Timeshare Presentation For Deep Discount On A Resort Worth It???
 

One of the Playacar resorts is offering a 5 night / 6 day stay for 2 people for $399, a $1385 value. The catch (hook) is that a 90 minute timeshare presentation must be attended sometime within the stay.

Has anyone done this? Is it worth going through to get the "deal."

Is this a place you would stay otherwise? Is it really a $1,385 value or can you get it cheaper on-line? If true, I think I could spare 90 minutes of my time for $986.00.

How do you get in on this deal?

We've done it - with the Villa Group in Cabo San Lucas. It was definitely worth it ... all inclusive and we had a great oceanfront condo at Villa del Palmar.

But ... be aware the presentation for the time shares is very hard-sell, even though they tell you when you agree to the discounted vacation that you are under no obligation to buy. They really put the pressure on you. We were fine with that, knowing we had no intention of ever buying a time share anywhere. It's a good idea, if you really don't want to buy, to have your reasons organized in your mind ahead of time, as they will try to talk you into it unmercifully.

In our case, the presentation lasted about an hour longer than they had promised, but once it was over (and they were not exactly gracious about letting us leave), they didn't bother us anymore, and we had a great vacation.

The timeshare is the Iberostar Tucan. It has very good reviews in Tripadvisor.

After, reading the terms, we discovered we do not qualify as we are both retired.

If, we did qualify, we would have taken the deal. But, we would NEVER BUY a timeshare. Five days in an all-inclusive is about as long as we could handle.
We need more variety & stimulation that what timeshares provide

WOW! Iberostar is doing time shares now?? They have never been a time share resort before!

They are rarely "90 minutes". More like 3-4 hours.

With the disclaimer I have never attended (and never will) attend one. I just know that complaint often comes up from reading reports about timeshare presentations on travel forums!

suze, you are definitely right about the timeshare presentations where they approach you on the street or at the airport and rope you in for a "free breakfast" or whatever. I've heard nightmare stories about tourists being "trapped," locked up in presentation rooms at places they have no way to leave for hours and hours. I'd never consider even acknowledging those pushy time-share guys on the street or at the airport.

But we have found that the ones that are offered personally ahead of time (usually via telephone and then finalized on the computer) and include a three to five day resort vacation at a nominal price can be worth it. We've taken part in about five or six of them over the past twenty years or so ... Cabo, Hawaii, San Francisco, Carmel-By-The-Sea, etc. We're going again in April to one in Cancun for four nights, and then we will travel in the Yucatan for another week on our own.

Yes, there is a time share tour and presentation, and depending on the developer company, they can be pushy or not. Usually they schedule the presentation for the day after your arrival, and then after you get through that, they don't approach you again.

Because they want to impress you with the accommodations in hopes you will cave to their sales pressures, they give you the best room/condo, and the all-inclusive is the highest level ... all free drinks, meals, snacks, etc.

We just always have our plan ahead of time (why we won't sign anything immediately), and stick to it. Personally, I would never ever buy into a time share - too many off the beaten path places I want to go to in the future ... but an occasional low-cost vacation is pretty nice, too.

And I don't feel as if we are doing anything underhanded, as the companies always approach us, and it says in the agreement that we are under no obligation to buy anything. Twice, we have been invited back to different properties by the same company.

My 1st Timeshare Presentation took place in the 1970s in Mazatlan, we received a free breakfast as a promotion...so $1000 discount looks great

Have done this a lot and owned timeshares in the past

most recently at Magen's Bary Resort St. Thomas USVI.

The scam is they high pressure you to buy ALL during your

stay relentlessly after the presentation till you leave.

You have to say NO Gracias a lot and even be mean to make

them stop.

If you are OK with that go for it otherwise

www.mexico.bookit.com www.priceline.com great budget packages

Timeshares almost always bad values going belly up and high

maintenance annual fees whether you stay there or not

that eat you up over time a very bad deal from personal

experience when I was clueless.

So Caveat Emptor,

scdreamer, Thanks for the clarification about the different types of presentations. Appreciate that. I'm still not going to participate and will never own a timeshare but good to understand how things work. Thanks.

I've attended three timeshare presentations here in Oz, each was worth my time for the value received. But I am retired so my time may be valued differently to yours, and I have the hide of a rhinocerous when resisting sales pitches.

One big difference is that over here we pay nothing for the stay apart from about $20 in admin expenses.

The first one resulted from an unsolicited telemarketing call. I though "why not?" All I had to do was drive to the presentation 45 minutes away (we made it a shopping trip to the big city anyway) listen with my wife for 90 minutes, accept a coffee and say no. The Timeshare company was Trendwest (an RCI user). The result was four free nights at the Outrigger in Fiji; we had to make our own way there from Coolangatta but I have lots of FF miles. We rented a car and made it a week by adding a few nights in hotels and had a marvellous time.

A year later they rang again, but this time the telemarketer was in Bangalore and I had to help her with her presentation :) We sat through the 90 minutes again, pressure was a little stronger, had our free coffees and a few months later spent four free nights in Auckland New Zealand. We did the same thing, using FF miles, renting a car and adding nights in hotels in Rotorua, Napier and Wellington.

Blow me down - they rang again the following year! I couldn't believe it. I told them I would never buy and that they were wasting their time. But they insisted they would like to try. Result - a week in Cairns with three of the nights free at their resort. But this time the high-pressure pitch was intense; the girl eventually called her boss over. He kept saying "we can't keep doing this" and I kept wondering why they did.

I was silly enough to add my phone number to the Australian "do not call" telemarketing list later that year. I wish I hadn't, I enjoyed those trips :)

90 min is usually 3 hours-If you don't mind using vacation time for that go for it. We own 2 timeshrares in Mexico & sometimes wnat to know whats new. Anything we order at timeshare is discounted. so worth it for us

You should only go if you're really good at saying no, and absolutely can't be persuaded to change your mind, no matter what, because they will say and do just about anything to get you to buy.

My husband and I go to them all the time, and we find it helpful to do a little research first, and find out what similar timeshares at the same resort are selling for on the resale market -- and bring printouts with us! Last presentation we attended, identical timeshares on the resale market were going for $800-$1,000, that they were selling for over $20,000 at the presentation.

Even after that, they still attempted to sell to us with offers of extra weeks, and even with ridiculous arguments, such as "you wouldn't buy a used TV, would you?" As IF we didn't know any better.

I think it's absurd that you don't qualify for these deals if you're retired. Plenty of retired people have plenty of money----not that I want to buy a timeshare.

I think before dealing you need to check properly. You can check TripAdvisor as well as you can get great information what you need.

Trip Advisor is no way to check properly, it is dominated by destination commercial interests.

While dominated by DEs w/ commercial interests, I think one can glean enough reliable information from TA to make it a valuable resource

Just to clarify....I AM a DE on Trip Advisor. We are just ordinary people who like to travel. I am a school counselor and have no commercial interests what so ever. Most of the DEs are just the same as I am.