(posted by Ange)
As mentioned in an earlier post, Dave and I spent a weekend up in Whistler recently on one of those "sit through our timeshare presentation and we'll give you a deal" deals. And what a deal we got! Shell Vacations kindly put us up in the Marriott Residence Inn, a ski in/ski out, located right on Blackcomb, complete with kitchen, balcony, big soaker tub and fireplace. I highly recommend this cozy accomodation to anyone looking for a place to stay up there. Only cost us $159 for 2 nights. I suspect you may have to pay a litte more.
All prepared for the big 90 minute spiel on buying a timeshare, we prepared ourselves with plenty of caffeine and pumped up the interest level. We were actually genuinely interested in what they had to offer - who knew, maybe this was something that would actually fit into our plan of work to travel.
We arrived early, taking no chances of missing this thing and having to pay full price for our room! The place was buzzing... Those sales reps had done their jobs in gettning people up there. I was expecting an auditorium style presentation. Instead, we were seated with a sales rep, Mitch who proceeded to chat with us about our lifestyle. Now pay attention. Should you ever be inclined to participate in such a deal, yet not be so inclined to sit for 90 minutes to listen to a sales pitch about something you have no intention of purchasing, you may want to approach it like this:
"We've just been together for 6 months. We love travelling, but no, we haven't really done much travelling together yet. We do have big plans to though."
"We LOVE road trips. We like to camp. We did some great camping in the summer up in Hope."
"We're thinking of doing this road trip through the states where we drive down through Utah, we want to go to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and then drive up the Pacific Coast Highway".
"Dave has travelled to some beautiful exotic destination quite a bit recently. His trips are all paid for, as he travels on business, filming for a T.V. show. He's been to Mexico and Jamaica most recently."
"We're planning a big road trip through Europe. We're going to buy a car and just drive, no real plan, just go with the flow."
"We like to work as little as possible to travel as much as we can. That is our goal in life. Work to travel."
"We like to be spontaneous, not necessarily planning our travels too far in advance."
"One of the main goals of travel for us is culture. Staying in posh resorts is wonderful, but it's really the culture that drives us."
Throughout this conversation, Mitch kept getting up to "deal with an issue". Finally about 20 minutes into the thing he says "How would you like to make this easy on yourselves?" Okay. "You're not going to buy today are you?" Uh, no Mitch. We've got Dave here, there will be no impulse buying today. "Tell you what, we're really busy, overbooked, let me just give you this brochure, you've got your 2 nights at a great hotel and you can be on your way." So he hands us a pamphlet which basically just shows pictures and tells us we can leave. I'm somewhat perplexed - "where do we find out the rest of the information? Is there a website...?" Lightbulb! We are being asked to leave the presentation. Yes folks, after what amounts to 30 minutes we have been kicked out of the 90 minute timeshare presentation.
But wait! There's more! Okay, well, thank you very much, we'll just grab our Edge cards and be on our way. "Edge cards? We don't give out Edge cards." Well according to our sales rep Shane you do...we'll go get our confirmation letter. A short while later we are given $150 worth of gift cards for use at various stores and restaurants in the Village in lieu of the Edge cards, which they really don't give out.
In summary: We paid $159 to stay 2 nights at a hotel that would have cost $650 for those same 2 nights, were excused from the timeshare sales pitch and given $150 for our troubles. SHELL VACATIONS people. SHELL VACATIONS. When they call, say yes and follow the above instructions.
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