The Most Unusual Timeshare Sales Pitch I've Ever Heard
The spot on St. Martin where we were flagged down by Nicole and Celine, or, "the timeshare twins," as my husband Tim and I call them.
by Wendy Perrin
Just one more story from my recent Caribbean adventures before I get back to covering travel deals and advice:
So we're driving through St. Martin when two women wave us down so emphatically that we pull over. We assume we're going to hear "There's a bridge out up ahead!" or something on that order of magnitude. Instead they hand us Scratch & Win "Free Jackpot" tickets, urging us to scratch and find out if we've won a prize.
Tim and I decide to play along, just to see where this might lead. We scratch and--lo and behold--each get the exact same number. The women profess extreme shock at our unbelievable good luck and explain that if we go to the Oyster Bay Beach Resort by 3:00 p.m. that day we can win one of the three prizes listed on the back of the ticket: a $500 shopping credit, a luxury vacation for two, or a video camera. Nicole whips out a form and starts filling it out, instructing us to take it with us to the resort so we could collect our prize and they would collect their $50 commission.
All we had to do to get the prize, they advised, was claim we'd been on the island at least 36 hours (a lie; at that point we'd been there less than a day), claim we were staying in a hotel (as opposed to the villa where we were actually staying), and show up no later than 3:00 p.m. (not to worry about the children: they could swim in the resort's pool while Tim and I sat through the 60- to 90-minute presentation!).
Meet Nicole and Celine, who waved us down as part of an elaborate attempt to entice us into sitting through a timeshare
sales pitch, Feb. 9, 2009.
Needless to say, Tim and I opted to spend our afternoon otherwise. But I thought the story was worth sharing.
What's the most unusual timeshare sales pitch YOU've ever encountered? Please click on "Comments" to tell me about it.
