Been there, done that with Silverleaf... Twice. Once in Galveston and once in Conroe. The one in Galveston lasted about 3-4 hours, the one in Conroe we were out in less than two. It was my wife's idea both times, and we never went on any of the free trips that they gave us. On a side note, the salesman we had in Conroe was a pretty cool dude. College grad, personable, funny, to the point without being too short and elaborative without rambling on. He was a hell of a salesman and I'm not sure that he even knew it. I left him my card to call later in regards to a recruiting opening in our department. A few months later I bumped into him tailgating before a Texans game. He recognized me and thanked me for sparking his interest in recruiting and HR and told me he just started working in HR at some accounting firm downtown. I asked him if he was going to still sell time shares on the weekends... His response: "Hell Naw!" :grin:
I've actually looked into Disney Vacation Club. It's a timeshare but at least it's not for "life". It's more like a lease and hell, it's Disney so they take care of their properties.
I did one in Cozumel about 10 years ago and it was a hard sell for about 90 minutes.....I finally got up and left, I didn't care about the free gifts after I endured that My sister has one and swears by it
we did one at one of the resorts in San Antonio. Took about 60 mins. They really made it sound tempting but we knew we weren't interested. They were cool about it and gave us the family 4 pack of tickets to seaworld and fiesta texas after we declined a couple times. No high pressure. I also know an older retired couple that owns a couple timeshares and they love them but they have disposable income and just travel all the time anyway.
Diamond Resorts and RCI. We use point systems for both. If you pay attention to managing your points it's easy to get 8+ weeks a year. We use excess points for family members and donate at least a couple of the weeks to charity auctions.
Everyone who goes to the presentations is determined not to buy. Yet this is the model that works. The salespeople are very good at their job. Do check secondary market (resales). Often 90% or more discount. And if you're interested, check out the fees....annual fees, trading club fees, exchange fees etc. It's not free vacations for life. But....if you know the costs, and use it, they can be a good deal. We bought a 'points based' club (on ebay after lots of research) and use it about 8-10X per year. So it's been very good for us. But I would not recommend them for most people.
