This story is my experience with Timeshare Sales tactics as I experienced when my family when on vacation to Mexico's beautiful Puerto Vallarta. Simply, I wish to share my story of how I fell into the Time Share presentation trap, should you decide to vacation in Mexico. The opinions expressed herein are just that, my own opinions. Consult professional advice before making any large financial commitments.

So here’s the deal. If you travel fly into Puerto Vallarta’s InternationalAirport, there will be a gauntlet of Time Share salesmen waiting for you much like wolves watching a flock of sheep, and as it works out, they almost pulled the wool over my eyes!

Heed the Warning! If you are flying on a vacation charter jet, you will most likely hear over the intercom a warning to not stop for any Time Share salesmen, and to walk directly to the front of the airport to meet up with your assigned tour bus. Easy enough, right? I supposed that these Time Share salesmen would be just some men with brief cases milling about in the lobby of the airport. Wow, I was wrong on that one!

So anyhow! While in flight, you will be given a Tourist Card, one for each member of your group or family, which you must fill out and remit with your passport at the Customs Agent after you disembark from the airplane. The Customs Agent checks both the tourist card and your passport, stamps something, rips the tourist card in half, and returns to you the “exit” half of the tourist card and your passport. Don’t lose this important document, you will need it for your flight back home. Also, on the airplane you are given a Customs Declaration, one per group or family, which you must fill and remit to the Customs Agent.

So what happened to me? Well, turns out my Customs Agent did not want the Customs Declaration. So silly me, I’m thinking “I must give this official document to someone!” So as I’m following my group of travelers from the same jet, we walk into this big room with a bold “CUSTOMS” emblazoned by the doorway. So here I am thinking “Oh Yay! This is where I can hand in this really important document that I so lovingly filled out en route!” This Customs room has two long counters with a bunch of official looking gentlemen behind each one. These men have the long sleeve white shirts and official looking airport identification badges. In the middle of the room is another official looking man with white shirt, black trousers, fancy ID badge, and a big walkie-talkie (almost as huge as the brick cell phone my employer has issued to me, more like a “cell-block” phone. But I digress.) So Mr. Walkie-talkie is directing the sheep, um, travelers to the wolves, sorry, agents behind the official long counters.

Cha! Ching! So I go to hand in my Customs Declaration, but I’m told that it is fine; I can keep the Customs Declaration, but “Hey Senor! While you are here in beautiful Vallarta, do you want to go on some excursions? I have a great deal for you!”

“Why yes! I would love a great deal.” So this “official” tells me that I can get two free excursions for my family (aka “gifts”), and a discount on swimming with the dolphins. All I have to do is attend a “short” presentation. But I’m too savvy for this, so I ask “Is this a Time Share?” The answer is “No Senor, it is not a Time Share, just a presentation”. He wouldn’t lie to ME! Would he? After all he’s an “official”. But I’m too smart to have anyone tangle with me, so I ask again just to me sure, and I get the same answer.

“Yeah, he’s still stupid!” I can hear my wife thinking while she rolls her eyes and tells me “Are you sure you want to do this?” But by this time, I’ve already forked over my 225 US dollars to the “official” in return for a slip of paper for the presentation.

Here’s where it get interesting. Mr. Official tells me to not worry about my tour bus, and that they will supply my family with a taxi ride to my hotel (because they don’t want your tour operator to save you!). But before my family is handed over to an assistant who will take me to a taxi, I am given this ominous warning “Tomorrow morning, when you are waiting to be picked up for your presentation, do NOT talk to ANYONE from your hotel Senor”.

“Aw geez!” I finally caught a brain and realized I should have held on to my money. So the following morning, as my family is heading to the front of our hotel for the presentation taxi pick up, a nice lady a the customer service desk spots me and asks “Senor, I did not see you arrive last night on your tour bus. Where are you going?” So I sheepishly hand over my “presentation” slip for her inspection.

“Senor, you do not want to do this!” she informs me. “I used to work at the Something-Palace, the presentation will be at least four hours long, and they often do you give you your “gifts” (the free excursions).” A this point I’m wringing my hands and say “But they already have my money.”

“No problem!” She tells me that if I attend this other, shorter presentation at the Something-Palmar instead, I would still get my gifts and have my dolphin discount moved over.

What a slick operation. One phone call and 30 seconds later, they had me in a taxi for the Something-Palmar as the taxi for the Something-Palace is pulling up. Once we arrive at the “Palmar”, they have a whole system for “processing” potential time share purchasers. Much like beef is processed at the abattoir, but with pretty surroundings.

The pre-interview. First they sit you down in a nice terrace café and give you juice, tea, coffee while you wait for your pre-interview. At the pre-interview, they want to feel you out for your “financial” situation. Note that several times during the morning they make you sign these pieces of paper that say that “yes”, you will sit through a 90 minute presentation before you get your gifts. This is important; they make you sign these silly things repeatedly so that you will dumbly sign the REAL contract when they drop it in front of you.

Meet the salesman! Next thing to do is meet the salesman, with whom you will enjoy a breakfast date with for about half an hour. After breakfast he will take you for a walking tour of the resort’s amenities and totally sumptuous suites. While I’m following the salesman, a lady guest at this hotel sees me and almost tackles me to whisper a warning “Check things out on the internet before you sign anything.”

The Killing Floor. The most perilous part of my family’s adventure is about to start. After the walking tour, we are taken to a fancy sales office. This office is equipped with video games to keep the kiddies out of your hair while they work you over. First, they take you over to a wall where several video presentation kiosks are set up. After seeing the video, you area seated at one of several small desks. They can process about a half dozen potential clients/couples/families at the same time. This is where your 90 minutes start, and you are asked to sign more silly papers.

Applause and Champagne. Twice during the presentation the room broke out in applause (by all the salespeople) while the sales manager brings out champagne (at ten in the morning, please!) because two hapless couples signed the “contract”. I don’t know what happened to them, because they were whisked away in no time.

The Contract. During the whole time the salesman is using this pretty colored worksheet with pastel designs to explain how the program works. “Any questions?” he asks, but I have none because I don’t really want to spend 30 thousand dollars for the privilege of paying more money for two weeks a year at their resort. So then he slips another pretty sheet of paper with the same pastel designs and simply states “Sign here.” I peruse this simply worded document (doesn’t really look like a contract), and state to my salesman “This is a contract, isn’t it?” (I’m not stupid anymore, or maybe I’m just cheap.) “Yes Senor, it is!”

But I want my gifts! My apparent lack of commitment is making this a long ordeal for my poor salesman. I don’t want to offend him, because I don’t want to be denied my gifts. So the whole time I tell him that I love this, but I need the week to think about it before I sign anything real. Even the silly pieces of paper I’ve been signing before declare this privilege of being able to wait a week. But oh no! I will miss out on the 3 thousand dollar discount if I don’t sign TODAY! They even have a piece of paper for you to sign that you acknowledge that you are missing out on the discount is you don’t sign TODAY!

The power of saying NO! Keep this in mind! Even if you really want something, just say NO! The first offer was about 30 thousand dollars for two weeks a year. The second offer was 20 thousand dollars for four weeks a year. The final offer was for about 7 thousand dollars for eight weeks a year. I’ll get back to this later.

Exit processing. Once it was determined that I was really a nice guy who just needed time to thing about this lovely offer, they decided to give me my gifts and send me off. So now we were taken to another office, where this pleasant gentleman (let me call him Jose, just for fun) will book the excursions for my family and the Dolphin swim. So we decide which day of the week we want to do each activity and my friend Jose will set us up.

I thought we were done already! So Jose enthusiastically tells us about the excellent excursions we will be going on (these were honestly good trips). After Jose hands me my excursion vouchers, he offers me a “better deal” and says “Senor, you paid 225 dollars for your dolphins, if you attend tomorrow’s presentation at the Something-Palace, we will refund your 225 dollars.”

Another presentation?!?!? I’m only out here for one week and I’ve already lost an entire morning! So we tell Jose “Thank you so kindly, but we are very, very happy with our gifts, and that you can keep our money.” Jose is NOT smiling anymore, and tells me “Senor, you were supposed to go to the “Palace”, I will book a taxi to pick you up at your hotel tomorrow, we will reimburse you 225 dollars so you can have your Dolphins for free, AND WE WILL GIVE YOU ANOTHER 300 DOLLARS ABOVE THAT!” Okay, so we’ve got a “Palace” guy working at the “Palmar”, they’re all in this together, along with the airport authority, at least it seems like.

No, I’m not jumping into the crucible again! If I thought they worked me over pretty good for my gifts here, I can be pretty sure the next presentation they would only give me my 225 plus 300 dollars if I sign a contract. We left an angry Jose behind. I don’t think I will be getting a Feliz Navidad card from Jose. Sorry Jose, I guess that I am both stupid and cheap.

In conclusion. I walked away with about 600 dollars of gifts. The one excursion was worth 40 dollars for each of the five members of my family, the other excursion was worth about 60 dollars a head. Plus my dolphin swim discount. Not bad for a morning’s worth of work.

But was it really worth it? I get a vacation like this much less than once a year, so each day is precious. Plus the vacation cost my family about 1200 dollars per day. So actually, my family’s time was worth at least 600 dollars for half a day. Basically, I broke even. Next time I will avoid any presentation and offer of free gifts, and simply arrange for the excursions from the lobby of my own resort and just pay the full fare. Apparently there are couples who willingly give up an entire half day of vacation for a single excursion, or about 100 dollars worth of benefit, that’s CRAZY!!!

Time Shares are not all equal. The presentation I attended was for a Time Share plan where you commit to X amount of weeks per year, each year, until you die. Other Time Shares work on the premise that you purchase “points”, which you redeem for accommodations as needed. I know a couple of families who have such an arrangement are happy. One family redeems points for vacation time once every couple of years. The other family uses their points a couple of times a year. Best thing to do it before you sign a contract for a given plan is to browse the internet to see what other people say about it. I know another family that own a Time Share in Florida. However, each they go there, they have to attend an “Upgrade Presentation”, or be assessed a fee for non-attendance!

Back to my Time Share offer. The first offer was $30,000 as a one-time fee, which would have meant that I would commit to two “green” weeks a year. A “green” week is a week that I can take anytime of the year, without restrictions. Now, each week would have cost me anywhere between 200 and 900 dollars per week, depending on the size of the suite that I chose for my plan. However, even after paying the one-time fee, paying the fee for each week, you still can’t actually use the facilities until you pay the “maintenance” fee. What if I can’t use the two weeks? You are still committed to pay for those weeks, even if the suite is empty. “Oh no problem.” I was told that the resort would sell my unwanted weeks for me, minus a profit, but that they usually can sell the week for a high enough price that I would not have to pay extra. THINK ABOUT THIS, in the summer of 2008, when the price of fuel skyrocketed, vacation resorts were turning into ghost towns and charter vacation operators where cancelling tours. So if the resort already has a commitment from you to pay, I tend to think they would be motivated to sell weeks that don’t yet have a Time Share contract.

How about the “cheap” Time Share? Well, that one was only 7 thousand dollars. And it came with eight weeks, four times more than the first offer! Also, these weeks were not all top quality weeks either, it was a combination of “green” unrestricted weeks, “yellow” weeks, and “red” weeks restricted to only some portion of the year. What do you think your chances are of either wanting to use, or sell off the weeks in the rainy season?

So what if I want out? The odds of you selling your Time Share to someone else are slim, you are competing with a professional sales team. Usually, the only thing you can do is pay off your initial fee entirely, then get the “weeks of commitment” legally transferred to some else, again for a fee.

But this will save me MONEY! The idea presented is that once you pay off your initial 30 thousand dollars, you will get a good price on your weeks for the rest of your life. Such a program expects that you will be using the Time Share for the next thirty years of your life. However, you most likely will have to finance the 30 thousand dollars, so you can expect to do financing payments of about 500 dollars a month for the next 5 years. Then add on the price of your weeks, add on the maintenance fees. Oh! And don’t forget the price of your airline tickets. Now you may have to pay full fare on your airline tickets as now you will not benefit from the good discount from a “package” vacation tour operator.

Food for thought. Should you really want to spend 30 thousand dollars, as a benefit for the next 30 years (as stated by the Time Share salesman), go see a financial planner. The planner should be able to get you something where the investment doubles every 7 years. So after 7 years 30 thousand is 60 thousand, after 14 years your 60 is now 120 thousand. After 21 years you are now at 240 thousand, then at year 28 you have almost half a million. I’m not an expert, so go see one and find out what your options really are.

Cheers!

Michel

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