The Top Ten Tricks That Timeshares Pull (By Tom Heehler)

Trick #2: Get customers to pay off their timeshare mortgage before they figure out they've been taken

Timeshares know that a certain percentage of customers will eventually figure out that they can negotiate out of their contract by using a law firm or an agency such as Resolution. That's why timeshares use a couple of sneaky tricks to get as much money as possible from their customers as quickly as possible. One such trick involves the interest rate charged. Usually it's pretty damn high. I'm talking anywhere from between 13% to 22%. This interest-rate strategy encourages customers to transfer their high-interest timeshare debt over to a lower-interest bank loan, which pays off the timeshare instantly. Once the timeshare has been paid off, it doesn't really matter if the customer figures out how to cancel their timeshare contract, because the timeshare already has its money. What's more, those customers who are unable to refinance, and who never realize the extent to which they've been deceived, will pay dramatically more money to the timeshare over a ten-year period, often more than twice the original purchase price.

A second strategy involves having the customer open a new credit card with a third-party provider such as Barclays, and putting the down payment (or even the entire amount) on that credit card. Often the customer is made to believe that the new credit card is issued by the timeshare itself, when it is actually a third party credit card. Once the timeshare debt has been transferred to the card, the timeshare is paid off entirely, and will feel little to no pain when the customer eventually figures out how to escape the contractual obligation.

The Top Ten Tricks That Timeshares Pull (By Stephen Lasser)

When you help people out of their timeshare contracts for a living, you spend a lot of time listening to stories about sales presentations. The following list of timeshare tricks is based on hundreds of conversations with as many clients. I consider these to be the most effective techniques used to separate people from their money. Most of these tricks are used by all timeshare salespeople, regardless of the timeshare company they work for. We’ll kick off today with trick #1:

Trick #1: Starting out with a ridiculously high dollar amount.

The salesperson does this for two reasons, both of which are critical to getting the sale. By starting off  extremely high, the salesperson establishes a dollar reference point by which all other offers can be compared. The technique usually results in the following exchange between husband and wife after their purchase:

“If we hadn’t held out as long as we did, Honey, we would have paid $50,000 instead of the final price of $15,000!”

(Little does the customer know, the salesperson would have accepted $7,000 as the final price.) This trick is pure psychology: $15,000 sounds like a small number and an awesome deal when compared to $50,000 – no two ways about it.

Second, by starting out high, the salesperson now has the ability to make up an excuse for lowering the price, to make the customer believe they are getting a steal. This excuse usually takes the form of a supposed foreclosed property or a trade-in.  Rarely is this actually the case, but the salesperson will lie and say it is. This sneaky trick also plants a seed in the customer’s mind that their timeshare can be given back to the timeshare company in the future, which is simply not the case.