My morning started off by being awakened by drunk people in the hallway of our hotel talking loudly and some guys that kept yelling housekeeping in a fake girl's voice. This was around 6:30 this morning, so I was pretty happy about that. I finally gave in and got out of bed around 7 to shower and get ready for the day.
We set out on foot to walk down to Cafe de Monde to have some of these famous beignets and coffee for breakfast. We didn't have a ton of time to spare because we were supposed to be ready for pick up for the time share thing at 9:35, so by the time we arrived at Cafe de Monde we realized that the line was too long to make it back. So we found a small cafe called The Gumbo Pot and had breakfast there instead. We waited for our shuttle to pick us up, and then she dropped us off a just a few blocks away from our hotel so we totally could have just walked there but whatever.
The time share presentation went pretty much like they all do. They ask questions about your vacation habits, they pick your brain for numbers and what you've spent in the past on trips, then they make their package deal sound so fabulous and great. Today we walked over to tour their New Orleans resort and then finally they got down to the numbers of it all. Club Wyndham works on points instead of like a typical time share, but I won't bore you with the particulars. If you want to know how it works, I am sure they would be more than happy to explain it to you. I'll just tell you that we travel enough each year that the 400,000 point plan is really what fits our travel style (meaning the number of day we typically vacation) the most and it comes at the low, low buy-in cost of $100,000 plus some other resort fees. Yeah, you read that correctly: one hundred thousand dollars. Nick and I actually laughed out loud when the guy laid that down on the table. What, you don't have $30k for a down payment? Was this guy serious? Yeah, he was.
So of course then there's the less attractive 200,000 points option without all the VIP perks, and it's only $35,000. We continue to laugh at them and they throw down the "ok well here just try it and see" option which was only $15,000...with a $6,000 down payment. Oh sure, let me just pull that right out of my purse, sir. These people are smoking crack.
Our agreement stated that we owed them 120 minutes of time, and it was now 12:52. They had began the presentation part at 10:05. I was getting annoyed, and here comes one last lady. She's supposedly going to give us the survey to see how our sales guy did....and what does she do?? She starts asking questions and talking numbers. I lost it. At this point I said "Look, we promised you 120 minutes of our time and we have now given you 52 extra minutes. I'm hungry, I'm annoyed, and I'm ready to be done." Well that angered the beast and we could both tell it was extremely difficult for her to maintain a professional composure as she assured me that we were free to go at any time, we just wouldn't get our free gift (which frankly I had forgotten about). I tried really politely to say "That's fine, continue. But I'm finished." She promptly got up, brought back the survey she was supposed to do in the first place, dropped a pen in front of me and said "Fill it out." So I did, and I made sure to remark that they took an extra 52 minutes of my time in the comments section, we picked up our gift card, and we were escorted out.
I'm sure I was talked about and called a few choice names after we left, but really people. Let's be honest. That's ridiculous. I felt bad that I probably set the negative tone for the rest of her day, but I just couldn't take it anymore. NO MEANS NO. And in this case, it also means GO AWAY. I actually gave our sales guy high marks on the survey because despite his sales pitch being for a ridiculously priced vacation club, he did a good job. He was probably lying about all the personal stuff and stories he told us, but whatever...it was believable. He seemed to know what he was talking about. He just really needs to get a real job.
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