Linx Legal

The Timeshare Pitch and Presentation

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Tour Incentives

The first part of timeshare presentations are the tour incentives. The timeshare company often provides incentives for you to take a tour of the property. They offer you “free” things in hopes that you will make a purchase. Did any of the below happen to you? You will receive tour incentives from all of the major players in the industry – WyndhamHilton, Bluegreen, HICV, Sheraton, Marriott, Diamond, and many others.

• The resort gave you a discounted rate on your stay. (The vacation resort is a timeshare, and a sale is the objective).
• You received gifts (that may range from luggage to a toaster to a tablet) in order to get you in the door. The resort gave you gifts in order make you more likely to attend the presentation. The more often that you attend tours, the more likely you are to purchase a timeshare.
• You received prepaid tickets (to a movie, play, or other forms of entertainment available in the general area of the resort).

• You received gambling chips (usually at a timeshare resort that has legalized gambling).
• The resort gave you prepaid activities coupons, usually for use in or near the vacation venue.

The resort gave you these incentives in exchange for a promise to take a timeshare tour. You must attend this tour before the completion of your stay. If you refuse to take the tour, you may find the price of your stay greatly increased. In a worst case scenario,the resort directed you to leave the property. In this case, any and all incentives are withdrawn or voided. Contact us to see if we can help.

 

Frontline

Frontline is the location where you purchase your first timeshare. This is usually just a pressure and emotional purchase. Most of the sale is made from finding out what you want to do, places you want to visit, and showing nicer accommodations than a hotel. The resort pitches you timeshare ownership as a means to satisfy your personal desires.

The Tour

You then sit in a Hospitality Room, (a term designated by the land sales industry in the 60’s) with many tables and chairs to accommodate families. The timeshare company then assigns you a tour guide. This tour guide is usually a licensed real estate agent, but not in all cases. The actual cost of the timeshare can only be quoted by a licensed real estate agent in the United States. The exception is if the purchase is a right to use option.

Since timeshares are sold internationally, these laws vary from venue to venue. After a warm-up period and some coffee or snack, there will be a podium speaker welcoming you to the resort, followed by a film designed to dazzle you with exotic places you could visit as a timeshare owner.

You will then receive an invitation to take a tour of the property. Depending on the resort’s available inventory, the tour will include an accommodation that the tour guide feels will best fit your needs. After the tour you return to the Hospitality Room for the verbal sales presentation. A representative will then give you a brief history of timeshare, and how it relates to the vacation industry today.

The Presentation

During the presentation, a rep hands you the resort exchange book from the exchange company associated with that particular resort property. Then, the tour guide asks you the places you would like to visit if you were a timeshare owner. The rep then designs the rest of the presentation around the responses that you give to that question.

If the guide is licensed, he/she quotes the retail price of the particular unit that best seemed to fit your needs. If the tour guide is not a licensed agent, a licensed agent will now step in to present the price. If you reply with “no”, or “I would like to think about it”, then a rep gives you a new incentive to buy.

More Incentives

This incentive will usually be a discounted price that will only be good today (“good today only” is an untrue statement and has been used as a sales closing device since day one of the timeshare industry’s inception). If again, the reply is “no”, or “I would like to think about it”, the sales agent will ask you to please talk to one of the managers before you leave. It is at this moment that the you realize that the Tour has actually just begun.

More Pressure

The rep then calls a sales manager, assistant manager, or project director to the table. This procedure is called: “T.O.”. This means getting the turn-over man to find a different incentive. This is usually in the form of a smaller less expensive unit, or a trade in unit from another owner. This tactic is commonly used as a sales ploy, because the resort is not interested in reselling already deeded property.

Similar to the automobile sales industry, the manager and salesman know beforehand exactly what the lowest price is that will be offered to you. They know this well before you have arrived for the Tour. If one incentive doesn’t move you to purchase, another will follow shortly.

This continues until you have either purchased, convinced the usually very polite sales crew that no means no, or you have gotten up from the table and exited the building. Once you purchase a timeshare, the non stop pressure does not end. This leads us into the next section, in-house.

In-house

In-house is where you as an owner upgrade you timeshare. The owner stays at a timeshare resort. This can be your own location, or at another location. The timeshare resorts will force you into an upgrade through a member service update. This is the location where you, as an existing owner, get beat up and lied to.

You will feel that the hard sell tactics are often very extreme during an in-house presentation. The resorts start really selling you, and making VIP levels seem better than they are. The top five complaints that we hear come from in-house are Rental, Resale, Buy-Back, Refinance and False Sense of Urgency (The Big 5). Linx Legal helps customers every day to cancel timeshare contracts.

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