Selling time share or membership of “holiday-clubs” is a huge money-earner in just about every holiday resort in Europe. The best timeshare schemes will plunge you into debt for up to twenty five years. The worst of them will sell you shares in something that doesn’t even exist! Yet millions of us get sucked in by timeshare salesmen every year!
The reason for this is – Timeshare sellers are among the best pressure-salesmen in the world. They are highly-trained, highly organised and highly motivated. And ordinary people are defenceless against them! The fact is, once these time-share teams get you in their clutches it is almost impossible to shake them off.
They have ready-made responses to every possible way that you could say “No” to them. They have several ways around every objection that you could possibly raise. You WILL succumb to their pressure. The only way to remain safe from these predators is to avoid them!
Luckily avoiding them is not too difficult – as long as you see them coming! The pressure salesmen are the second stage of the operation. The first stage is the “recruiters”. The recruiter’s job is to find potential customers and lead them to the salesmen like lambs to the slaughter! Recruiters are easy to spot and much easier to get rid of than the expert salesmen. Here’s how to spot them. They are usually attractive and friendly – good at starting a conversation with you for no apparent reason.
They may ask you to help them with a “survey”. Or they may offer you a free competition scratch-card. At some point they will tell you that you have “won” a prize – usually an excursion, a free night in a luxury hotel etc. It will sound like a nice prize – but what you have really won is several hours in the clutches of a pressure sales team.
Don’t let anyone talk you into helping with a survey. Don’t accept free scratch cards. Escape from the recruiters – because you will find it FAR harder to escape from the salesmen.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
This happened to us on our last day in Benidorm. We were walking around reminiscing with little lad about the fortnight we had had and wammo! A young lady came up and we got a free scratchcard and we won some bottles of expense wine…to claim all we had to do was go into this building.
My lad was only young and they had a kids room with TV’s and playstations while we were grilled over two hours. We didn’t sign up and we got the booze, which was rather good but, it spoilt our last day.
Now, this was a few years ago but, I am sure it is still going on so, be courteous but be firm and say NO! And please, carry on walking.