shoeie
TUG Member
Enjoying a great week at Surfwatch (absolutely love this place).
We have never, I mean NEVER, taken a Marriott sales presentation. We bought resale about 5 years ago for absolute peanuts (thanks TUG) and immediately converted/enrolled in the DC program just under the wire. We've never been interested in the incentives for taking a tour. Our 90 minutes of vacation were too precious.
Well, our "concierge" (read: person who's sole job is to get you take a tour) convinced us that we should take the tour to understand our points better, etc. Long story short-wife and I decide to do the tour hoping that we'll be able to wade through the sales mumbo/jumbo to get some additional information. Offered 20K MRP, $150 resort credit, or 250 DC points. We took DC points.
Should have realized I may be in for a somewhat hard sell when I saw the plaque in the sales guys office noting he was the top Surfwatch sales guy for 2014-apparently he did over $1.3M in sales in 2014. Got very little info about our present ownership-just a constant mantra that without purchasing trust points my enrolled weeks points would soon be worthless, and we were kept there for over 2 hours. Wanted to leave at minute 91, but my lovely wife is too polite.
Sales guys claimed similar "timeshare within a hotel" properties, similar to the new Mayflower in Washington, DC, are planned for many major cities in the US, including Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Also claimed that MVC is going to start purchasing or building actual vacation homes. A lot of fuzzy sales speak without many details. Slippery guy, refused to answer any question directly and kept writing different numbers on a white board very quickly that made absolutely no sense, mathematically or logically (I'm a litigator, but since I was never going to buy, I didn't really push the guy, I just wanted to get out of there). I guess we'll see.
Eventually offered 3500 points at $10.12 pp or 2500 points at $10.76 pp, with a 3500 or 2500 one time bonus. A second 3500 or 2500 bonus is you took Marriott financing and kept it for at least 18 months. Of course, both my credit cards have better interest rates if I ever carried a balance (but you can deduct this interest from your taxes!!! People must fall off the turnip truck every day, I swear).
No idea if the deals got better because I almost laughed out loud at those prices. So for us-the tour confirmed to us that we'll never do a "tour" again and just keep enjoying our present ownership.
Interestingly, we are interested in purchasing trust points in the future to add to what our two enrolled weeks get us-but of course-we'll never be silly enough to go through Marriott. Its just tough to stomach even the resale prices on the trust points (particularly when adding in the Marriott "junk" fees), when compared to how little I paid for my enrolled weeks and how many DC points they get me.
Not sure how the Tuggers who go to the presentation on every vacation do it! I would go postal!
We have never, I mean NEVER, taken a Marriott sales presentation. We bought resale about 5 years ago for absolute peanuts (thanks TUG) and immediately converted/enrolled in the DC program just under the wire. We've never been interested in the incentives for taking a tour. Our 90 minutes of vacation were too precious.
Well, our "concierge" (read: person who's sole job is to get you take a tour) convinced us that we should take the tour to understand our points better, etc. Long story short-wife and I decide to do the tour hoping that we'll be able to wade through the sales mumbo/jumbo to get some additional information. Offered 20K MRP, $150 resort credit, or 250 DC points. We took DC points.
Should have realized I may be in for a somewhat hard sell when I saw the plaque in the sales guys office noting he was the top Surfwatch sales guy for 2014-apparently he did over $1.3M in sales in 2014. Got very little info about our present ownership-just a constant mantra that without purchasing trust points my enrolled weeks points would soon be worthless, and we were kept there for over 2 hours. Wanted to leave at minute 91, but my lovely wife is too polite.
Sales guys claimed similar "timeshare within a hotel" properties, similar to the new Mayflower in Washington, DC, are planned for many major cities in the US, including Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Also claimed that MVC is going to start purchasing or building actual vacation homes. A lot of fuzzy sales speak without many details. Slippery guy, refused to answer any question directly and kept writing different numbers on a white board very quickly that made absolutely no sense, mathematically or logically (I'm a litigator, but since I was never going to buy, I didn't really push the guy, I just wanted to get out of there). I guess we'll see.
Eventually offered 3500 points at $10.12 pp or 2500 points at $10.76 pp, with a 3500 or 2500 one time bonus. A second 3500 or 2500 bonus is you took Marriott financing and kept it for at least 18 months. Of course, both my credit cards have better interest rates if I ever carried a balance (but you can deduct this interest from your taxes!!! People must fall off the turnip truck every day, I swear).
No idea if the deals got better because I almost laughed out loud at those prices. So for us-the tour confirmed to us that we'll never do a "tour" again and just keep enjoying our present ownership.
Interestingly, we are interested in purchasing trust points in the future to add to what our two enrolled weeks get us-but of course-we'll never be silly enough to go through Marriott. Its just tough to stomach even the resale prices on the trust points (particularly when adding in the Marriott "junk" fees), when compared to how little I paid for my enrolled weeks and how many DC points they get me.
Not sure how the Tuggers who go to the presentation on every vacation do it! I would go postal!