Ok, ok I know
here is my experience-Hubby and I were approached by an English woman in Torremolinos last week and asked to do a survey- no problem. Short survey completed we were presented with 2 scratch cards for our time and duly uncovered a prize of a bottle of champers for hubby and no less than the star prize for me
When I showed her my card she looked amazed and started shouting for her boss to come and see that I'd won the star prize- did she think I was green? I told her that I wasn't in the least excited because I'd heard all about the timeshare scams. When she could see I wasn't buying into it she was more genuine and confessed that they'd like us to take a look around a newly refurbished 4 star hotel for promotional purposes and that our prizes were genuine. As it was a cloudy/showery day and we had no plans we thought we'd go along as it would be something to do. We had our eyes wide open and knew it would take up a couple of hours.We were whisked off in a taxi to the hotel and met by 'the salesman' who proceeded to tell us about the hotel and how nice it would be to stay there for a holiday. It was indeed lovely with all the facilities you could wish for. Many times I cut him off in his tracks, asking questions and indeed pointing ot that things weren't quite as simple as he was making out. He didn't mention that it was a timeshare type of thing until I pressed him on the point within 5 mins of meeting him. He explained that it was similar to timeshare but they were a holiday club that came with a lot more 'safety and regulations' than the timeshare which had a bad name.
I asked him to cut to the chase and tell us exactly how much money they wanted from us and what would we get for our money. To cut a long story short we said we weren't signing up for it as it was too much money so because we liked the idea we were being sold , we were offered a 3 year membership at a cost of £595, in the hope that we'd like what we were getting and would take out the indefinite membership at the end of the 3 years. For this we are getting one week's free accomodation at one of 3 luxury 4 star hotels
in Benalmadena, to be taken within the next 12 months-obviously we'd pay for the flights ourselves. Also over the next 3 years we could have up to 20 separate weeks accomodation at any of their luxury hotels around the world at a fixed price of £179 for a studio, £219 for a 1 bedroom for 4 or £259 for a 2 bedroom for 6 people.
The crunch for us will be when we decide to book as we can only go during peak weeks. HOw easy will it be to find availability for our chosen dates. Anyway, it's too early to tell whether we've made a good decision or not but as hubby says if we can only get our free week and nothing else works out then we haven't really lost anything as we'll have had a week for £595.
We are going to be contacted within the next 3 weeks to book our free week's accomodation. I'll keep you all posted.
We did not get in that taxi, nor would I ever when on holiday. I think they are a big con, and you can never get the dates you want.
He was half winding me up and half worried I think. I did think that anything could have happened but what would they have to gain in doing that. I genuinely believed that they wanted to get us to this hotel to give us the sales talk which they did but looking back it was a bit naive.
