:: Articles ::Some of
my random thoughts on life and what happens |
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:: Saturday, November 23, 2002 :: How a timeshare pitch mirrored my heart – A case
study on evangelism. It had all
the ingredients for a disaster. A
renegade phone call. A person telling us that it will be the vacation of a
lifetime. A price that’s unbeatable. The timing was impeccable we were tired
and ready to get away from our normal lives. The method was a marketers dream
– they conned us into offers we could not resist. We gave in to temptation accepted the offer and that’s where
the journey started. Now I’m
walking into a hotel where we will attend a 90-minute presentation on
vacation club ownership. Crap. We fill out a form and wait for our
representative to start the indoctrination.
She is short and shriveled – Paula is her name, her friends call her
“Mighty Mouse” she says. We start
some meaningless chatter about superficialities, the weather, the beaches and
then she invites us to a courtesy lunch.
On our way she assures us that they are not into high-pressure
sails. The food is Ok and we sit down
with Mighty Mouse and she starts the profiling. Where are you
from? South Africa. What do you
do for a living? I’m a pastor and we work at a church. Ohhh? What do
you like to do? Anything in the sun and in the water. She starts to
tell us about all the celebrities owning property in the area. Oprah, Tiger,
the Trumps (which she must have thought afterwards weren’t the best person’s
name to drop). The area is known for
the white beaches the wonderful climate and all the sports, golf, sailing and
whatever we want to do. This is the
premier spot in America, did we know that there’s no beachfront property left
in South Florida? Real Estate comes
at the price of $11000 an inch! I really like
the chicken and the ribs so I smile and get up to get another helping of
it. At the buffet I meat a man we
will call Bob. Bob was suckered into
the exact same ‘deal’. He asks me if
we can pick them up at their hotel on the way to the cruise that is included
in our package, he read somewhere that parking will be $30 – maybe we can
share it. I tell him that I’m sure
that our ‘package’ included a free parking voucher, and triumphantly walk
back to my seat. (Later we found that the voucher was a myth and we had to
pay yet another hidden cost) The
conversation continues and Lollie leaves for the restroom. I see my gap and address Mighty Mouse: How much success do you have with folks like us? 1/3 of the
people buy some property. That’s great! I can assure
you that we are in the 2/3’s category. Why do you
say that? We haven’t even looked at the budget yet. I have lot’s of pastors that buy from us. This is a great place to bring your church
choir. On these tours we give amazing
first time offers that will be very affordable, you will see. Mighty Mouse
looked deflated. After some
further pleasantries, Paula ushers us into a bus to tour the property. We never saw any of it! Rather than showing us their property they
took us to the yacht club, membership at the club is included in the price of
the vacation package. On board our
bus is captain Larry, amusing us with his charm and wit. He starts out asking everyone where we’re
from and then connecting his life-experience to our home states. Where are you
from he asks. Colorado. Do you know
what we do here in Florida when we see snow? No We change the
channel. Larry has the
gift of really laughing at his jokes.
He then continues his sailing spiel with another joke. Have you guys
heard on the news that the road to the Keyes is closed? Yeah, all the bridges are up. Someone accidently dropped some Viagra in
the ocean. Roaring laughter, mainly
from Larry. Mighty Mouse
turns to us and tells us how great Larry is – he’s the best captain in the
Atlantic ocean. The tour bus circles
around the area for 7 minutes and then we go back to the hotel –it’s time to
look at the finances involved in buying the dream vacation. We sit down
at a table surrounded by 50 other couples sitting with their version of
Mighty Mouse. Paula starts to ask us
questions about our current budget how, much we earn, our debt (she is
shocked to find out that we don’t have a credit card). She then asks about the hotel we live in
right now and starts to blacken the hotel’s setup of rooms, the cleanliness
or lack there of and then she pulls out a floor plan of her luxurious
unit. She convinces us that we will
spend at least $70000 in the next ten years on vacation – she appeals to our
every consumer nerve and bombards us.
Calculated
she goes through charts that she developed with pertinent information
underlined. Graphic charts and
comparisons abound in her literature – she frantically writes numbers to
shock us on a paper. She then suggest
a walk on the beachfront, but we were there for so long that the beautiful
Florida sunshine turned into a monsoon!
After 40 minutes of budget battering we take the elevator to see and
taste the wonderful units. She takes
us to one of the demo-units and ushers us through vacation heaven. She comments that this is one of the
smaller units, one of the owners the other day showed Paula her unit, and it
was huge – the bathroom was the size of this unit! As we walk back she apologizes for the state of the hotel and
explain that their busy with renovations. Back at the
table she asks what we think this dream vacation will cost – and remember it
includes membership to the yacht club and discounts at the PGA Golf club
close to the premises. Lollie resigns
from taking a guess and I humored her saying $40000, she then whips out one of her
self-developed charts (which we could not get copies off) and showed us that
this dream will only cost us $28000!
We were not amused and Mighty Mouse must have sensed it with her
mighty perception. In a sensitive way
we told the lady that we could not afford something like this. Why don’t we get the church to buy one of
these vacations, it will be a wonderful way to honor someone for a work well
done she says. Paula continues to
address new angles and we keep on cutting them off. Lollie in her
brilliant way explains to her that we have a visa issue and until we know
that we will be in the country permanently, buying a vacation house for a
week a year don’t make sense!
Especially if the one week vacation house cost the same as a house in
South Africa. Mighty Mouse counters,
in her humble opinion this will be an investment, regardless if we were in
Africa or the US. I try to explain to
her that it’s impossible to pay the monthly premium on a South African
salary. Suddenly she
reverts to personal testimonies telling about her wonderful times in her
vacation house and how much money she has made renting hers out. On the sideline she tells numerous stories
of friends and families who have been blessed by owning. Sensing that we are not biting she offers
to lower the deposit from $7000 to $1500, still we were not biting. She then forced the $28000 down to $24000,
still no response from us. Her next
move was to go and speak to a manager about our unique situation. Now remember they are not into pressure
sales. Entered
Dina. She introduced herself and told
us how many South African friends she has that owns here in Florida, Lollie
looks smilingly at her and says that they must be very rich! Taken aback Dina continues with her part
of the presentation, miraculously she brings the price down to $14000 and
manages to give us an extra week – to good to be true. Sensing a general lack of excitement from
us, she also starts to write frantically on a paper, presenting a matrix of
numbers and options. WE WERE NOT
BUYING! The penny
dropped and Dina backs down (with another incredible offer). In the space of 30 minutes they offered us
the same product at 4 different prices – because they really wanted to
accommodate us – says Might Mouse. I
ask her if she works on commission and she says yes, sarcastically she
mentions that she probably won’t eat for a week. The badgering is over and very professionally Mini Mouse
walks us to the place where we will pick up our cruise tickets – (you see we
had to go through this presentation of 90 minutes which turned out to be 180
minutes before we could get our tickets.)
We walk over to a different room. Paula says
her goodbyes and introduces us to Ray, a man that suffers from extreme
sweating and looks grieved. Ray
explains to us that he will ask us a few questions about our experience. Were we treated professionally? Do we feel like we got good information
about ownership? Any recommendations? We answer his questions cordially and look
forward to getting out of there! Now remember
they are not into pressure sales. At
this point Ray, or Stingray goes under the radar. In a whisper he asks us if he can tell us about a ‘deal’. He explains that they are not allowed to
advertise the following information because they might get sued over it. Have we ever heard of a foreclosure, he
asks. He explains to us that they
have some vacation homes in Orlando that people lost because they can’t make
the payments, would we be interested?
Here we go again, we explain to him our knockout punch of visas and
South Africa and then Ray comes in for the attack – In an extremely pissed
off tone he says – it’s really not about the South African deal and the
money, for only $5000 you can own this vacation home! At this point I became mad – images of me
verbally attacking him started to form in my head. I was streaming. In a
calm way I said to him that WE WERE NOT BUYING! He looked severely dejected and in a rude manner signed our
paper that authorized the cruise and said ‘goodbye-now’ in a sarcastic
voice. My only question then was,
where can I fill out an evaluation on StingRay? Well we survived the Nazi, no pressure, information overload, vacation ownership deal. Two nights later we were sitting at a table on our cruise with 3 other couples. Our cruise by the way was also a total disaster, at our table 4 people had to leave because they felt seasick! While everyone was still there we found out that we were all there because of the same ‘deal’. After some probing we discovered that all of us had the exact same experience with the vacation ownership deal – except that one of the couples who were older, were hit with different foreclosure amounts – their bargain was for $7000. What a joke! Now a week
later I realize that we as Christians, influencing this world can fall into
exactly the same methods than our vacation ownership friends! I will explain tomorrow. |
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