ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — I had filled out a form to win a Whole Foods gift certificate. Instead I got a phone call from “Hannah” at FantaSea Resorts congratulating me on winning a travel package.
My gift sounded promising: Four airline tickets worth up to $4,500, a weekend at an East Coast resort and more. “All you have to do is come to Atlantic City to pick up your gift,” Hannah said.
The penny dropped. “This is a timeshare pitch, isn’t it?”
It was. I would have to show up at the Flagship resort with an ID, a credit card and sit through a 2 1/2 hour presentation. “There’s no obligation to buy.”
I had zero interest in a timeshare, but my husband and I had never been to Atlantic City and the airline tickets sounded promising. We decided to go.
We told several friends what we were doing and without fail, they said, “Oh, my mother-in-law (or brother-in-law or … ) has a timeshare. Watch out, she never intended to buy one either.”
We registered on a Saturday morning and were seated at a conference room table surrounded by dozens of other couples at tables, all of us getting the pitch.
Our salesman asked us about our family, travel desires, annual travel expenses, where we like to go, what we like to do on vacation and where we’d like to go next. “Argentina. Venice. The Carolinas,” we said.
If we bought a timeshare in Atlantic City, he said, we could exchange it for timeshares around the world.
His pitch was periodically interrupted by a master of ceremonies — a manager with a microphone — noting the stars who’d be performing in Atlantic City in coming weeks: Smokey Robinson, Santana, Sting. And each time someone signed for a timeshare, he’d request “a round of applause for our newest members of the Flagship family” and the room would erupt.
Where’s the money?
We had coffee, water, bathroom breaks and a rundown of investments being made in Atlantic City to compensate for the shuttered Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza and Revel. More than two hours in, we were shown a one-bedroom suite that we’d be buying into. It had oceanfront views, a breezy balcony, marble countertops in the kitchenette and bathroom, king-sized bed and sofa bed.
I was getting antsy. There was no mention of money.
More than 9 million U.S. households own timeshares. According to the American Resort Development Association, the vast majority are happy they do. But about 20 percent regret signing and want out.
We were approaching three hours at the Flagship Resort when our salesman finally pulled out the numbers: The one-bedroom timeshare would cost more than $23,000. We’d get to use it just one week a year. Paid over seven years, that would come to about $400 a month plus annual fees of about $1,000.
We didn’t want the timeshare when we went into the sales meeting, and we definitely didn’t want it after we saw the price.
The tickets are real enough, though they come with strings attached. I was happy to get them, though I would have been just as happy with the Whole Foods gift coupon that I tried to win in the first place.
