OT - Wyndham Vacation TImeshare - Waste of Time??

[Mo Standards]

Orlando is the Telemarketing and Time Share Vacation Scam capitol of the US.

[Pavel314]

-hour talk and be rewarded as worded below.

d for 4 coach-class round-trip airline tickets to your choice of more than

30 destinations in the U.S., Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean and Europe, good for 2 years from Issue Date (2 airline tickets per vacation, 2 vacations a llowed) and, when you are ready to make your reservation (advance notice is required), you must purchase your hotel stay through the airline-ticketing agency, First Priority Travel, for a minimum number of nights, choosing fr om the hotels offered. Or, if you don't want to fly, you can use the cert ificate for a discount of up to $100 per night at select hotels. Your "Fly Away Getaway" certificate includes a 47-page booklet with pictures and des criptions of the destination and hotel choices. Taxes (hotel tax plus ai rline/airport tax of $28-$98 per domestic airline ticket) and fuel surcharg es, if applicable, are not included. Baggage fees, if applicable, and prem ium seat assignment fees, if applicable, are not included. Incidental expe nses are not included.

. You will have a choice of popular restaurants in your area or various cit ies thought out the US. Log on, search to find your favorite restaurant, pr int certificate and use, it's that simple. Please seewww.diningdough.com fo r details."

entation, but I am wondering if the tickets they propose to make available are worth while or not. It is hard to tell if their choices of destination s are places I might want to go, and I probably would not stay at their cho ices of hotels since I would be going places where I know local residents.

I went to one of these many years ago. I got the free hotel room, ski lift tickets, and a free dinner and breakfast, but it was all in exchange for a very long and boring high-pressure sales pitch. I could tell early on that it wasn't worth what they were charging and they finally let me go. I only regret that I was too polite for too long.

Paul

[Stormin Mormon]

First, that's funny. Second, the God of the Old Testament got rid of Sodom and Gonorrhea. (ha, ha)

[trader_4]

Only problem with that is that the maintenance fee is almost always whatever they want to make it, at any time. If it's a new place they are selling, they set if low, then later it starts to ramp up and nothing you can do.

But I think the real question there was not about whether they are a good idea or not, it was whether it's worth taking the free trip offer to see the place and sit through a high pressure sales pitch. I got suckered into one once, decades ago. It was the first and last time I used a travel agency. They steered me to Puerta Villarta, Mexico. Included was a free lunch, but the trip I paid for and there was no mention of any timeshare pitch. At check-in, they also didn't say anything about a timeshare pitch. Turns out the lunch was a timeshare pitch. It wasn't the worst thing ever, but no way I'd go to lunch if I knew it was a sales pitch. A trip somewhere has to be worse, I'd suspect that they find ways to continue to hound you, that it won't just be a one or two hour thing.

There was an interesting story on shysters on TV last week. It's the the shysters that advertise they will get you out of a timeshare. I hear one on the radio, advertising on right wing radio. IDK if that one is honest or not, but the story was about a bunch of them, mostly based in Missouri, that scam people. They had a couple that had a timeshare at the NJ shore, wanted to get out of it, paid one of those companies $16,000 and they did NOTHING. When I hear those ads, first thing I think is what is that company going to do that I can't do myself? If that couple had negotiated with their timeshare company, I'd bet they could have gotten out of it for $16K by paying them, instead of the shysters.

[gfretwell]

I haven't been dumb enough to buy a time share but I thought the people who offer to get you out were reselling them. I wouldn't give anyone a dime until it was clear they were actually buying my unit or somehow brokering the sale.

BTW in Florida you can refuse to go to the sales pitch if you want and they still have to give you the "gift". Remind them of that if you are here. In the early 70s we passed laws about that regarding all sorts of baited sales tactics, not just time shares. In the 60s it was lots in communities that did not really start growing until the 2000s house bubble. We stayed in a hotel on St Pete Beach in 1971 and they were chasing us the whole time trying to get us to ride all the way to Lehigh (Ft Myers) to look at a building lot. We just skipped the free lunch and didn't spend a lot of time in the room during the day. Once they finally caught up to us, when we were checking out, I reminded them of the new law, they paid our bill and stomped off grumbling. I am not sure how much lots were going for in Lehigh then but throughout the 80s and 90s, they were going over for the 3 year tax bill all the time. (typically a few hundred bucks) if anyone bid at all.