Timechairs

At Westbrook's Together Days a couple weekends back, Karrie signed us up to win a Lowe's gift card. Imagine our surprise when we got a call last week telling us we'd won several prizes.

The list of prizes was rather long, so Karrie asked what the catch was.  The gentleman explained that these “prizes” we’d won could only be redeemed by going up to a resort near Wiscassett and listening to them talk about their new condos for a couple of hours.  He explained that while they’d try to sell us one, the main intent was to spread the word.  We decided the trip was worth it and booked an appointment for this past Sunday.  I figured in return for not buying anything, I’d do a nice writeup on the new condos here on the web site.

Upon our arrival, we were asked to fill out a form and then we were ushered upstairs to an empty restaurant.  An older Irish man sat down with us and explained that in return for our “gifts” (no longer called “prizes”), we had to sit in our chairs and endure 90 minutes of him speaking.  He had a weird kind of sales-pitchy demeanor; he always tried to take the offensive and as such put us back on our heels.  At the same time he tried to appear as if he had our best interests in mind.  After he asked us some questions (in order to formulate his plan of attack, it would seem), it soon became obvious that he was not going to try to sell us a condo, nor was he interested in getting any good publicity; he wanted to sell us a timeshare.  Not only that, he wanted to sell it to us that day.

It became very clear that this was one of those now-or-never deals.  Whenever I asked any questions about purchasing later, he brushed them aside as if he were making his way through loose foliage.  To his credit, he had me interested in the whole timeshare thing when he described having equity after a lifetime of vacations (I drew an analogy to owning a house vs. renting); nevertheless, no matter how good the deal was there was no way Karrie and I were going to spend any frivolous money three weeks before having our first child (and less than three weeks after getting my full schedule—and paycheck—back).  At the end I told the man we wouldn’t be purchasing that day but asked for any materials he might have in case we become interested later.  Upon making that statement and asking that question, we were given our gift packet and ushered out the door like nobody’s business.

Strange experience aside, we now supposedly have four round-trip plane tickets to pretty much anywhere in the world, $500 towards groceries, $100 to spend on our next vacation, and a $50 gift card to Target.  That last one is the only one without a catch; our tickets only come when we book three nights at a preferred hotel (as does the spending money) and our grocery money only comes in $25 increments (monthly) when we mail in receipts (that’s 20 months of mailing in receipts, folks).  We haven’t gotten the details yet, but Karrie’s aunt indicated that she was unable to use tickets from a similar experience due to blackout dates and other technicalities.  It all seems like more trouble than it is worth.

Needless to say, I don’t believe we “won” anything.  I think that all attendees who signed up for the Lowe’s gift card were invited to the resort and given the same gift package and sales pitch (there were other people from Westbrook at the resort when we were there).  While it seemed like it was worth it early on, I now feel that we should skip such events in the future; also, after discovering how complicated they are, I’m relatively turned off to timeshares for now.