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Can you be blacklisted from timeshare tours?

T

TimeshareFrenzy

TUG Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2012
Messages
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Location
Columbia, MD
Often times when on vacation if we have some extra time we'll go on these timeshare tours for the free gifts and to check out what the resorts have to offer.

We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.


However, I'm curious...will there come a time when the timeshare companies realize that we're just doing it for the free gifts and it's not worth their while to try and sell to us?

If this is the case, how many timeshare presentations will be able to attend before they make such a decision?


Thanks in advance!
 
TimeshareFrenzy said:
Often times when on vacation if we have some extra time we'll go on these timeshare tours for the free gifts and to check out what the resorts have to offer.

We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.


However, I'm curious...will there come a time when the timeshare companies realize that we're just doing it for the free gifts and it's not worth their while to try and sell to us?

If this is the case, how many timeshare presentations will be able to attend before they make such a decision?


Thanks in advance!
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Im pretty sure Im on Wyndhams list
 
One can only hope ....:rofl:

The best respone is just not to go
 
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TimeshareFrenzy said:
With all due respect, I don't see how that adds to this discussion. I already stated that I don't mind going to the presentations in exchange for free stuff when we have free time for it.
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Because I believe if people would stop {selling their time} for approximately $ 100 in "gifts" the developer sales model would eventually collapse. The salesmen are pros, and find a way to separate enough people from there money to stay employed and keep the corrupt business going.

My Intent was to continue my opinion that we should be encouraging PEOPLE NOT TO GO, not to encourage people to go.

There is a firm that is doing the developer song and dance with gifts in Vegas, turns out since they are selling resales recision rules don't apply.
 
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I'd speculate that individual resorts (or systems as stated above) might keep track and limit you to perhaps 1 presentation a month. I can't see any mechanism that would let the whole TS sales industry know that you are just there for the goodies unless you tell them.

It's YOUR vacation time and how you choose to use it is your business, but it's not my idea of fun. However paying money to chase a small white ball around landscaped grounds doesn't strike me as particularly enjoyable either.

Best

Jim
 
When the economy was really tough, I heard from someone at one of those kiosks in Orlando that locals were doing the TS freebie circuit for the gift cards.
I guess that, along with unemployment, was profitable enough to spend the week in Orlando. Kinda payback to the developers for all the wasting of time they do begging people to do the tours.

I used to do the "tours" years ago, but find that my vacations are less stressful if I skip their "freebies" and go about my vacation business.

If you can stand the pressure and can get out in less than 2 hours, then $50 an hour tax free might not be a bad return on your investment. ;)

Good luck in your plans. :)
 
chriskre said:
When the economy was really tough,{????} I heard from someone at one of those kiosks in Orlando that locals were doing the TS freebie circuit for the gift cards.



I used to do the "tours" years ago, but find that my vacations are less stressful if I skip their "freebies" and go about my vacation business.

If you can stand the pressure and can get out in less than 2 hours, then $50 an hour tax free might not be a bad return on your investment. ;)

Good luck in your plans. :)
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Whose time are you valuing as worthless, your's or your spouse, you need to divide by 2 again since you both must go. It's $25/hour
 
TimeshareFrenzy said:
Often times when on vacation if we have some extra time we'll go on these timeshare tours for the free gifts and to check out what the resorts have to offer.

We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.


However, I'm curious...will there come a time when the timeshare companies realize that we're just doing it for the free gifts and it's not worth their while to try and sell to us?

If this is the case, how many timeshare presentations will be able to attend before they make such a decision?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

After you check in, they send you to a place to get your wrist band, parking pass, etc. They have a computer printout that shows all of guests names that are staying that night, it shows name regestered in, VIP status, marketing code, etc. If you want to know what the marketing code is that you have been placed under, just ask.
 
Not in Mexico

27-70 blind crippled or crazy, as long as you can sign your name.
Blacklisted, not :hysterical:
 
I think we have been black listed from Wyndham and Westgate.

I argued too much with the Wyndham people (my shins always ended up black and blue from where my husband would be kicking me to be quiet). We did know that Westgate had a minimum time between presentations, but since it was usually only an annual thing, it didn't affect us. Then one year, at the sign up booth, they called to make the appt and we were told that they had a lifetime max of 3 or 4 and we didn't qualify any more.

Since then I think we have maybe done one "update" in 6 or 7 years and that ws this past year at Vistana and only because it inluded unlimited passes for Vistana Disney park transportation i(nornally $10 pp each way) in addition to the other free gifts. Didnt really need it, but I figured with older teens it could have come in handy if we decided to split up.
 
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I've seen one ad somewhere touting " free" 3-night stay at said resort (or a "gift something along those lines) but you must attend a 90-minute presentation. One stipulation, however, was that you could not have attended one of their presentations within the last 12 months.
 
I think Marriott limits you to 1 per 6 months but I don't think they would blacklist you just not allow you to take until the wait period is over.

We do a Marriott tour every vacation which is usually 7-10 months apart for the 15-20k in reward points and have never been told we had to wait but I had heard it was a 6 month window.

I personally don't mind doing the tours because usually the sales people sees our portfolio and know they're deal with an expert and usually get us in and out. We think its worth it as over the years we must have received 150k points or more. We ready don't just go for the points, we like the cookies they usually serve as well.

No seriously, we always go with an open mind that if they offered us a good deal we would buy that hasn't happened since we bought our Oceanwatch at a pre-construction price with a boat load of points.

Now we go and say if they converted all my weeks, including a few after the cut off date I would buy 2k new points but they've yet to take me up on that.
 
TimeshareFrenzy said:
Often times when on vacation if we have some extra time we'll go on these timeshare tours for the free gifts and to check out what the resorts have to offer.

We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.


However, I'm curious...will there come a time when the timeshare companies realize that we're just doing it for the free gifts and it's not worth their while to try and sell to us?

If this is the case, how many timeshare presentations will be able to attend before they make such a decision?


Thanks in advance!
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Years ago, back when we were taking the tours every chance we got, we'd occasionally be told they wouldn't let us tour anymore, only to have them offer us another tour within months of being told no more tours. We were never refused and they never check our income.

Now I'd love to be black listed from taking the tours. We don't want to go but we can't get them to stop calling. I'm about ready to start taking the tours again and blatantly tell them, "I'm only here for the money, you've got 90 to 120 minutes, then we're walking" just to see if it's possible to get black listed.
 
I wonder about peep so easily persuaded to sell their vacation time for a few treats.
But I 'spose some folk have so much time on their hands that it's no loss.
Personally, I'd rather watch grass grow, but hey, I'm kinda strange that way.
.
.
 
Talent312 said:
I wonder about peep so easily persuaded to sell their vacation time for a few treats.
But I 'spose some folk have so much time on their hands that it's no loss.
Personally, I'd rather watch grass grow, but hey, I'm kinda strange that way.
.
.
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For us it was a matter of the learning curve. I wanted to hear and learn about the other systems plus, I wanted to see the timeshares I might be interested where we might exchange. Over time we saw enough and stopped going. It's not longer worth the vacation time and the aggrivation.

Occasionally we'll still go on an update if I feel there's something we might want to know. This past month we ended up cancelling our Sept vaction to our home resort of French Quarter Resort in Brason. If we hadn't of cancelled, I was planning on doing the update. The reason being that FQ's original developer's bankruptcy had recently been settled and management was now officially Southwind Managements. They have a new resort in Branson with an internal exchange program. I wanted information on that program. I also wanted to know what was being done with Grand Regency, also managed by SWM during the bankruptcy. The rumor is that Grand Regency was going to another management company.

So it was more for information gathering than for gifting.
 
dougp26364 said:
I was planning on doing the update. The reason being that FQ's original developer's bankruptcy had recently been settled and management was now officially Southwind Managements. They have a new resort in Branson with an internal exchange program. I wanted information on that program. I also wanted to know what was being done with Grand Regency, also managed by SWM during the bankruptcy. The rumor is that Grand Regency was going to another management company.

So it was more for information gathering than for gifting.
Click to expand...


And you are expecting reliable information from a timeshare salesman ?
 
dougp26364 said:
For us it was a matter of the learning curve. I wanted to hear and learn about the other systems plus, I wanted to see the timeshares I might be interested where we might exchange. Over time we saw enough and stopped going. It's not longer worth the vacation time and the aggrivation.


So it was more for information gathering than for gifting.
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I think alot may depend on where you are in the timeshare learning process. We did do a lot of Wyndham tours in the beginning for the learning process (although my husband always said I taught the sales person more than he taught us). We have done other tours just to see the properties.

Have there been a few that were purely for the gifts? Yes. But we made sure they were darn good gifts, never less than $100 plus something or another thrown in like Masanutten's waterpark discounts or Visana's free Disney transportation. One or twice I finageled Wyndhams or RCI points directories as part of it. Of course, this was way back before everything was much more available online plus we always liked having a hard copy.

Sometimes now my husband will get insulted that we don't get asked and he wants to question them "like aren't we good enough", but then I remind him that we have better things to do with our time.
 
Lots of interesting perspectives in here.

I will always take any that I can if/when the value of the "gift" makes it worth my time. More often than not, especially with Wyndham (as an owner) I can go w/o the DH in tow . . . and I'm back to the T/S unit before he's even up for the day. So no time lost or wasted in my opinion.

As for the question of blacklisting, I doubt that really exists except for owners staying within their own "system" (Wyndham, BlueGreen, etc). Personally, I'm shocked that Wyndham never blacklisted me/us because those sessions can and have turned very confrontational.

Regarding the poster who suggests that people not take part and that eventually the developers may stop this technique . . . that is really wishful thinking! The sales methodology has been around for probably 35 or 40 years, with finetuning along the way. The bottom line is that it works because the uninformed and unsuspecting will and do buy. You're preaching to the choir and extreme minority here.

Even if every single TUG member plus anyone we ever encounter regarding TS stopped attending presentations, they would not discontinue the sales practice of giving stuff away for the opportunity to browbeat us into buying.
 
TimeshareFrenzy said:
We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.
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Hats off to you!! I am sure glad that not many people are like you, otherwise, we will not have great weeks to buy in resale.
 
As the "idiot" {My Label, NOT YOURS} who suggested if people stopped going the sales model would evolve, I agree that this segment of the population will not move the market.

As to:

I'm shocked that Wyndham never blacklisted me/us because those sessions can and have turned very confrontational.
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IMHO they would look at that as a failure of their training program for the salesman/ sales manager not to be able to control the situation, since the whole program is based on overcoming objections
 
Every time I stay at a ts I take the tour unless the gift is bad

I looked at it as making $25 an hour and helps pay for my week - My goal is always $100 - One offered me $50 and I did not go. The more I can get the better - I like getting the money never tickets unless they are offered as a add on

So far no one has said you can't go - they ask if you have been in the last six months - NO

Most like you to make over $50,000 to accept

They spend their time finding out where you work and whether you will buy - even if you tell them you are there just for the gift - they have to spend a specific amount of time with you - last one I did - the sales person was a long timer and did not keep me the whole time because his children were texting him to come home and take them shopping - shortest one ever - about an hour

They have percentages of presentations to sales - so I am the one not sale and put them closer to a sale :)



TimeshareFrenzy said:
Often times when on vacation if we have some extra time we'll go on these timeshare tours for the free gifts and to check out what the resorts have to offer.

We never buy anything from the tours but I don't really mind the presentation as I'm not easily persuaded so it's not really that high pressure for my fiance and I.


However, I'm curious...will there come a time when the timeshare companies realize that we're just doing it for the free gifts and it's not worth their while to try and sell to us?

If this is the case, how many timeshare presentations will be able to attend before they make such a decision?


Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
 
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