Timeshare Sales Presentations: Making Rational Decisions
Instead of analyzing the details before making such a major purchase, the aggressive sales tactics lead us to make our first timeshare purchase in haste. Instead of making sure we were getting our money’s worth, we decided to go for it. We arrived home that evening having spent several thousand dollars and with a bag full of paperwork.
A quick read through some of the agreements and other documents left us quite confused. We had points and weeks and didn’t quite understand what to do with them. We knew that we could somehow exchange it, but once we began to evaluate the value of our purchase (as discussed in Chapter 4), we became more skeptical.
Fortunately for us, we began to question our purchase early. The state of South Carolina had a rescission law, also commonly known as a “cooling off period.” This law entitled us, as consumers, to five business days to reconsider our decision. We decided that we would continue to research and evaluate our purchase, and if we were still not comfortable with our decision we would rescind.
This began our quest for timeshare knowledge. We phoned exchange companies and searched all over the internet to find the “trading power” of our week. We also questioned the deal we received. We quickly found that it was impossible to find any legitimate, quality information on timeshares that wasn’t part of someone’s advertisements. We searched bookstores, but could not find anything suitable.
We began to get frustrated and felt as if we had been swindled. It seemed like a dead end—we had just committed ourselves to spending thousands of dollars but didn’t understand the purchase. We were scared and felt very alone because we didn’t know anyone that owned timeshare. Even worse, we felt as if we had painted ourselves into a corner. Every friend and family member seemed to think that it was a “scam” or “rip-off” and not a wise purchase.
We felt that if this concept was legitimate there would be more information readily available. Instead, all we could find were other salespersons trying to sell us more timeshare, but no one was offering the opportunity to educate us first. A book such as ours is exactly what we were looking for, but never found.