Rule # 43 – Always look on the bright side of life
(Pythonism, not a Gibbsism)
Time shares… the only way, some years, our family even had a
vacation. It’s great to get away, to fun places we would never have even
considered visiting, unless we were staying close by. Plus, the room part is already
bought and paid for. We can vacation as frugally or extravagantly as our
current finances allow.
We have a time share at Massanutten Resort and we really
enjoy our unit and just the get-away from the day-to-day back home. We have
timeshare too, with another company and are now able to get away to a number of
different places each year. We always
look forward to these vacations. The trips get us to places we can explore for
history. They are highlights of our years.
One part of a time share vacation is the inevitable sales
breakfast. When you check in, the sales people meet you and set you up for the
“free” breakfast so they can “update you about the resort, and let you know how
the timeshare industry has changed in the past year”. There’s always a freebee
at the end of the presentation, too. But you have to sit through the whole
thing to collect.
We’ve refused to attend in the past. That wasn’t a problem.
But this year we decided to sit through it to see what the new pitch would be.
It is a game with Hub and me now. Let them throw anything at us and see what we
will hit. We double dog dared them!
The day started as expected. We are checked into the
breakfast and met by our starting pitcher. She is a pleasant person, very
conversational and not at all pressuring at this point. We start the process
with a “survey” of our experiences at the resort. What did we like about it,
what would we change? How long have we been coming here? You know, the basic
stuff about our experiences so far.
Then we head off – in her car – to the restaurant for the
breakfast. The game strategy is to keep us there so we can’t walk out if things
get uncomfortable. Nice going, sales manager. Things stay light for this part
of the game. Conversation is about our time vacationing and what we like to do.
We eat from the breakfast bar. Drink coffee. She pitches a few things and we
knock them down. We finish up there with the fastball – “let me take you over
to one of our properties and show you what we have that’s new”.
The game starts getting intense now. Score is still sales –
0, us- 0. She drives us over to the newest, high-end resort property we’ve seen
in a while. These things are real luxury – if that’s what you are after on a
vacation. The view from the unit is spectacular. You don’t have to leave the
house to enjoy your vacation. I could cook in a full kitchen for the whole
vacation.
Not leave the house and cook for a week – and this is a
vacation? I can do that at home. Forget about it!
We both agreed that the place was nice. We were on base now.
We all headed back to sales center where the pitching continued. She talked to
us about the high-end place we just saw. She tried to convince us that we
wouldn’t get our weeks next year unless we switched to a new plan in a new
place. We wouldn’t be able to trade since our week “floats” and is not a fixed
week. Hub says, “When we trade we book and fix a week, then we deposit it. It
is a fixed week when we trade.” He hit a curve ball and got a base hit. We have
the bases loaded now. Things get tense. Sales brings in a middle reliever. The
fellow is a nice, soon-to-be-retired fellow who focuses on me. He ignores the
Hub totally and asks me where I want to stay – where I am or in the fancy place
we just saw. He catches his breath as I say, “Where I am.”
“What? I don’t understand how you can pass this up.” One run
in… yeah!
I explain that we don’t vacation to sit around. We tour; we
enjoy off the resort. We just need a place for a quick meal and to hang our
head at night.
The pitcher tries again. “They can afford it,” he says to
the starting pitcher who stayed beside him. “No, we can’t.” But none of that is
anyone’s business, especially these sales people. The middle reliever took
himself out of the game when he saw he wasn’t getting anywhere. The starting
pitcher made one last lob. We kept saying, “No thanks”. Another hit and another
run.
Last stop was a quick closing pitch from the final check out
sales person. He talked so fast that we just said “No” to everything he said.
His leg kept going up and down like he was beyond hyper. Then we got handed off
to another person to collect our end game prize. “We need names of people to
contact for possible sales weekends.” We gave them one name and some bogus
phone numbers. This was the icing on the cake. Enough already!
We won this one. We only lost 3 hours of vacation time but
we have some freebees to use for the rest of the week. We earned this win.
Now we went into this breakfast knowing full well what was
going to happen. We’ve been to others where the pitchers – all of them – have been
rude, high pressure, strung out or all of the above. These sales people and the experiences they provide really
do NOT represent the vacation property well, at least to those of us who are on
vacation. I realize these people are only doing their job, but…. These
experiences put a temporary damper on the concept of vacation.
But I must confess a bit of evil glee from the sales process this
year. You see, they use Chapter 1, 2 and 3 of the Marketing textbook I had in
college. I know what they are going to do, and the order in which they will
complete their mission. I know their end game. Yes, it gets me frosted when it
happens, but it’s so much fun trying to beat them at their own game. It’s
almost a challenge. And yes, we have pulled the ultimate marketing kiss-off by
walking out on the sales person in the middle of a pitch. It really does help
to “Know thine enemy” and the rules they are using, so you can beat them at
their own game.
Yes, I know that marketing course soured me on shopping
forever. But I am not sorry at all. It’s made me a more aware consumer, who
parts with her hard-earned bucks carefully. My purchases are my choices, and not because it’s the cool thing, the
latest thing, the most dazzling thing… I either need it or can afford to want
it. There was, is now, and ever more shall be the truth in the phrase, “Self,
you can NOT afford this.” And guess what, kiddies? It’s NOT so bad… really!
Well so much for the speed bump in the road of our Virginia
vacation. I’m thinking to quest for more wine, visiting more wineries… sitting
poolside for a bit…
Ahhhh…… much better!
Namaste`, y’all!
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