AE had the same good cop / bad cop routine for 3 hours
Westgate Timeshare Resort Issues



Date of Incident: 2/1/2003

My husband and I went to one of their tours with my mother and my 10 yr old daughter. My story is very similar to yours in that I expressed feeling uncomfortable proceeding with signing without the opportunity to research. I had to send my mother and my daughter to wait in the car for they were very tired after 3 hours. From the beginning I noticed that we where paired up with a hispanic woman and I felt that was purposely done because they assumed communication would be easier not because it was true at all for I was born and raised in the U.S. but because they saw I had a spanish last name. The process included a screening to see if we were lying about having stayed in a hotel after arriving from out of town and she then wanted to know the exact figures of our income. I told her we met the requirements and she said that if they wanted to they could find out and I told her that she can go right ahead and do that, but I inturn reminded her that I was told there was no obligation to purchase. We can't say that the hot dog lunch is what we expected their free delicious buffet to be, for accross from where we had sat waiting to be paired up was a cafeteria with wonderful smells reaching our noses as we waited with other victims. Little did we know they had a different eating area for us where the wonderful smells had faded and the ugliest fattest hotdogs with watered down juice were served. Now don't get me wrong but from the very invitation my intention was to find out if infact this is something I might be interested in for we had spent a forture on hotels and wondered what other options we might be missing out on.

Our rep proudly showed us her portfolio with pictures of her children sitting next to a fireplace, all her awards etc. She kept shifting from how she has to work to feed her kids to how successful she is at what she does. She kept saying how at the end of the tour her boss would ask me questions to make sure she did an excellent presentation. I now realized she just wanted to make sure her long speech that was to follow would be carefully listened to.

Later, she introduced me to her brother as we passed him busy with his own victim. Then later on we met her mother on the elevator and her sister, a manager, she said. At one point she tells me some people want to come to these tours wanting to get it over with quickly but that with her everyone has to do the whole thing. I was surprised at her comment for it was uncalled for since she herself had mentioned earlier that she liked that I had a lot of questions.

To make a long story shorter she took the same top down approach as with Lisa's story. I mentioned to her that the interest rate, about 19%, was extremely high and she said that she knows but that there are people who pay multiple times that in other countries so that to them it is a deal but that I could finance through my own bank. When I told her that I was a home owner and I never make money decisions without giving it some thought she went from powerful salesperson to almost biting her nails. This worried me. She went for the pressure of what discounts I would be missing out on and I told her being sure was most important to me but she kept on and on. Then she got up and came back with the wonderful news that her sister helps her out sometimes and that she had priority access to the best deals so I was in luck that very moment because one had just fallen into her sisters hands the opportunity to buy at half the price. How so I asked? She said that an owner was upgrading and was selling at a low price. I felt even more suspicious but she wasted no time and in between biting her lip she got up one more time and came back with her sister who sat there just as strong and powerflul as the other one had started out but soon gave up on me but before she left she shook my hand told me I wasn't right for the timeshare and stormed off like I was a waste of her time. Little sister was left there again biting her lip and she now tells me that she felt sorry for me because she saw me jotting down figures like I was interested so she wanted to get something special for me. So she comes back with a bald guy who tries to push another top down approach on a trial package.

Our story is a little different because it seems they got sick of us first. The bald guy eventually stopped tapping his foot, signed a piece of paper and sent us toward "that door" that's all he said. That door led to arrows on the wall that told you how to get to the place where you get your $20 dep back and your tickets. But the complimentary picture they take of you on the tour you don't get till you give them about 4 names of victim friends and family members and their phone numbers and addresses. What happened to our sales girl we didn't know, she didn't even come back to say goodbye to us. We saw her again as we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the victim welcoming center. She never once looked our way. Oh well, I guess she really wasn't as interested in what was best for me after all and to think I almost believed her.

We got four tickets to Arabian Nights, a wonderful show I would rather pay for than to endure the energy draining harrassment of timeshare tours.


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