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JLB · 06-07-2012, 10:32 PM

Unusual Situation

I have an unusual situation whereas I am very close to TS industry folks, both salespeople and top management/company owners and then a large number of close acquaintances who think they are the scum of the earth. Day-to-day and sometimes all in the same day.

I have to be careful which hat I'm wearing.

When you live in a timeshare/tourist area, there is a segment that accepts the vacation club/timeshare/nightly rental condo industry as upstanding and legitimate and another segment that absolutely abhores them.

JLB · 07-23-2012, 12:40 AM

Oops. Today was the day.

We had a lull and I was talking to a coworker who knows absolutely nothing about timesharing. Just at that point when I was explaining that there is absolutely no resale market, and no way to get out of paying annual fees . . . no exit strategy . . . one of those industry people happened by behind me, and overheard me.

Oops.

You have to understand that they don't talk about stuff like that. They only see owners on their way in and could give a rip about what's gonna happen 20 year, or 20 days, from now.

Of course, I was then committed to engage in one of those no-one's-gonna-win timeshare conversations.

Turns out he has worked for or is tied to many of the prominent TS developer-types, including the one we have most talked about the last 15 years, whom he agreed with me about. &, including the people I now work for and see almost every day. Oops.

His answer to does the industry provide help to owners when they are done with their timeshares. No.

His advice on how to sell your timeshare . . . go to the resort where you own and sell it to someone who already owns there, or one of their friends or acquaintances.

His answer to do most resorts help their owners do that. or does anyone. No.

He told my co-worker after I left that I am very knowledgeable.

duh

JLB · 07-23-2012, 12:51 PM

Oh yeah, I invited him here, so he could set all of us straight.

rapmarks · 07-23-2012, 01:27 PM

i sold my timeshare in exactly the manner he suggested. I went to the timeshare, got up at the meet and greet and sold both my weeks. i was planning on giving them away, but I actually got some money for them. i sold them the first day we were there, and closed by Wednesday.

JLB · 07-23-2012, 01:48 PM

Originally posted by rapmarks View Post

i sold my timeshare in exactly the manner he suggested. I went to the timeshare, got up at the meet and greet and sold both my weeks. i was planning on giving them away, but I actually got some money for them. i sold them the first day we were there, and closed by Wednesday.

I don't disagree that that is one of the few remaining places to unload an unwanted timeshare. So did my buddy from OY, but how convenient is it for everyone who wants to get out of a timeshare to physically go to that resort and talk it up around the pool?

That is the method successfully employed by the SW FL resorts who actually assist their owners on their way out, which you know I know.

How lucky do you feel? (and since you immediately emailed me when you dumped those unwanted weeks, I already know the answer)

That tactic follows along the lines of other advice he gave me . . . find people who do not (yet) know what you know.

So, since so many are going in the same direction, getting rid of unwanted weeks to people who already own there, might there be something that can be formalized? Like, since the most likely prospects are the owners of adjacent weeks at the same resort, how cooperative are the resorts in assisting us in identifying and contacting them?

rapmarks · 07-23-2012, 05:02 PM

the difference is the person who bought my weeks lives two hours away, when they book at the resort (and they have never traded) they get ten hours on the big boats free, it pays the maintenance fee and makes an enjoyable week.

JLB · 07-23-2012, 07:00 PM

Originally posted by rapmarks View Post

the difference is the person who bought my weeks lives two hours away, when they book at the resort (and they have never traded) they get ten hours on the big boats free, it pays the maintenance fee and makes an enjoyable week.

Sounds just like a certain SW FL resort. . .

. . . One where Snowbird Weeks quickly go to other owners, or friends of other owners. Of course, that resort assists their owners on the way out by publicizing weeks that are available, and having a local real estate agent come on site a day a week to conduct transactions.

JLB · 07-23-2012, 07:06 PM

I mentioned to the salesperson that when RCI did their last dehancement, we no longer could get our last 26 exchanges with the deposits used to get them, and we had to use at least two.

When I said you could get many Branson weeks because they have so little value to RCI, he agreed.

I also mentioned that I had searched SW FL for January since 1997, and documented the decline in availability, that it started in 2004, for January 2006, and that it has gone from a selection of 15-20 resorts to none. I'm not gonna acknowledge RCI recently adding Lehigh to FL/Southern Gulf Coast.

He was very interested in all of those RCI facts.

He sells at an II resort.

JLB · 07-23-2012, 08:56 PM

Since I was in direct sales for ten years, and he appears to be about the age when I got out, and since he said the industry has been very good to him (he has previously mentioned to others about earning $40,000/month), I wanted to suggest that he cash out, and devote the rest of his life to something meaningful.

I didn't, and he was off in his Beemer before I could reconsider. It was his sports car Beemer, not his SUV beemer.

JLB · 07-27-2012, 05:35 PM

The plot sickens.

I am working/golfing in a failed-because-of-the-times exclusive gated golf community. Lotsa unhappy property owners.

It would not be prudent for me to say what, where.

But, a new road is being cut into the woods . . . gonna be timeshares I was told . . . in a fialed gated community . . . cuz that's what the developer did to make their $$$ to begin with.

tonyg · 07-27-2012, 06:57 PM

Just what Branson needs- another timeshare.

JLB · 07-28-2012, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by tonyg View Post

Just what Branson needs- another timeshare.

Yeah, sure, try to tell the TS people that! I don't think they know any other way to make a buck.

JLB · 08-17-2012, 08:48 PM

I never thought I would ever hear what I heard today.

Earlier this year I met a mature TS sales guy at the golf course. By that I mean a guy who has sold for 25 years, with pretigious companies and at places we are all familiar with. He and his wife moved here and he started selling here this Spring.

Then, another time we talked, he had moved up to #2, doing that well that quickly being unheard of here, especially when competing with all the arrogant 25 and 30 year olds.

Today he showed up at the golf course and we exchanged pleasantries and I asked how things were going.

"I quit. I made $73000 in the last two months, and I quit this week."

"No way. What's up?"

"This is the scammiest, sleaziest operation I have ever seen. I can't believe the AG has not shut it down."

Still him, "We have been targeting current owners staying at the resort, ones with huge maintenance fees that want to get rid of them. (I took that to mean guests at the resort who own elsewhere.) We get them interested in what we are offering, and then we get our 'resale broker' on the phone. We have a conversation like . . . So, you paid $70,000 for it. Joe says the developer's selling them for $110,000 now, and he can get $90,000 for yours. So, you're making money and starting over with a much better product. Are you in?"

He said the closing rate has been phenomenal.

Then, one day this week he asked his buddy about the resale broker, where he sells them, and stuff like that, and his buddy laughed at him, saying, "He's never sold any of them."

"So, the people we sell to find out later they still have what we told them we got sold, plus they have what we sold them?"

"Yup."

"What do we do when they find out?"

"The ones that lawyer up and send us a nasty letter, and pursue it a bit, get their money back, and the commission gets charged back. But we still wind up ahead from the ones that don't do that, cuz most of them don't. They just figure they got screwed again."

He said he couldn't sleep that night, the first time in 25 years of selling that he felt that bad about what he was doing. He said the next day at the sales meeting, after all the rah rah stuff at the end, he stood up and said he quit, blew a kiss to his manager (a woman) and left. He said she called, he told her what he found out, that he was going to call every deal he had written and tell them what's going on, and that they could keep the commissions they owed him.

He said he could work somewhere else in town, but "every shop has their own little scam."

Wow!

Then his golf buddy showed up, a young arrogant salesperson at the same place, and what they are doing doesn't bother him in the least.

JLB · 08-19-2012, 10:44 AM

Wow!

No comments to this?

Hmmmmm!?

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