Another Day
Once again I've been honing my negligence skills and not keeping up to date with this blog. I don't know if you can tell, but I've gotten pretty darn good. Today at work a fellow was talking about timeshares and it reminded me of an experience I had when my lovely wife decided we had lived long enough without one.
We were on vacation in Cancun and, one afternoon, when crossing the street in front of our hotel in search of a restaurant, a young man approached us and asked if we wanted a free meal. Having learned as a youngster that there are no free lunches in life, I immediately replied "No thanks" and kept walking. Unfortunately, my wife grabbed the sleeve of my shirt stopping me and asked why it was free. Of course he explained they were opening a new "luxury hotel" and wanted people to come "visit and give their opinion of it". For being so kind to take the time to do so they would repay us with a free meal in their four star restaurant.
We rode in a Volkswagen taxi down to the hotel. Guess who paid for the taxi. We went inside and took a tour of the hotel before we could go to the restaurant. It was a very luxurious place with each room overlooking the Caribbean. They were one, two, three and four bedroom units. It didn't take but a couple of seconds to realize that this was being pushed as a timeshare, not as a hotel. I wasn't interested in anything other than getting something to eat and going back to our hotel because we were wasting a vacation day. But N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! We had to keep looking! We had to tour every style room they had available which were only two, three and four bedroom. None of the one bedroom units were finished.
After an hour or so of oohing and ahhing we finally got to go to the restaurant and sit down to a meal of baked chicken and vegetables that were cooked about six hours earlier in the day. When we were through eating we were hustled upstairs to a room full of people that were signing folks up for deals. Every time somebody signed a deal, people would come over to the table and clap and holler. It was downright scary. It was like some kind of real estate cult initiation thing. My wife got caught up in it and no matter what I said I couldn't talk her out of it. The next thing I know, she's clapping and yelling. I told her that if she bought a time share, she was going to be the one paying for it, not me. Of course she's planning on all the wonderful future trips to Cancun for us and family members. To tell you how ridiculous it was, she bought the only one we didn't get to see! The one bedroom unit!
The whole deal took about five hours and $20,000. To top it off I had to pay the taxi fare back to our hotel. When we had left the hotel earlier in the day, all I had wanted was a hamburger or pizza or something American. And boy did I get something American! A Royal American Screwing! That night I laid awake in bed thinking how dumb you have to be to let something like that happen to you.
When we got back home my wife had decided that it wasn't such a good idea after all. She spent the next couple of days on the phone calling Mexico telling horrible lies about having polio and such trying to get out of the deal. Luckily they have a law that allows 30 days grace to let you out of stupid contracts. Personally I think it would have served her right to have had to pay the $20 grand. It would have probably kept me from getting dumped out in the street in New Orleans a couple of years later when I confronted the folks at Jean Lafitte house who were trying to sell us a timeshare that she dragged me to...but that's another story.
We were on vacation in Cancun and, one afternoon, when crossing the street in front of our hotel in search of a restaurant, a young man approached us and asked if we wanted a free meal. Having learned as a youngster that there are no free lunches in life, I immediately replied "No thanks" and kept walking. Unfortunately, my wife grabbed the sleeve of my shirt stopping me and asked why it was free. Of course he explained they were opening a new "luxury hotel" and wanted people to come "visit and give their opinion of it". For being so kind to take the time to do so they would repay us with a free meal in their four star restaurant.
We rode in a Volkswagen taxi down to the hotel. Guess who paid for the taxi. We went inside and took a tour of the hotel before we could go to the restaurant. It was a very luxurious place with each room overlooking the Caribbean. They were one, two, three and four bedroom units. It didn't take but a couple of seconds to realize that this was being pushed as a timeshare, not as a hotel. I wasn't interested in anything other than getting something to eat and going back to our hotel because we were wasting a vacation day. But N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! We had to keep looking! We had to tour every style room they had available which were only two, three and four bedroom. None of the one bedroom units were finished.
After an hour or so of oohing and ahhing we finally got to go to the restaurant and sit down to a meal of baked chicken and vegetables that were cooked about six hours earlier in the day. When we were through eating we were hustled upstairs to a room full of people that were signing folks up for deals. Every time somebody signed a deal, people would come over to the table and clap and holler. It was downright scary. It was like some kind of real estate cult initiation thing. My wife got caught up in it and no matter what I said I couldn't talk her out of it. The next thing I know, she's clapping and yelling. I told her that if she bought a time share, she was going to be the one paying for it, not me. Of course she's planning on all the wonderful future trips to Cancun for us and family members. To tell you how ridiculous it was, she bought the only one we didn't get to see! The one bedroom unit!
The whole deal took about five hours and $20,000. To top it off I had to pay the taxi fare back to our hotel. When we had left the hotel earlier in the day, all I had wanted was a hamburger or pizza or something American. And boy did I get something American! A Royal American Screwing! That night I laid awake in bed thinking how dumb you have to be to let something like that happen to you.
When we got back home my wife had decided that it wasn't such a good idea after all. She spent the next couple of days on the phone calling Mexico telling horrible lies about having polio and such trying to get out of the deal. Luckily they have a law that allows 30 days grace to let you out of stupid contracts. Personally I think it would have served her right to have had to pay the $20 grand. It would have probably kept me from getting dumped out in the street in New Orleans a couple of years later when I confronted the folks at Jean Lafitte house who were trying to sell us a timeshare that she dragged me to...but that's another story.
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