Timeshare-Gifts and your acceptance are the begining of the sale. Are they worth it?

Timeshare-Gifts are REALLY where the sale begins.

These gift offers appeal to everybody's greed.

Remember this about resort timeshare-gifts. The resort offering you these gifts are buying your time. The cost to the developer to get you to the resort is in the $400 to $500 range. When the marketing company the resort hired handed out the gift certificates, the salesman's salary or commission, the staff salary, and other management overhead is considered. It is not a cheap proposition to the developer to give out timeshare-gifts when you consider they must sell at least one customer out of every 10 to stay in business.

Timeshare-gifts are appealing to the most seasoned time share owners. So, even though you might own a week or two of time share, when accepting an invitation to a resort for the gifts, the resort will not give you the gifts until you have completed the 90 minute presentation. The salesperson is required to keep you until a floor manager interviews and releases you. Some resorts require the salesperson, at the outset of the presentation, to go through the timeshare-gift offer and make it understood that in order to receive the gifts you are required to listen to their offer.

TimeShare-gifts of cash, show tickets, and dinner certificates appeal to my wife and me.

For example: My wife and I received a call from Horizons by Marriott Vacation Club in Branson, Missouri, a couple of years back. It was winter where we live, and very cold. The thought of going south for a few days appealed to us. For $99, we would receive gifts of two nights and three days in a Marriott suite, two show tickets, and one dinner ticket. We could schedule the visit anytime within one year.

All we had to do was attend a one hour- and -a -half time share presentation. We informed the caller that we already owned two deeded weeks. That was no problem," Come anyway." In this case, we decided to schedule during the Minnesota Education Association 4-day break. It was a one day drive.

The resort accomodations were excellent, the time share gifts, shows, and dinner were great. We were treated very well by the salespeople. At the begining of the presentation we explained to the salesperson that we had informed the resort, when we booked, that we already owned two weeks, the resort said that was fine, "come anyway". We didn't make a purchase but we would certianly exchange into this 5 star resort.

We knew exactly what to expect because we had paid cash up front in this case, and we enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to exchange one of our deeded time-share weeks into Branson a year later.

One year later while in Branson, Missouri on one of our exchanges, we were solicited by a resort booth representative who was representing The Carriage Place at Surrey Vacation Resort. In exchange for spending 90 minutes with a resort representative, we would receive time-share-gifts of two show tickets of our choice and a dinner certificate . The value of the tickets and the dinner certificate were well over $125 were we to purchase the show tickets ourselves.

We informed the booth representative that we were in Branson using one of our deeded time-share weeks, and since we owned two weeks, we were not interested. He said we were just the kind of people his resort was looking for because we already understood the time-share concept, and that our presentation would be much shorter. He promised us that our visit to the resort would be no longer than one hour, and we would still receive the resort gift offer. We asked him to put that in writing. He did.

When we arrived the next morning, the waiting area was half full. Many more prospective customers came after us. Each person was to fill out a questionaire. We did, and we made a note on the questionaire that we had informed the booth representative that one hour was all that it would take. Even though many people came in after we had completed the questionaire, we were the last couple to be interviewed. This is where time-share-gifts sometimes are not worth it.

Never again will we do that. We were the last people to be interviewed, and we had to explain several times what took place with their booth representative. The resort did not know what to do with us. The sales representative was fine. But we had to go through several managers to explain what took place. They were going to let us go without giving the gifts promised. We said that we did not lie to their representative, and we were entitled to the time-share-gifts as promised. Reluctantly, they gave us the gifts when we put up a mild protest about our treatment.

Over the years there have been some pretty bizarre gifts from timeshare resorts. There have been pretty good gift offers, also. We have taken advantage of some of these offers even though it has taken time out of our vacation schedule. Tell us about offers you have accepted.

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

120.00 CASH 
We went to Gatlinburg for about a week. On the first night down there we stopped for some coupons at a booth. The guy asked us how we would like to make ...

Worldwide Travel Center 
My wife and I responded to a time share presentation offer of two free airline tickets to any place in the continental U.S., Canada or Mexico. I responded ...

Mexican time share gifts. $200 cash 
I've been doing timeshare presentations for the gifts for years. Some salespeople have referred to me as "A PRO". I love going to timeshare presentations ...

Timeshare-Gifts, Are They Worth It?