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| - TIMESHARE SCAM!
First things first - I have NOT stayed at the Grandview Resort. When I checked into my own hotel, The Golden Nugget, I was pulled aside and offered free show tickets or free gambling/food money, for sitting through a "one-hour" presentation on an "up and coming" new resort. They didn't want to sell me anything, they just wanted me to tell my friends about it and consider staying there in the future. We were also told that we would have a fully catered lunch and be back to our hotel in no time. $125 is $125, so my boyfriend and I agreed.
The first red flag was when we went down to catch our ride to Grandview and were told that our one to two hours was suddenly two to three. And that there would be "snacks," not a fully catered lunch.
Once we got to the Grandview we were paired with a nice guy, Blake, who sat with us during an awful and condescending hour-long presentation on the importance of taking a vacation. It was mind numbingly stupid. Once the presentation was over we were taken to the area for the hard sell portion of the timeshare. But first Blake wanted to reiterate to us every vague point that was made during the stupid presentation. When I asked him for some hard numbers he told me that isn't his job and that someone else would come along in a while to talk numbers. Instead, he wanted to show us the unit. He took us in some odd two condo in one units, which they call a two bedroom. Sure, it did have two bedrooms. But also two kitchens, two washers/dryers/ two dining room tables, etc. It was weird. Blake kept pointing out what a beautiful condo it was and I just rolled my eyes and resisted telling him that I had a nicer condo back home in Chicago.
Finally we went back to our little table where BLAKE, not another person, talked to us about numbers. Just about $40k would buy us a weird two bedroom condo, and we would only have to pay a $13k security deposit! Woo Hoo! Just what I came to Vegas to do... pay $13k for a vacation home in the desert. We obviously said no, at which point the head of the Grandview Resorts mafia came over to offer us a deal we couldn't resist. {yeah, right.} He could cut the price in half AND we could somehow get up to SIX weeks of vacation per year. {crickets.}
Mafia Man walked away and when we asked Blake if we could leave he told us that Mafia Man was drawing up the paperwork so we could get our free gifts. Instead, Mafia Man came back with another offer... $9,990. We still said no, and Mafia Man pretty much told us we were being stupid while Blake looked dejected. Blake took us down to another room to get our free gifts but it turned out to be ANOTHER SALES PITCH.
This time we worked with Ben, and the deal offered to us was actually pretty good - $5,000 for a one bedroom timeshare. We seriously considered the offer and tried to figure out the math for how that would match up with future vacations we knew we wanted to take.
My boyfriend is an attorney and hell broke loose when he asked to read the terms of the contract. We were told we couldn't read the contract until AFTER we paid our $890 security deposit. WTF?! When do you EVER pay first, and see the terms later?! We raised a fuss and Ben went to get his manager who actually had the audacity to YELL at us for asking to see the contract. She told us that her brother was a contracts attorney and had read the contract and agreed it was legit, so why would WE need to see the contract?! I interjected at this point and asked her why she was yelling at us, when we were asking for something quite logical when you are about to make a big purchase. She apologized and went to request a contract.
My boyfriend read the contract thoroughly and found a couple of things he didn't like, but nothing too concerning. What was concerning, though, was a piece of paper that shouldn't have been left in there, which was for the seller to rate how the client behaved. Grandview Resorts considers it a negative if you are a lawyer or a CPA. {Two groups of people that are going to question the terms, perhaps?!} They also consider it a negative if you ask too many questions or want to read all the paperwork. {Not shady at all, right?!}
My boyfriend raised this issue to Ben, who tried to claim that the form was for us to rate ourselves. {WTF?!} And then he backed away from that and claimed that what some people see as a negative he sees as a positive, such as reading the contract. When my boyfriend tried to explain that reading the contract wasn't necessarily a bad thing, Ben seemed to get upset that we weren't taking him at his word that it was a good deal and told us he thought it was time for us to go.
Yep, we got kicked out of a timeshare presentation after 4 hours! We were inches from buying and Ben Kicked. Us. out.
Thanks, Grandview/Vacation Village/whichever company you are. Our steak dinner was superb. Thanks for letting us waste so much of your time.
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