RSL Who would Spend $10k+ Without Legal Advice??
Westgate Timeshare Resort Issues



Date of Incident: 6/5/2003

Your website was refreshing to read. Tonight while taking the family to McDonalds for dinner after a long day at Sea World we were approached in the McDonalds itself (Largest McDonalds Playland in the country near International Drive in Orlando) by a person who was from the promotions booth.

I figured they were selling tickets at reduced rates. He was probably in his 50's and seemed pretty slick. I am in professional sales in the healthcare market and he was working us trying to find out what tickets we needed. While we had amusement park tickets for Seaworld, Disney and Universal, we were debating on going to the Pirate Dinner Show for our last
day of vacation. No mention was made of the timeshare at this point. He
was claiming he could get us some money for listening to a timeshare. He first said the timeshare would pay me and my wife 70 dollars (probably
combined) to hear the 90 minute presentation. We mentioned the pirate show and he claimed he could get us a great deal. He claimed he could get us reservations called in immediately. He showed us the times of tours and said that we could show up as early as 7:15-30am to get to the park when it opened. At the tour, he claimed we would be fed and the kids would be in a
huge gameroom with plenty of games to play. He said the 4 tickets
standard at the dinner show would run us 150 dollars on the street. My wife did some research and I think we were figuring about 110-120 off the internet.

All of a sudden he was claiming if we went to the this timeshare you had trouble with he could lock us in for 4 tickets at 30.00 total our cost. I figured for 90 minutes and my wife was talking about the timeshare we were staying at in Florida as a good idea. I had heard on Clark Howard's talk show that timeshares are worth 10% of their selling price. At the time I figured 90 minutes wasn't bad, and being in sales I know how to deal with these people. What I don't know is on the presentation if they take your ID and credit card they will do a credit check on you and also you can't leave if you don't get your ID and credit card back. I don't know if this happened or not.

We have 2 boys 9 and 6 and for our last day on vacation I didn't want to be another victim on your site. I wish I found your site before I forked out 20.00 but not going is probably the best 20 bucks I have spent all week here in Florida. Myself being a salesperson you always treat others as you would want to be treated. They probably shouldn't be called salespeople. These people obviously hold no bars in insulting people and treating people with respect. Probably the ones who do are no longer employed there or quit due to the ethics they demonstrated. Who in their right mind would spent 10K+ without consulting legal advice or just sleeping on it or doing some background checks?

While I did pay the guy 20 dollars (didn't give him my credit card) after reading your site my wife and I believe it's best to not chance a terrible event with our kids trapped in their place. I will gladly write off 20 dollars stupidly spent to assure my family enjoys their last day here. I wouldn't be comfortable with my kids being left locked down for 3 hours let alone the quality of being watched. I find it interesting nobody mentions a 90 minute presentation, even the buyers.

What a terrible way to end a vacation some of the posts I read. If I buy a timeshare I'll get that "20k" retail salespitch timeshare and buy it on ebay or a site reselling for 1500 or less. So much for the people who work for the timeshare companies that have been brainwashed into a timeshare being an investment. In 40 years the timeshare upkeep will make you cry. It may look like a million today but 52 rotations of people a year for 40 years= trashy. I'd rather just buy one for 1500 bucks and assume I've inherited a dive and then everytime I go on vacation and it's nice I'll feel great. When I sell the timeshare worst case I'll lose my 1500 dollars, not the 20k dollars I paid being worth 1500 dollars in a week after purchase.

Florida needs to get serious on this behavior, it's corrupt and deceptive.

Thanks for a great site!

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