresso. Even my wife had to tell her to slow down and the legal pad in front of us filled up with numbers at even a faster rate (also written upside down). Suddenly we could have the same time share for just $27,500! The only difference is that we would have to give up the "lock-down unit" - whatever that meant. I told her that no, we were not at all interested.
So she said fine, she would take us downstairs so that we could check out and get our prizes. By now it was past 11:30 and I was thinking I just might make it back to the strip my noon with my blackjack money. But no! We were told to sit on a metal folding chair and wait until the next representative was avaiable to check us out. A half hour goes buy and over the loudspeaker we keep hearing announcements of "Introducing the newest owner of Grandview, Mr. and Mrs. such-and-such." About 12:15, a woman comes into where we are sitting and announces that lunch is being served in the next room. I tell her that we aren't hungry and we just want to collect our prizes and go. But her response is that the representatives are all busy processing orders and that we will just have to hang tight and might as well grab some lunch in the meantime. So reluctantly, we take a walk over there and there is nothing but a big platter of deli meat and some old-looking rolls with some kind of juice. So we go back to the folding chairs to wait.
About 15 minutes, we finally have another sales rep come to us and she wants to know if we are interested in getting a sandwich with her in the lunch room. After I tell her no way, she sighs and says that she'll delay her lunch while she gets us processed out. While we are walking to the check-out area, she asks us if we heard the announcement of all the new owners and what it would take for us to become a new owner of Grandview as well. At that point, I was just about to walk out of there, screw the prizes. But after I flatly told her no, she took us to a cubicle where there was this nasty, scowling lady who took her sweet time processing our paperwork and issuing our prizes. She tried to give us only $150 in gambling money and it took a little convincing to get her to issue the $250 that was promised. Same routine with the dinner. Then she told us our first few choices for shows were "unavaiable" so we had to settle for Lance Burton - some kind of magician, I was told.
After much paper shuffling and asking us one more time if we wanted to reconsider buying this time share, she finally handed over the gifts and told us we could wait for the shuttle outside to take us back to the strip. For the first time that day, I was able to stick it to them. I told her that we took our own car over and we would happily drive ourselves back. So we walked out of the resort, past the poor folks in folding chairs waiting for their ride back. It felt kind of like escaping prison.
Well we had a good time with the tickets, the free meal wasn't too bad (not great) and I was able to turn that $250 house money into $400 at the blackjack table, but it was still not worth wasting a whole morning of my vacation in time-share hell. We were approached several more times during the week for offers of "free gifts" but not even my somewhat gullible wife wanted to listen to their spiels anymore.
If you are ever in Las Vegas, just say NO to any free gifts! Nothing is free in Vegas!
Branson, MO.
I booked into a 2 bedroom time share condo. At like $150 per week. Beautiful condo. Ridiculously low rate.
The catch: Attend a 90 minute sales presentation. That’s all - they said. Oh. And you must bring a valid major credit card.
The morning of the sales meeting, I present my Visa debit card. They would not take it. (Not like I was gonna allow them to charge anything anyway)
Long story short. I still got to stay at that beautiful condo for the 5 days at $150.00. I just didn’t get all the other free crap.
But - I didn’t have to sit through a tag-team sales presentation.
I came out definietly ahead.
If the breakfast, lunch or whatever is better than average, I may give them an extra 10 minutes and ask them for their card. Funny how few of them actually have cards to give out.
If the deal actually sounds good, I tell them I like older properties, off seasons (when crowds are sparse), etc. If they haven't excused me by then, I tell them to put it in writing and I'll check in before I leave town. Once when I thought I had a good deal, I showed it to a timeshare reseller who had an office near the resort and he showed me a number of better/cheaper properties he had for sale.
Almost every major resort has reseller offices nearby to check it out!
Looks like somewhere less than $4,000 ,, week 15 (April) is listed for $4k at Grandview at Las Vegas and that’s an asking price .. http://www.timesharesonly.com/timeshare/1035310
Roughly, about half the sales price goes to sales commissions. So, selling one or two units a month, isn’t bad work.
Run like hell. Don’t look back.
Week 50 , a 2bed/2bath is $1000 ask http://www.timesharesonly.com/timeshare/1291774
I live in Vegas...there is an easy way out of the come-ons when you are here. When they ask where you’re from just tell them: “We’re from here”. They will drop you like a hot potato.
And yes, nothing is free here — truth be told, everything here is overpriced by A LOT. But you can have a ton of fun here if you just do a little research and study before you come here. We have more of the greatest restaurants in the world than anyplace else...and right now they are offering some pretty good prices for what you get. But the restaurants that comes with “free” offers are always the garbage places. Never go to those...ever. Pay for what you want, you’ll enjoy it all much more and have a more relaxing time.
Syphilis, Gonorrhea, HIV, and a Time-Share.
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Gonorrhea. You can get rid of Gonorrhea.
What you described is picture perfect. These things always work exactly the way you described. We did this in Hawaii, knowing what would happen. Only difference was they had a shill they “signed” during the hard-sell and went through a little ceremony with popping a tiny bottle of champagne, and lots of cheering and smiling and hand-shaking for their new “club” members. This was supposed to make the rest of us want a little bottle of champagne too.
At any rate, we listened for the allotted time and a bit more and then demanded our free prizes, which were quite generous actually, including a free helicopter ride for two around the Nepali coast of Kauai, free tour boat ride for two around the west coast, and a free restaurant meal for two, all of which were great.
However, this sort of activity is highly regulated in Hawaii, and these hard-sell outfits are required by State law to live up to their promises regarding the prizes offered.
And, naturally, there was no way in hell that we were ever going to buy any of their Glengarry Glen Ross type “investments”. I subjected myself to the experience as an educational venture and to undergo some very intense sales pressure as a means of personality testing and hardening myself to peer pressure, and oh yeah, the great free prizes!
If you had to show them a credit card you need to check the bill really good for the next few months. A few years ago my wife and I looked at a Vegas timeshare and my credit card got charged $250 for a “cleaning fee”.
Rent a “float” week for $400 , under 1/3rd of just the maintenance fee... http://www.timesharesonly.com/timeshare/1222115
Timeshares are a joke. $40K*50 weeks = $2m (2 weeks scheduled downtime for repairs yearly is the norm) plus $1.5k*50 ($75k) yearly for maintenance and new cheesy furniture every 5 years... all for a condo that would sell for 5-10% of that price outside of the high pressure sales.
They have the same in Sedona. I said no to begin with but they followed me around the place bugging bugging bugging
Oy vey!! Yes, aint nuthin’ for free!! I’d pay $250 to AVOID one of those hellish mornings! But you made a nice profit, dude! Good for you!
Never again...
I loved how you shut him down by saying that a week at the resort of your choice, a new one each year, would be the same as the MAINTENANCE fees at the timeshare unit!!!! Good one.
I *love* reading stories like this, don’t know why...Thanks for sharing your suffering!
Scott, I love your city - WITH kids. We always find fun things to do. We too like to avoid the usual crowds, but sometimes there are a few fun things on the strip too. I agree with you — some great places to eat, and fun things to see. I don’t gamble either (except on the Triple Crown).
Yes, I was going to write a post on that too. It didn't necessarily offend me as I knew I was in Vegas but it was annoying as hell. Even with my wife by my side, they would try to shove the cards in my hand at every street corner.
Let's just say that if Nevada ever adopted the Arizona law, they would disappear overnight because I don't think any of them were U.S. citizens, if you get my drift.
I'm actually surprised the strip allows this to happen if only for the fact that the streets are literally covered with these cards all day long because most people who take them throw them down to the street.
Hey, I get a postcard about every week offering to buy my timeshare. Except I don’t own one.
Gambling a little bit can be part of the fun...stick with table games or sports bets. I’d stay away from video poker or electronic games and slots. And just have a budget and stick to it. I can see where some people would like to go without kids...but if you do have kids there is a lot to do during the day (Madame Tussauds, The Eifel Tower, Fremont Street, M&M World and so on) and even some of the shows (some Cirque Shows, The Lion King and the one at the Wynn) can be kid friendly (if a tad pricey). Or stay at Red Rock Station and wear the kids out at Red Rock Natural Area during the day and play hard at night!
I’m glad you love it here...come often, we need the business these days!
My wife and daughters suffer the time share hard sell for free tickets on vacations. Me? I go golfing.
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