In the Navy we were hit up with time share presentations every weekend on the Carolina coast, with the promise of a free something or other for attending. I remember one prize turned out to be a chintzy clock radio with a very short cord.
During the last one I attended, participants were divided into groups of about 8, who sat around the free dinner table to listen to a pitch from a salesman. After his presentation on how much we would supposedly save on vacation, he asked all of us, “Doesn’t it sound like a good deal?”
Stupid me mentioned that the salesman forgot about calculating the lost opportunity cost of the money spent on the time share, plus the interest paid.
Immediately thereafter I was called away from the table by one of the hosts. He sat me in a back room, very angry. At a young age, I thought I was in big trouble for something. “You just came here for your free camera! Here it is, now get out of here!” With that, he handed me this chintzy plastic camera with fixed shutter speed and aperture, and escorted me to the door. Thank goodness I had finished my free dinner.
I never attended another time share presentation. My time was just too valuable.
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Couldn’t get me into purchasing a timeshare if you paid for it. But my best friend and her family love theirs, and one brother keeps purchasing more. It’s nice, but so is traveling to new and different places…and I can pick and choose from whatever I want for however long I want.
I couldn’t remember the details so I had to ask A.I. about something I had heard.
“Yes, in the United States, there was and still is a long-standing tradition of protecting active-duty military personnel from exploitative financial practices, particularly with regard to installment contracts and loans.”
So, I woudl think that you could have the free dinenr and then state that you needed to get approval from higher up. I am sure about that time you would be led out because they would not want to get into any long discussion with ‘higher ups’ who know the drill (no pun intended).
This was 40 years ago. Funny thing is, the promoters often employed ex-military higher ups to give their time shares an air of respectability to active service members. For a cut of the loot, of course. Most of the time shares on the Carolina Coast were outdated hotels that were spiced up just enough to sell as time shares.