Deal or no Deal?

We have done so many timeshare presentations over the years that we pretty much knew what to expect.  Our meeting on Tuesday started in the usual way with us being introduced to Paddy and his apprentice Darren.  After handshakes all round we started in the bar with coffee and the usual get to know you questions.    Normally at this point I am very tight lipped and try not to give anything away but yesterday I decided to play ball.  After 35 minutes of small talk, Paddy walked us to the presentation suite.  This was pretty boring and mainly involved talking us through wall mounted pictures of infiniti hotels.  After that it was up to the main office for the hard sell.

Actually we have sat through some really hard sells and yesterday was pretty tame.   Paddy did his best but his selling skills weren’t the best.  He looked like he had a heavy night the night before and some part of me felt sorry for him.  I certainly knew that Phil & I would not be signing up for the timeshare option mainly because of the maintenance charges but I was interested in the 2 year free trial package.  I don’t know whether it was the fact that I was bored because we’d been there for 2 hours by this point or whether because the sun was shining and I needed a cold beer but I found myself saying yes.  And yes that was me and not Phil! 

Well it did seem a good package; £1500 for 60,000 points for 2013 and 60,000 for 2014.  They were also throwing in £250 on a membership card and a free weeks’ holiday which could be taken in 2012.  They took our details and we signed up and went for lunch.  After lunch we had to go back to the office and collect our contracts which we spent all of yesterday afternoon going over. Okay that maybe a slight exaggeration but we did spend a couple of hours. We weren’t too fussed because we knew that we had a 14 day cooling off period where we can change our minds.  Unfortunately, after reading through the contract again this morning in bed, I think we are going to cancel.  There are a couple of clauses in the contract that we didn’t like; namely they involve extra membership fees and reservation fees.  We’d been through the points booklet and when you factor in the extra fees the sums don’t add up. It’s not because it’s a bad deal, it’s not and for normal people it could work.  But let’s face it, Phil are I are not normal.  We are free spirits, nomads that like to fly off at the drop of a hat plus we like bargain deals.  Timeshare points and prizes are not for us and is probably why we’ve resisted it when we’ve been offered it before.  Tonight we are meeting up with Eva & Dave who we met in Los Christianos a year or so ago.  They brought into timeshare a few years ago and it’s one of their biggest regrets.  Just goes to show, you gotta read the small print.