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!
Everyone should attend a timeshare sales presentation. You will see every sales gimmick that you will encounter for the rest of your life.
LOL!
Good tip for avoiding the time share trap. Aside from the hard-sell experience, the rest of the trip went very well. As you say, there were excellent restaurants and plenty of things to do besides gamble. We will be going back and next time we’ll just say we are locals!
I’m going in 8 weeks.
Can’t wait!
The Timeshare people and the Mexican dudes with their little hooker cards are most annoying parts of the place.
“I get free rooms at any Harrah’s property any day of the year.”
Same here.
Last year it was 5 night free at the Paris.
This July it is 4 nights free at Harrahs.
I’t the plane tix that suck.
I was just at Paris last week.
I’ll be back there in July.
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?You nailed it, right there.
I learned that “We’re from here” trick one day while walking through the forum Shops.
Have used it ever since.
Works like a charm.
LV has tried to outlaw the meican porn card vendors.
It got shot down dur to some civil rights thing.
From July 5 - 9 i’ll be at the Carnival bar.
I'll be at Paris the last week of July.
Just ignore them.
If you put down a deposit on a unit you get out of there quick, get a free limo ride back to your hotel, plus the freebies.
Of course, you have like 48 hours to cancel the contract for a complete refund of your deposit, which I promptly did.
Major victory over the time share people from hell.
Now that’s a gutsy thing to do. I don’t know if I could have done it, I’d be too concerned that the resort would find a loophole to keep me from canceling the contract.
Lance Burton - some kind of magician, I was told.
Back in the early days of the Vegas timeshare scam industry, no other than Harry Browne, future Libertarian Presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, ran a timeshare high pressure sales office on the strip.
His coworkers back then accredited that gig with pumping up his presentation style that later paid off well in the wealth protection advisement industry.
Whoa I didn’t know that. That wouldn’t had stopped Rudy if he was the Mayor of Las Vegas.
Anyone who's ever been to Vegas would have summarized your post in 3 seconds flat, saying precisely that.
Sorry you learned it the tough way, but then again, you did better than the poor saps waiting for the bus back to the hotel...
Homes in his neighborhood selling for 250 during the height have been seliing for under 20 grand, mostly under 50 these days..
Speaking of San Francisco, the son went down there recently. Ten dollars an hour to park and walk around the wharf area.
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