A Local Vacation

I was dri­ving home the other day when my cell phone rang. I didn’t rec­og­nize the num­ber, but I always answer my phone. It was some lady from Colo­nial Cross­ings of Williams­burg call­ing to let me know I won a 2 day/1 night vaca­tion in Williams­burg. I was like, uh, lady, I live in Williamsburg.

No you don’t, you live in Suf­folk, she replied. I was like, no, I’m pretty sure I know where I live. I live in Williams­burg. She was like, oh, well we’ll give you $50, too. And a 3 day/2 night vaca­tion you can use some­where else. I was like, oh really? What do I have to do? She said I just have to lis­ten to a 90 minute pre­sen­ta­tion about Colo­nial Cross­ings of Williamsburg.

Ah hah! A time­share! Becca and I are sav­ing for a house, so I had no fear of get­ting talked into pur­chas­ing, so after talk­ing it over with her, we decided to go for it.

Then the “gotchas” started show­ing up. They required a $10 reser­va­tion fee. And $5 hotel tax (which actu­ally ended up being $7.50, and almost $15 if we didn’t catch the billing error). The addi­tional vaca­tion was just another time­share. And although we were led to believe that we’d be stay­ing at the resort, we actu­ally were put up in one of the shifti­est hotels in town. The car­pets had dirt clumps on them, we found a child’s toy next to the bed, and the towel rack lit­er­ally fell off of the wall. Shifty.

I later dis­cov­ered (thanks to Google) that this is a sales tech­nique. Once at the pre­sen­ta­tion, the sales­per­son can say some­hing like, “Now, wouldn’t you rather spend your vaca­tion here instead of a hotel?” at which point you think “wow, my hotel room really did suck” and you plop down $35,000.

Oh I didn’t get to the $35,000 part yet? Well, that is how much your fancy 1-week at the resort will cost. Plus quar­terly main­te­nance fees that can go up in price with­out notice. Plus a yearly fee if you want the book that lets you trade your week at dif­fer­ent resorts. Plus a few hun­dred dol­lars if you do want to trade your week at another resort. And that is just for the place you sleep. What about food? Sou­ve­niers? Admis­sion to attrac­tions? Trust me, it is not cheaper to buy a resort (at least not at the retail price).

But yes, we got our $50, so we came out ahead. I had to sign for my money, and was able to see what oth­ers got. Some were being paid as much as $120 to come lis­ten to the pre­sen­ta­tion. I guess I should have held out for more money.