I'm not sure what I got myself into at Eddie's LA show (night 2)...

walkunafraid

As my girlfriend and I were walking down the lobby to get to our seats, we were stopped by a guy next to a stand that had been set up along the wall.

Being generally nice people, we stopped to hear what he had to say instead of breezing past him and ignoring him (as most people did).

Turns out he had a "tremendous opportunity" to offer us. In exchange for taking a tour of "the Welk Resort" (in Escondido, near San Diego), he was going to give us a free vacation package to Las Vegas, Catalina Island, or San Francisco, along with a voucher for $200 to buy tickets to any LiveNation show.

Sounded unbelievable, but after he gave us the rundown of how it all worked, we decided to sign up.

Now we have a tour set up for May 17. We know what the purpose on their part is -- they think that by giving us a 90-minute tour we're going to be unable to resist buying into a timeshare -- but we really have no desire to own a timeshare in a place we never visit, and never would even if we owned one. Plus, we don't have the money.

So it's going to be 90 minutes of ear torture listening to someone(s) use all kinds of persuasive techniques to try to get us to buy something we really don't want.

Of course, we could just not show up...but then we'd lose the vacation, voucher, and $30 deposit we had to put down.

Anybody else sign up for this at the show? Or, has anyone else ever done one of these "tours"? Are they as bad as I think this one will be?

Aargh...

walkthamile

walkunafraid wrote:

As my girlfriend and I were walking down the lobby to get to our seats, we were stopped by a guy next to a stand that had been set up along the wall.

Being generally nice people, we stopped to hear what he had to say instead of breezing past him and ignoring him (as most people did).

Turns out he had a "tremendous opportunity" to offer us. In exchange for taking a tour of "the Welk Resort" (in Escondido, near San Diego), he was going to give us a free vacation package to Las Vegas, Catalina Island, or San Francisco, along with a voucher for $200 to buy tickets to any LiveNation show.

Sounded unbelievable, but after he gave us the rundown of how it all worked, we decided to sign up.

Now we have a tour set up for May 17. We know what the purpose on their part is -- they think that by giving us a 90-minute tour we're going to be unable to resist buying into a timeshare -- but we really have no desire to own a timeshare in a place we never visit, and never would even if we owned one. Plus, we don't have the money.

So it's going to be 90 minutes of ear torture listening to someone(s) use all kinds of persuasive techniques to try to get us to buy something we really don't want.

Of course, we could just not show up...but then we'd lose the vacation, voucher, and $30 deposit we had to put down.

Anybody else sign up for this at the show? Or, has anyone else ever done one of these "tours"? Are they as bad as I think this one will be?

Aargh...

Seriously, you should have kept walking!

go pre

walkunafraid wrote:

As my girlfriend and I were walking down the lobby to get to our seats, we were stopped by a guy next to a stand that had been set up along the wall.

Being generally nice people, we stopped to hear what he had to say instead of breezing past him and ignoring him (as most people did).

Turns out he had a "tremendous opportunity" to offer us. In exchange for taking a tour of "the Welk Resort" (in Escondido, near San Diego), he was going to give us a free vacation package to Las Vegas, Catalina Island, or San Francisco, along with a voucher for $200 to buy tickets to any LiveNation show.

Sounded unbelievable, but after he gave us the rundown of how it all worked, we decided to sign up.

Now we have a tour set up for May 17. We know what the purpose on their part is -- they think that by giving us a 90-minute tour we're going to be unable to resist buying into a timeshare -- but we really have no desire to own a timeshare in a place we never visit, and never would even if we owned one. Plus, we don't have the money.

So it's going to be 90 minutes of ear torture listening to someone(s) use all kinds of persuasive techniques to try to get us to buy something we really don't want.

Of course, we could just not show up...but then we'd lose the vacation, voucher, and $30 deposit we had to put down.

Anybody else sign up for this at the show? Or, has anyone else ever done one of these "tours"? Are they as bad as I think this one will be?

Aargh...

why did you pay a $30 deposit to listen to someone try to sell you something you don't want in a place you don't want to visit?

niner

i find your screen name a little ironic in this situation


we did something like this in St. martin to get a free car rental. we just keep saying we would think about it. i just saw something on tv about scams like this. they will serve you food, compliment you, send in a "manager". we told them we would have to our "accountant" before making any business decisions. there was nothing they could do, so stick to you guns and say no and don't sign anything! good luck!

walkunafraid

go pre wrote:

why did you pay a $30 deposit to listen to someone try to sell you something you don't want in a place you don't want to visit?

yeah, it sounds pretty stupid. but the free vacation and $200 voucher for something we'd use in a heartbeat was hard to turn down.

walkunafraid

niner wrote:

i find your screen name a little ironic in this situation


we did something like this in St. martin to get a free car rental. we just keep saying we would think about it. i just saw something on tv about scams like this. they will serve you food, compliment you, send in a "manager". we told them we would have to our "accountant" before making any business decisions. there was nothing they could do, so stick to you guns and say no and don't sign anything! good luck!

thanks for the advice! that's pretty much what we talked about doing -- sticking to our guns and saying "no" no matter what.

i mean, they still have to give the free goodies no matter what, and i'm pretty good at dealing with people who want to get something out of me, so i'm hoping it won't be TOO painful.

go pre

walkunafraid wrote:

yeah, it sounds pretty stupid. but the free vacation and $200 voucher for something we'd use in a heartbeat was hard to turn down.

are you sure you're getting a free vacation and a voucher, or did that guy just get your $30??

walkunafraid

go pre wrote:

are you sure you're getting a free vacation and a voucher, or did that guy just get your $30??

yeah, that part is a given.

it's a known practice that timeshares do this type of thing all the time. hell, there are people who live off of going to timeshare presentations and getting the free gifts that go along with them.

the freebies are for certain with these type of things...you just have to sit through the presentation.

and if you meant the guy might have been a fraud, he wasn't. all of the brochures etc. were valid, and the reminder e-mails from the resort (and website with our reservation time on it) make it abundantly clear that it's for real.

wilfmiss

If they pick you up in a limo at the airport, and you see a shovel and a bag of lime in the trunk when they stow your luggage, I would split.

Oh, and if they take you in a cave that looks like anything from the Temple of Doom, I would run, too.

SDHSClassof82

go pre wrote:

are you sure you're getting a free vacation and a voucher, or did that guy just get your $30??

I've gotten two free weekends at a nice casino at Lake Tahoe for listening to a 90 minute spiel. I only had to say no firmly once and I was outta there. Totally worth it.

Allie

walkunafraid wrote:

Sounded unbelievable, and $30 deposit we had to put down.

quote]
If it sounds too good to be true it usually is
sounds to me like you already got scammed out of $30, why did you 'have' to put that down
and was it $30 per person? (you and your gf)?

ONCE DEVIDED

A good buddy of mne Did this type of event and his story cracked me up.
he told them in no uncertain terms that he wasnt interested in investing from word go but took up the offer of a free weekend including meals and a bottle of wine. he went to the presentation for 2 hours and was leaving when he was bailed up by the people who were running it and they asked him if he felt bad for taking all that they offered and not signing on- he just said listen I told you from word go that I wasnt interested but YOU JUST HAD TO GET ME TO COME TO THIS AND THE GREAT OFFER WILL BE TO HARD TO RESIST well im resisiting and wheres MY FUCKING BOTTLE OF WINE.
go for it I say.
JUST DONT SIGN ANYTHING

meme

Strange the booth was there, guess Ed had no control on this kind of advertisement. But the story made me think of that part of Benaroya when he tells about the guy "serving him papers". So now Lukin is playing in my head

bettermanofthehour

a buddy of mine at work just got back from vacation in florida. they sat in on one of these things down there to get some free tickets to disney and a hotel package i believe.

he said that at the beginning they were real nice. by the end of the 90 minutes they were down right mean to the people who weren't signing up. they didn't sign up for anything and got their free stuff. but he did say that there were several people that ended up signing up just to get the people off their backs.

nukeboot

If you 've ever been able to leave a car dealership without buying a car you should be fine.

One tip I heard from friend - dress badly for the presentation and maybe don't shave for a few days. They'll move on pretty quickly to the well groomed yuppies.

JaneNY

There were a lot of handy tips in this thread! Walkunafraid you'll have to let us know how it goes.

walkunafraid

SDHSClassof82 wrote:

I've gotten two free weekends at a nice casino at Lake Tahoe for listening to a 90 minute spiel. I only had to say no firmly once and I was outta there. Totally worth it.

Good to know I'm not the only one who has done this. Thanks for the advice!

walkunafraid

Allie wrote:

walkunafraid wrote:

Sounded unbelievable, and $30 deposit we had to put down.

quote]
If it sounds too good to be true it usually is
sounds to me like you already got scammed out of $30, why did you 'have' to put that down
and was it $30 per person? (you and your gf)?

No, $30 combined. It's so that the resort can be sure the persons actually show up. They have a very detailed schedule of times for these tours, so having people not show up would totally screw that up. (And, of course, there would be a TON of people who didn't show up if they didn't have to put any money down...)

walkunafraid

nukeboot wrote:

If you 've ever been able to leave a car dealership without buying a car you should be fine.

One tip I heard from friend - dress badly for the presentation and maybe don't shave for a few days. They'll move on pretty quickly to the well groomed yuppies.

Nice!

Best tip so far!

westsidepie

go pre wrote:

why did you pay a $30 deposit to listen to someone try to sell you something you don't want in a place you don't want to visit?

And how do you know this company actually exists. Maybe the guy had no affiliation with the resort, and he was just trying to scam people out of 30 bucks. Call the company quickly. And, yea, there is an element of S&M to this. Why would you pay someone $30 for someone to verbally torture you?

nowayimfaithfull

walkunafraid wrote:

thanks for the advice! that's pretty much what we talked about doing -- sticking to our guns and saying "no" no matter what.

i mean, they still have to give the free goodies no matter what, and i'm pretty good at dealing with people who want to get something out of me, so i'm hoping it won't be TOO painful.

The problem is, the stuff they sell really isnt all that bad when your amped and maybee drinking. I have seen times when they may of had an open bar. You may go to the sales meeting and they are offering a great deal over 10 years time and be like great we could use a time share condo for 200 a month. Than come home and staighten your thoughts and be like crap what I just get myself into.
So its really no differant a process, you recieved 1 small getaway for 30 bucks, next time it will be 20 getaways for 12.000 bucks.
Just be crefull, its not that they are all crooks they just put you in a position to make crazy decisions.