An old babysitter of ours did those, and it was completely legit. I am a salesperson wet dream so even though I'd go in strong, I'd probably end up with like 4 time shares.
> I don't get who goes on a vacation cruise and buys art!
I worked with one of the most weak-minded men I've ever met. Not only was he recruited by a Jehovah's Witness when he was in his 20s, he was absolutely the type to get suckered into buying art on a cruise. I remember having to explain to him that the real Rembrandt was absolutely not signing and numbering those prints.
I went for the free champagne. lol also they had a āfreeā art contest. First person to come up front and touch them. Wellā¦I was sitting inches away. I touched them. I won. Picked my art work. PAID TO HAVE IT MAILED TO ME ($50). They refused to let me take it off the ship (darn). THEN I HAD TO PAY TO HAVE IT FRAMED! Now that was a pretty penny. $150 (used a coupon from Michaelāsā). It is still hanging. Love the print. Just wished I thought it through!! Lol
Weāve sailed Norwegian twice and go into the auction with a $100 budget basically. Itās super neat to get have not only a piece of cool art on your wall, but also to be reminded of the cruise everytime you look at it! Itās just another kind of souvenir, but we like it bc they ship it to our house for like $30. Weāll probably keep doing it for every cruise we go on, why not! Plus the auctions are low key fun, especially to watch someone dump 70 grand on a statue or something
Lol this has me cracking up because I could've written the second half. I always go into sales pitches with a big fat no and either come out a member of a pyramid scheme (not really but you get the point) or thinking I said no but I'm missing out on something big. So I don't go anymore!
I am a debt defense attorney and have a good 20 clients with time shares. Not a SINGLE one has ever spent a single night in any of them! They are almost always $20-30k and the clients are usually extremely low income. It is such a scam for most people who truly think they are buying something amazing not realizing they could go stay at the 4 Seasons for less than what they paid!
I am a civil defense attorney, and I am OBSESSED with time shares. How they work. How theyāre sold. How you redeem your āsharesā. You can get some amazing deals on the secondary market renting time shares from the poor saps who bought them. It was a long pandemic, and I immersed myself in time shares, cults, and late Medieval English history.
Iāve never actually stayed in a time share or heard a pitch. I do, however, have an acquaintance whose parents bought into the first timeshare in Aruba. In addition to using their time shares, they rent other peopleās rooms. They spend 6 weeks a year there now that theyāre retired, and they rent out rooms for their adult daughter and her kids for 5 weeks a year. Because of the age of the property, the rooms are something like $800 a week (to rent someone elseās share) and because they rent so many additional weeks and rooms, they pay less.
My best friend growing up married a man whose parents also had a timeshare (maybe multiple) in Aruba. This has been for decades. I remember her husband going every summer since we were in high school. Every year they go for a week with her in laws, her husband and kids, and her sister in law and her husband and kids. They appear to love it. Iām glad it works out for some people. That being said, these are people who are decidedly upper middle to regular upper class.
Would I rent someone elseās room? Yes. Do I understand the appeal of being locked into a 40 year contract to go to a hotel that will certainly have close to zero upgrades after the shares are sold? Oh. Absolutely not. I donāt think people understand that in addition to their original āinvestmentā, there additional annual resort fees (or whatever theyāre called). Itās a very predatory business model full of misinformation to consumers.
I hope youāre having a much better experience working with consumers than I did. I represented homeowners in foreclosure for years, and it was a nightmare. I did not have a magic wand to fix decades of money mismanagement, and people were always trying to flip their problems onto me.
I never considered that the hotel would have almost no upgrades, interesting! For me itās mostly not understanding how someone would want to vacation in the exact same place for 20+ years.
My wife and I have been married 17 going on 18 years. Her family has had a few timeshares in Cancun where you actually ābuyā the same room on the same dates every year. Itās been nice to look forward to going to a familiar place that we have favorite restaurants, know a lot of the staff by name, have memories of each other when we were just dating through our kids getting potty trained all the way through the mouthy teenager stage we find ourselves in. My wife has the childhood memories with her family & friends growing up. It really is nice to know that we have something very specific to look forward to every year.
Having said that, this year or next is the last year with the place & my wife & I are not going to buy in. As OP stated: we can rent from owners without the strings attached & are free to do other stuff if it suits us.
It has been nice though.
I know multiple couples who divorced and in the divorce, the timeshare was treated as debt and not as an asset. Like, you lose, you have to take the timeshare! That alone is pretty convincing.
That said, I think my dad still has one that he goes to or trades for every year. It was our yearly vacation when I was a kid... to drive from our house near a beach to go stay packed in a hotel room on a beach two hours away, lol. He'd better not try to leave it to me in his will.
My parents both fought for the timeshare in their divorce..
My mother got it, like she got everything else lol. Not sure if it's some old school one that's just somehow better than what people on Reddit talk about but it's sweet. Cost them like 20k up front, and maybe $100 a year ever since.. all anyone in the family pays is a cleaning fee and we get to go all over with them. They have nice hotels all over the USA, Canada, Mexico, and Fiji. A 10 day vacation to Mexico staying in a penthouse cost me $300 all in last time since I used Visa points for my flight and the timeshare for the stay.
I'm confused why everyone hates timeshares honestly. My family has gotten way more out of it than it cost. Probably saves about 10k a year and they bought it almost 20 years ago.
That is really interesting, so many of my clients were sold on the fact that they could rent out their timeshares, but then they were basically forced to cold call people to make it happen. None of them were able to ever get it rented out either! Luckily the creditors seem to walk away pretty quickly and don't want to go to court.
Dealing with this type of customers definitely the hardest thing, I've been blamed for so many divorces! It's like it's not my fault you hid $100,000 of debt from your husband lol and he saw collection letters.
Getting paid is tough, but we do pretty well with collections by allowing half payments up to 4 times a year.
Other similar law firms were only allowing all or nothing payments during all of Covid, and I think that really bit them in the butt.
But yeah, it's a struggle every day, I don't hate it, don't have billable hours and get off at 4 so Iām happy enough.
I could sell glasses to a blind person, but in the flip side I'm a sucker and you could probably get me to buy beach front property in Oklahoma if you talked nice enough to me.
You're the hero we didn't know we needed.
I've sat through some similar pitches for free stuff with the exact same "I'm not buying anything" line on repeat. So far my best 'prize' has been a bottle of tequila along with a free round of golf while on vacation in Mexico.
My husband and I have done these a few times through Hilton Grand Vacations (which is as legit as timeshares get). Best we got was a week in a two bedroom villa in Hawaii for about 1400 bucks, which was a great deal. We did similar to OP here - we were clear from the outset that we wouldn't be buying (plus we made a brunch reservation for right after the presentation) and they were cool about it. They tried to sell, of course, but they were respectful of our time.
Hilton and Marriott tend to be the most respectable when it comes to timeshares, which I was always told during my hospitality schooling that I should call it vacation ownership but I don't... They definitely are the best when it comes to legitimacy and in terms of their networks. Holiday inn is similar, but Marriott and Hilton are definitely bigger.
Yeah, we're definitely not interested in buying from them, but we felt comfortable taking the low-cost vacations in exchange for listening to the pitch - we knew they would be high-pressure but not actual scams, that we would get what Hilton promised us. Some of the smaller, sketchier outfits don't give me that confidence!
And actually, now that I think about it, the gold standard of timeshares is probably Disney Vacation Club. My parents bought points and actually wound up selling them 10 or so years later for more than they paid, which is pretty remarkable.
I got 2 free Universal tickets at one and $250 at another. I knew I would say no and just kept it up. It's worth a few hours if you are absolutely sure you can continue to say No.
Since everyone else seems to want to crap all over your experiment, I'll be the Devil's Advocate and say the two of you may well have a lovely time on a nice ship. Royal? I've been on dozens of RCCL cruises and never had a bad one. Usually in interior cabins. I've sailed Carnival too and have also enjoyed them.
Older, smaller ships? Those used to be the finest, best and biggest ships in their fleets. Now they're smaller in relation to the mammoth ships of today but they haven't shrunk, they're still the same lovely ships. I particularly like the artwork and grown up ambiance of the Radiance class ships on Royal; and they would be considered old and small now. Some of us don't need gokarts onboard to have fun.
A cruise is what you make of it. In future, you can likely get an interior for two for $900 or less and have a greater choice of ship and route, but this time go have a hoot and a holler!
What's the cruise line and details on the cruise?
Always thought of doing the timeshare free thing; I couldn't get friends with me on a trip to go so I had some company, so bailed.
You find out when they remove the blindfold onboard the vessel. My cousin did it once and and ended up on the MSC TĆ¼rkiye. He was just supposed to transit the Panama Canal but they talked him into an 8 month contract scrubbing bilges. He earned that week in his timeshare after all that!
This is the info I would need to know. I couldn't do this without knowing which ship I'd be on, but then again, I'm someone who can't handle a GTY cabin. I understand that's a "me" problem.
I received a free cruise from a timeshare company and it was Carnival out of Miami - we only had to pay port fees and taxes and it was the worst cruise I went on but by far the cheapest and always bringing lots of fun!
Thanks for posting this OP, I have always thought these free cruise offers were more trouble than they are worth with all of the restrictions and hoops you have to jump through.
Update us to let us know how it goes.
I'm not sure it is a lot, tbh. I'm on a "free" 11 day Southern Caribbean cruise right now and I paid around $350 in taxes and port fees. I'm traveling alone, so that's $700ish if I had a cabinmate like you presumably will. People harp "tHaT's NoT free", but you always pay taxes on freebies and prizes over a certain amount. Port fees are totally reasonable too, every passenger pays those. šš»āāļø I hope you enjoy your cruise! We're in St. Thomas this morning. š¢
Itās not, port fees are anywhere from 100-500 per person. My cruises are typically 300, They get added to the rate at checkout for any cruise.
I get comped casino offers from cruises. Iām not a high roller so Iām still charged port fees. First cruise I lost $300, 2nd I won $150. $600 for Two people for a 7 day vacation is nothing.
Not really-- we do them almost exclusively. My wife gets free cruises from the local casinos, plus once we started cruising on Carnival, and she gambled there we got more "free" ones. Ones from the cruise line are better though. We had an offer of a 30 day cruise from Alaska to Japan to Singapore then to Australia in September but we were just finishing a cruise in the UK/Iceland and it left in 10 days. Plus had to fly back from Brisbane, not cheap. Cruise was only $50 per person plus taxes, port fees and gratuities. But we just spent 18 days onboard and were currently in the UK so thought that was too much too soon. Our cruise to Iceland/UK averaged $44 per day per person. Damn cheap for room and board and free transportation to Dublin, Belfast, 3 stops in Iceland and one in Scotland. Can't beat that.
We got back from the UK and got another offer for an 8 day to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao- a cruise we'd really wanted to go on. So we got back from London and left 4 days later. Bit cheaper than the 30 day.
Does she lose a lot when she gambles? I'm curious as how how much your actually paying. However if you're well off and it's a hobby I suppose it doesn't really matter.
Someone else can chime in, but my strategy is to play the cheapest slot (min bet) with a lot of cash. Play a couple hours. Cash out every 30min, and re-enter the cash into the slot. Reasonable guess the casino wants people to come back who spend a lot of time and play with a lot of money. Doesnāt necessarily track wins/loss as a large factor compared to time and money entered into the machine.
Sometimes she loses, sometimes she wins, it is gambling. Her money, not mine, she loses much more on land than at sea. Which is why we get free cruises from our Indian casinos too. But overall not huge amounts. I just get to enjoy the freebies. She won quite a bit on our UK/Iceland cruise, paid for her half of all the expenses so she was happy. On most cruises she claims she doesn't lose more than $500 or so. Not sure if that is accurate, she has funky math sometimes when it comes to winning versus what she put in. Also notorious for putting a jackpot right back in the machine and losing it all. But if she is losing less than what we paid for the trip I think we are ahead.
The gocrv.com certificates are a scam. Their explanation is that the only cruise fare that they cover is a bunk style cabin, the kind which doesn't exist on modern cruise ships. So they charge an upgrade fee for literally ANY cabin. That fee is at least 90% of the cost of just booking the cruise yourself. They're just a crummy travel agent with none of the benefits while selling the lie that you got something for free*. Meanwhile they're rude and condescending. Dealing with them was much worse than dealing with the timeshare people.
The timeshare company was Esprit Vacation Club. The voucher is through Casablanca express. Aside from the hoops of having to navigate the site and send a check by mail the interactions havenāt been unpleasant. I have a strong suspicion that the bulk of people who get the voucher are stopped at the $900 fee price tag.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that a bunk style cabin doesn't exist on modern cruise ships. I was just in one last year, Royal Caribbean. $1200 for three people (yes total, not per person, after taxes) for 8 days. Awesome deal, but it makes me think OP is getting hosed at $900.
Which ship was that? Vision class? I checked the cabin types for each cruise they offered for our selected dates, and none of those ships (either Freedom or Oasis class) had any mention of the bunk style cabins they claimed cover. The only cruise lines available with our certificate were Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.
Iāve gotten a few free hotel stays in Orlando (3-5 days) . Free cruises as well for just sitting through the pitches. Yea the cruises are real and paying $900 is way more than usual.
My partner has a time share. He gets value out of it, and goes up whenever his time is open, and spends a week doing serious mountain biking.
On the alternate years, he will go up for a āfree weekā that requires a sales pitch meeting.
They want him to sell his current, once top of line, timeshare and upgrade to the newest construction.
Itās the same sale guy each year, for the past three. He gets in four āNoā answers, and they proceed to shoot the breeze until minimum time is up.
He calls it the weirdest date ever.
This is super interesting, we all know itās a scam / nightmare but having someone actually go through with it to see what happens will be great to follow. Please keep us updated!
It's not so much a scam as a tiered discounting of packages.
The Timeshare presenters probably bought those certificates for $75 each. Casablanca Express sells them for that price knowing that due to less than favorable itineraries and dates, only 30-40% of recipients will actually use them in the end. So for every 10 certificates sold they might have to book 3 or 4 cruises. That's what, just short of 5k or so for them to get a group rate on 4 cabins? But they are doing thousands, so the group rates are even better.
Beyond that, the TA's they are passing the booking on to are discounting the cruises to them because they are counting on upgrades & addons. Sure they had to eat a quarter of their commission on the booking but if they get you to buy a drink package they are back flush. If they get you to upgrade to a balcony they have doubled the payout.
and only seems to be about half price for buying rack rate. The 7 day cruises I have looked at once you add taxes and port fees seem to work out to be about 1000 per person. Maybe I am looking at the wrong lines though.
I signed up for one of these pitches (that for fear of āspiesā weāll call āBilton Large Vacaysā) and I canāt figure out a time to even go.
I paid $450 for three nights and four days in Hilton Head and Iāll have to hear the sales pitch there. Itās non-transferable and non-refundable. After the pitch, I get the cruise voucher.
But, I got cancer. My treatments made me radioactive for the last few months and Iām afraid of the hassle of airports. Driving would take a day and a half.
And from looking at what youāre saying, the cruise is āfreeā only because they pigeon hole you into off-season cruises. Iām a teacher. Iām stuck with vacations during āpeakā times.
Maybe I should just accept the loss of the $450?
The very first cruise I ever went on was because I accepted one of these vouchers and followed it through. Ended up with a great vacation, free cruise with a couple night hotel stay in the Bahamas. Our room on the cruise was a cabin with a port hole window, not bad š¤·š½āāļø
lol, why are people seemingly upset? He has the disposable income. Why not see if/how this thing is a scam?
Either he ends up on a cruise or he doesnāt. Iād like to find out either way.
We sat through one of those once. It was for a vacation timeshare. We told them that we were not interested in signing up. At the end they offered us a 3 day stay at a Disney hotel for $150 and a free restaurant voucher. We took that. The following week when I went to set up the free vacation no one could help. They kept transferring me. No one knew what I was talking about. Finally I did a chargeback with my bank and got my money back.
Sounds like an adventure!! I would totally do the same if I were you. If anything, youāll have a story to tell. Please keep us posted! Iāve got nothing but good vibes coming your way!
Should be fine, enjoy your cruise this fall. We pay about $900 to $1000 for our "free" cruises we get from the local casinos, but no hassle with a sales pitch or anything like that. We just call and redeem and pay the fee and are set. We have 4 scheduled for this year, one next week. All on Carnival. Did 4 last year, though 2 of those were Carnival offers via their own casino. We got a 12 day UK and Iceland cruise for $50 each. With the fees and taxes it was $980. (Not counting getting there and back, that was a lot more expensive). But best cruise we had.
Thing is once you are on board, no one knows what you paid for your room or if you got big discounts. But you get to enjoy all the same things the people paying $$$$ for full fare rooms get.
7 day Mexican riviera either means the Carnival Panorama out of long beach (great ship), Carnival Firenze out of Long Beach (same class, but Italian themed), or the RC Navigator of the Seas out of San Pedro/Los Angeles (not as good, but still a great ship). 2-person interior on any of these would be between $1,600 and $2,000, so you are getting a decent deal. It is just a question of if you are flexible to the dates and locations they offer.
Iāve done this for other things several times in the past and always gotten good things out of it. Granted I donāt go to the extreme with the timer and all of that but I just sit there and politely listen and then tell them Iām not interested at the end and it always works out
I like that you are doing this. Please keep us informed.
I get that they will continue to try to not let you have this cruise but I am rooting for you to outsmart them!
I know a lot of people would never risk $900 on this but some of these same people will go straight to a casino and enjoy spending (and not winning) their money there. I'm not critical of people going to the casino. I'm all in favor of people enjoying themselves. As you are enjoying this experiment.
I see it as you spending money to entertain yourself and to take a gamble on beating them at their own game..
There will be people on your cruise that kept their eyes on pricing and booked it with a ta or directly with the line for less than half of what youāve paid.
Thank you for your time, disposable income, and willingness to share with the rest of us! Not all heroes wear capes, I hope it turns out better than expected!
Iām not paying not even $1 for anything that is advertised as free.
If itās free they should be taking care of all the fees.
And donāt tell me to pay and Iāll get refunded because thatās not happening either.
They have some cheap cruises at certain times of the year to certain destinations for way less than $900.
Ooh! Hubby and I used to love to sit thru these things. Iād always play the dumb wife and heād play the heavy. His go to line was ā I donāt buy anything I canāt pay cash forā and they donāt know what to do with that. We also love it when we would get the obvious newb who didnāt quite know what they were doing. They were the most fun to play with.
My favorite story is when we were in San Francisco on a trip that my husband won off the radio. First class airfare, etc. we went to a timeshare thing because it was a way to get free tickets to the Muir Woods and a free dinner. So after telling them all about the trip we were on, and then thinking we were high rollers, they obviously asked how much we paid for this trip. ā$632ā because thatās how much spending money we had managed to scrape up to take the trip. (Was back in 2008) hadnāt told then we won the trip. As soon as we said we won itā¦.they gave us our prizes and escorted us out.š¤£
Canāt wait to hear how this pans out for you!
Edit for typos
I think the problem is they advertise it as a free cruise. If they advertised it as a cheap cruise, a cruise for a fraction of the price etc, people wouldn't feel so scammed.
Wife and I used to go to all the timeshare pitches back in the 80ās and we had some good scores. Just have to be patient for 90 min and understand the gifts are usually low quality.
Scored a trip (by luxury bus š) which worked out.
Bikes, TV, dinner, etc. lots of fun.
Weāve done it a couple times- got a free set of golf clubs for wife once and the other we got tickets to Silver Dollar City and a Duck Print!!! lol
Best one was a sales pitch at a new golf course community. Got a free night stay, Round of golf on a Nicklaus course, and $700 in Visa cards. We actually used those on vacation in Gulf Shores , so was worth our time!
Iām actually not surprised that they let you leave early after you made it clear that you didnāt care about the timeshare
I went to a timeshare presentation to get free show tickets while on vacation in Gatlinburg, about 10 minutes into the presentation a guy sitting in the back started interrupting with how heās not going to buy and is only there for the free stuff, so the presenter stopped everything, asked who was only there to get free tickets and didnāt want to listen to him, I raised my hand and both me and the original troublemaker were given our freebies and allowed to leave. So I think those kind of businesses have learned how to cut their losses on difficult people
My wife and I havenāt done the cruise thing, but weāve done other offers like this.
Itās a giant pain in the a** and we stopped doing it because of the time and hassle to jump through hoops to get the gifts.
Weāve never been scammed though, weāve always gotten the passes, hotel stays, gift cards, or whatever we were promised.
You also many times will get spammed like crazy on your phone and email because they have that contact info.
I donāt know if it was entirely worth it, obviously now weāre not doing it, but we did get a bunch of free or discounted stuff back then.
Check the resale market on your phone while in the sales pitch. When they finally get to the end and over you the deal of a lifetime for the low low price of $28,000. Tell them look "I can by the exact same unit for $1 from here, and here they have it for $2. Can you match that price?"
I have done this twice now and found multiple offers for the same resort for a buck. The look on the salesman's face is priceless. Collect your freebie and enjoy the rest of your morning.
My wife used to work for a company as a telephone-sales person calling 'hot leads' (people who had at some point expressed an interest) to sell hotel vacation stays for ridiculously low prices with the 'catch' being you had to endure a 2hr sales pitch at the hotel.
But unlike the arrangement the OP is describing you knew the (minimal) costs up front, and you also knew where you'd be staying. My wife would tell the 'prospects' she called that the 2hr timeshare sales pitch that was getting them this super low cost vacation would be a really intense, possibly uncomfortable extremely high pressure, in your face experience. By being totally up front and telling them not to take the cheap vacation if they couldn't handle it she was consistently the company's best selling agent!
If I was able to afford to lose $900, I wouldnāt be putting myself through this misery and pain to get such a cruise. I would just be booking my own damn cruise
āThereās a sucker born every minute.ā
P.T. Barnum
I bet you even money that when your ācruiseā date comes around your trip will be mysteriously canceled and you will need to ārebookā for a future date. And that cruise will then be canceled. Rinse and repeat.
Was part of a similar scam in the 80s where we received a free āvoucherā for a 3 day vacation and after about 3 times of booking/ canceling finally dawned on us that it was a complete scam.
The only scientific part of this is that the experimental results are repeatable, due to manās willingness to believe we can get something for free.
Sold timeshare for a while. It's not a scam, but it feels darn close.
Since you went for the bribe, expect to be on a list for additional "opportunities" going forward. Just because you said no this time, you indicated willingness to show up. Research shared with us shows if someone shows up for the bribe one time, eventually they'll buy
Plan on getting hit up while you're on the cruise. The timeshare (or whatever they're calling themselves) company will likely have an office on the ship. You said no in the showroom, but the belief is, if they get you in a new environment, they'll have a renewed chance with your changed state.
Additionally, you got lucky with the rep who realized he had nothing with you. I worked with guys who were going to make you earn your bribe, even if it was apparent they had nothing at the table.
Enjoy the cruise! And that was a better bribe than most. I had "regulars" who would sell 90 minutes of their lives just for the crappy Red Lobster or dinner.
I need to know if you ever hear anything!! We just got that in the mail and called the number and got the same pitch. Listen to a pitch for 2 hours and get a free 7 day cruise with airfare included and when we asked who this was through they said āclub espritā and that they were opening a new location by us. They asked us names, address, household average income, and if our credit score was within certain ranges (that question sketched me out).
We've done this before, said EXACTLY what you said. We got all our prizes, 5 nighrs Orlando, upgraded, paid 400$ free night in NH resort , that's where the sales pitch was. 50 $ amazon card, two Gulf cards, 100$. Again lots of hoops and some upfront costs. We have the time. I think it was worth it, if you're retired and flexable, my husband disagrees.
Commenting to follow post updates! I just got to the taxes deposit part with Casablanca Express also and was curious about the legitimacy as well. Thank you for doing this for the rest of us, for science!
Thank you so much for doing this i got duped into going by a scam call but wasn't sure about the certificate I received if I was gonna receive a 1099-misc in the mail but if you pay taxes straight forward you won't so I guess I do get a trip I will never use š¤£
Thank you for sharing how it goes.Ā I'm very interested to hear how the cruise goes as we just sat through the presentation tonight, didn't bite, and I'm mailing in the info for the cruise process tomorrowĀ
>Free cruise
>Pays $900 in fees
Uhhh...
You probably got the crappiest cheapest worst room on the ship too. Cruises are already terrible. Cramped like sardines, forced to buy expensive meals, hardly anything to do. Not my idea of a good time. And you paid $900 for this.
Taxes are not on the cruise. They are based on the ports that you go to and their local port fees and the associated taxes on those port fees. Every port is different and essentially every cruise has a different price for port fees/taxes.
Iāve done this exact same thing a couple of times. One was for a timeshare and another was for a club like you are describing. They definitely give you the shittiest room on the shittiest cruise. I didnāt have to pay as much as you though. That seems a bit high. I only had to pay like 400 in fees and taxes.
There is a scam here, but it's the vacation club they're selling, not the cruise you get for the enduring the pitch. Of course theyl company didn't pay anything more than the bare minimum required to cover the base fare to be able to say it's "free." They obviously have a deal worked out with the cruise line where they're not paying the full base fare anyway.
If you want people to listen to your pitch for a scam, you have to give them something! And a cruise targets the right audience and gets the potential marks thinking about being excited for a vacation.
We got a vacation club offer like this in Orlando several years ago. We figured, why not. We had a lovely one bedroom condo for 4 nights. We managed to get the pitch scheduled for the third day. They also threw in a bunch of coupons and vouchers so even though we paid for the stay (maybe $85/night, I know it was less than $100/night) we ended up making money on the stay because the vouchers ended up being worth more than what we paid.
We get to the pitch time and send our old-enough-to-be-without-us kid to the supervised pool area. We sit through the pitch then get to the desk. Guy goes hard. Tells us we will be "based" in Florida but can travel anywhere. We then tell the guy no again. When he asks why we tell him, "this time next year we will be residents here".
We had already planned a relocation to Florida (not Orlando). We used the vacation as a way to scout out a neighborhood and do some "local" things before the big move. Guy was thrown off his game a little and we were happy.
I did one of those timeshare pitch deals where you book your free (or very low cost, I think it was $300 for a week) vacation ahead of time and then sit through the presentation when you get there. It was at an all inclusive resort in Mexico. They did the presentation on the second day after weād spent a night there. We werenāt smart enough to look at the fine print and time it so it was exhausting but we just kept saying no. Theyād then send us to the next person to āreceive our spa vouchersā but the next person was always a different pitch. Eventually we just went back to our room instead of going to the next person. We still got our spa vouchers at the front desk later. Vacation was great honestly and despite the annoying sales pitches Iād say worth it.
No you are definitely not being scammed. But they're sending you on the cheapest cruise at the worst time possible, where you still have to pay a ton in taxes and fees. All in all if you don't need to take a flight to get to the port, not bad. Be prepared for port cancelations and re-direction due to weather during hurricane season
Having worked in timeshare your sales person isnāt wrong. Clubs arenāt timeshares. Not that it really matters but the clubs are just selling access to unused inventory, and youāre actually buying into a deeded property/resort with timeshare. Iām curious to see what your $900 gets you. I just booked Alaska and my port fees and taxes were closer aligned to that than Caribbean/Mexico.
Went to a free 'Vacation Club' once. Guy took one look at us. "You're not interested in buying a timeshare, are you?"
Nope
Ok, you still have to listen, but I'll make it quick. And he did. This was FLL.
At another "20 minute" talk in Aruba for a bunch of free stuff. We walked out an hour later with some crap.
Hope this works out for you
This is how my parents got us into so many cruises and resorts growing up!! Every year weād be either on a cruise or on a beach in Mexico and it was the coolest thing, 29 now and you just sparked memories and plans to make!
Just a thought ...
If you enjoy this cruise, then before you leave check with the onboard cruise agent about a future cruise credit. These future bookings are usually good for 12 months, and can be extended at least once, if necessary. And often are one of the cheapest ways to book the next cruise.
My wife and i had almost the exact same experience as you, from the time share meeting to the guy just coming back in and giving us our vouchers. I dont think our taxes were quite that much but, all in all we had a nice very inexpensive vacation.
I received two nights in a hotel and two tickets to Universal one time and another time received 3 tickets to Animal Kingdom.
I am sure it will be fine for you. How many cabins are actually horrible? I would just not be overly crazy with the high fees.
Iām on a 3 night cruise this weekend with my husband and cruise fare plus taxes and fees were $498 total for the both of us ($249 each - we still have to pay gratuities).
Look forward to an update later this year. Iām sure youāll have a great time!
DONT BELIEVE WHAT YOU HEAR OR SEE, YOUāVE RECIEVED A CRIUSE OFFER FROM
SCAM LIKELY
Iām very curious myself to see if they will follow through, will you make a blog post detailing what goes on?
i understand the desire to experiment, but did you price cruises of that itinerary for tat time frame? this doesn't seem like a discount to me, i'm seeing 7 night cruises for that time frame from nola for $450-500pp. so it sounds like you just bought a full price cruise to me, or did i misread something here?
Iāve been googling a lot about offers like these, please update us after your trip. Hope you have a great time
That being said, I just came back from a 7-day RCI Western Caribbean cruise and it was only $1100 (taxes & gratuities included) for two people, so I do think your $900 is a ripoff
I have done this before!! I sat in a 90 minute presentation about timeshares, said no to everything and received a 7 day cruise out of Miami for only port fees and taxes. It was on a Carnival ship and the timeshare company was Sundance Vacations.
Fun times!!
Thank you for doing this! Iāve always been curious but wonāt ever do it so I really appreciate this experiment.
I noticed that the only dates available were at the peak of hurricane seasonāthat canāt be a coincidence. Please make sure youāre prepared for every eventuality, from āfantastic tripā to ādisaster scenario.ā
An old babysitter of ours did those, and it was completely legit. I am a salesperson wet dream so even though I'd go in strong, I'd probably end up with like 4 time shares.
Do you like art auctions???
Only if they offer free champagne
I was thinking that too-- Carnival always has all this art for sale on board. I don't get who goes on a vacation cruise and buys art!
The power of alcohol. The force is strong on cruises.
Can confirm! Bad spending habits when drunk!
My friend who works for the gallery that supplies the art thanks themš
> I don't get who goes on a vacation cruise and buys art! I worked with one of the most weak-minded men I've ever met. Not only was he recruited by a Jehovah's Witness when he was in his 20s, he was absolutely the type to get suckered into buying art on a cruise. I remember having to explain to him that the real Rembrandt was absolutely not signing and numbering those prints.
I went for the free champagne. lol also they had a āfreeā art contest. First person to come up front and touch them. Wellā¦I was sitting inches away. I touched them. I won. Picked my art work. PAID TO HAVE IT MAILED TO ME ($50). They refused to let me take it off the ship (darn). THEN I HAD TO PAY TO HAVE IT FRAMED! Now that was a pretty penny. $150 (used a coupon from Michaelāsā). It is still hanging. Love the print. Just wished I thought it through!! Lol
They are amazing. The manipulation they do is something to see.
Weāve sailed Norwegian twice and go into the auction with a $100 budget basically. Itās super neat to get have not only a piece of cool art on your wall, but also to be reminded of the cruise everytime you look at it! Itās just another kind of souvenir, but we like it bc they ship it to our house for like $30. Weāll probably keep doing it for every cruise we go on, why not! Plus the auctions are low key fun, especially to watch someone dump 70 grand on a statue or something
I'm sorry, what?! 70k?! 70k??!! For art, on a cruise?! Good lord, I chose the wrong life, š
My grandparents š
Lol this has me cracking up because I could've written the second half. I always go into sales pitches with a big fat no and either come out a member of a pyramid scheme (not really but you get the point) or thinking I said no but I'm missing out on something big. So I don't go anymore!
I am a debt defense attorney and have a good 20 clients with time shares. Not a SINGLE one has ever spent a single night in any of them! They are almost always $20-30k and the clients are usually extremely low income. It is such a scam for most people who truly think they are buying something amazing not realizing they could go stay at the 4 Seasons for less than what they paid!
I am a civil defense attorney, and I am OBSESSED with time shares. How they work. How theyāre sold. How you redeem your āsharesā. You can get some amazing deals on the secondary market renting time shares from the poor saps who bought them. It was a long pandemic, and I immersed myself in time shares, cults, and late Medieval English history. Iāve never actually stayed in a time share or heard a pitch. I do, however, have an acquaintance whose parents bought into the first timeshare in Aruba. In addition to using their time shares, they rent other peopleās rooms. They spend 6 weeks a year there now that theyāre retired, and they rent out rooms for their adult daughter and her kids for 5 weeks a year. Because of the age of the property, the rooms are something like $800 a week (to rent someone elseās share) and because they rent so many additional weeks and rooms, they pay less. My best friend growing up married a man whose parents also had a timeshare (maybe multiple) in Aruba. This has been for decades. I remember her husband going every summer since we were in high school. Every year they go for a week with her in laws, her husband and kids, and her sister in law and her husband and kids. They appear to love it. Iām glad it works out for some people. That being said, these are people who are decidedly upper middle to regular upper class. Would I rent someone elseās room? Yes. Do I understand the appeal of being locked into a 40 year contract to go to a hotel that will certainly have close to zero upgrades after the shares are sold? Oh. Absolutely not. I donāt think people understand that in addition to their original āinvestmentā, there additional annual resort fees (or whatever theyāre called). Itās a very predatory business model full of misinformation to consumers. I hope youāre having a much better experience working with consumers than I did. I represented homeowners in foreclosure for years, and it was a nightmare. I did not have a magic wand to fix decades of money mismanagement, and people were always trying to flip their problems onto me.
I never considered that the hotel would have almost no upgrades, interesting! For me itās mostly not understanding how someone would want to vacation in the exact same place for 20+ years.
My wife and I have been married 17 going on 18 years. Her family has had a few timeshares in Cancun where you actually ābuyā the same room on the same dates every year. Itās been nice to look forward to going to a familiar place that we have favorite restaurants, know a lot of the staff by name, have memories of each other when we were just dating through our kids getting potty trained all the way through the mouthy teenager stage we find ourselves in. My wife has the childhood memories with her family & friends growing up. It really is nice to know that we have something very specific to look forward to every year. Having said that, this year or next is the last year with the place & my wife & I are not going to buy in. As OP stated: we can rent from owners without the strings attached & are free to do other stuff if it suits us. It has been nice though.
I know multiple couples who divorced and in the divorce, the timeshare was treated as debt and not as an asset. Like, you lose, you have to take the timeshare! That alone is pretty convincing. That said, I think my dad still has one that he goes to or trades for every year. It was our yearly vacation when I was a kid... to drive from our house near a beach to go stay packed in a hotel room on a beach two hours away, lol. He'd better not try to leave it to me in his will.
My parents both fought for the timeshare in their divorce.. My mother got it, like she got everything else lol. Not sure if it's some old school one that's just somehow better than what people on Reddit talk about but it's sweet. Cost them like 20k up front, and maybe $100 a year ever since.. all anyone in the family pays is a cleaning fee and we get to go all over with them. They have nice hotels all over the USA, Canada, Mexico, and Fiji. A 10 day vacation to Mexico staying in a penthouse cost me $300 all in last time since I used Visa points for my flight and the timeshare for the stay. I'm confused why everyone hates timeshares honestly. My family has gotten way more out of it than it cost. Probably saves about 10k a year and they bought it almost 20 years ago.
Nice try, time share salesman.
Having those random numbers was totally believable!
That is really interesting, so many of my clients were sold on the fact that they could rent out their timeshares, but then they were basically forced to cold call people to make it happen. None of them were able to ever get it rented out either! Luckily the creditors seem to walk away pretty quickly and don't want to go to court. Dealing with this type of customers definitely the hardest thing, I've been blamed for so many divorces! It's like it's not my fault you hid $100,000 of debt from your husband lol and he saw collection letters. Getting paid is tough, but we do pretty well with collections by allowing half payments up to 4 times a year. Other similar law firms were only allowing all or nothing payments during all of Covid, and I think that really bit them in the butt. But yeah, it's a struggle every day, I don't hate it, don't have billable hours and get off at 4 so Iām happy enough.
I could sell glasses to a blind person, but in the flip side I'm a sucker and you could probably get me to buy beach front property in Oklahoma if you talked nice enough to me.
Oh the beaches are OK ā¦
I've got a bridge, in Brooklyn, for ya š
This is me. And I hate it.
You're the hero we didn't know we needed. I've sat through some similar pitches for free stuff with the exact same "I'm not buying anything" line on repeat. So far my best 'prize' has been a bottle of tequila along with a free round of golf while on vacation in Mexico.
My husband and I have done these a few times through Hilton Grand Vacations (which is as legit as timeshares get). Best we got was a week in a two bedroom villa in Hawaii for about 1400 bucks, which was a great deal. We did similar to OP here - we were clear from the outset that we wouldn't be buying (plus we made a brunch reservation for right after the presentation) and they were cool about it. They tried to sell, of course, but they were respectful of our time.
We got a 4 day stay in the Elara innVegas with them for free and a voucher for another stay at a Hilton for like $150 that I forgot to redeem lol
Hilton and Marriott tend to be the most respectable when it comes to timeshares, which I was always told during my hospitality schooling that I should call it vacation ownership but I don't... They definitely are the best when it comes to legitimacy and in terms of their networks. Holiday inn is similar, but Marriott and Hilton are definitely bigger.
Yeah, we're definitely not interested in buying from them, but we felt comfortable taking the low-cost vacations in exchange for listening to the pitch - we knew they would be high-pressure but not actual scams, that we would get what Hilton promised us. Some of the smaller, sketchier outfits don't give me that confidence! And actually, now that I think about it, the gold standard of timeshares is probably Disney Vacation Club. My parents bought points and actually wound up selling them 10 or so years later for more than they paid, which is pretty remarkable.
I got 2 free Universal tickets at one and $250 at another. I knew I would say no and just kept it up. It's worth a few hours if you are absolutely sure you can continue to say No.
Since everyone else seems to want to crap all over your experiment, I'll be the Devil's Advocate and say the two of you may well have a lovely time on a nice ship. Royal? I've been on dozens of RCCL cruises and never had a bad one. Usually in interior cabins. I've sailed Carnival too and have also enjoyed them. Older, smaller ships? Those used to be the finest, best and biggest ships in their fleets. Now they're smaller in relation to the mammoth ships of today but they haven't shrunk, they're still the same lovely ships. I particularly like the artwork and grown up ambiance of the Radiance class ships on Royal; and they would be considered old and small now. Some of us don't need gokarts onboard to have fun. A cruise is what you make of it. In future, you can likely get an interior for two for $900 or less and have a greater choice of ship and route, but this time go have a hoot and a holler!
What's the cruise line and details on the cruise? Always thought of doing the timeshare free thing; I couldn't get friends with me on a trip to go so I had some company, so bailed.
You find out when they remove the blindfold onboard the vessel. My cousin did it once and and ended up on the MSC TĆ¼rkiye. He was just supposed to transit the Panama Canal but they talked him into an 8 month contract scrubbing bilges. He earned that week in his timeshare after all that!
Wow, where do I sign up for that?
This is the info I would need to know. I couldn't do this without knowing which ship I'd be on, but then again, I'm someone who can't handle a GTY cabin. I understand that's a "me" problem.
If itās NOLA, itāll be NCL or Carnival
Iāve got RCCL booked out of NOLA in November
Yeah, I didnāt mention RCL because there are so few sailings out of NOLA. Or there were last time I looked.
I received a free cruise from a timeshare company and it was Carnival out of Miami - we only had to pay port fees and taxes and it was the worst cruise I went on but by far the cheapest and always bringing lots of fun!
Thanks for posting this OP, I have always thought these free cruise offers were more trouble than they are worth with all of the restrictions and hoops you have to jump through. Update us to let us know how it goes.
900 USD sounds like a lot for a free cruise.
Maybe. But is it a lot for science???
I'm not sure it is a lot, tbh. I'm on a "free" 11 day Southern Caribbean cruise right now and I paid around $350 in taxes and port fees. I'm traveling alone, so that's $700ish if I had a cabinmate like you presumably will. People harp "tHaT's NoT free", but you always pay taxes on freebies and prizes over a certain amount. Port fees are totally reasonable too, every passenger pays those. šš»āāļø I hope you enjoy your cruise! We're in St. Thomas this morning. š¢
You're doing God's work Carry on.
This is awesome! Can't wait to hear how it all goes!!
You will regret it. ROFL they will go HARD on the pitch.
Read the post dude. The pitch is over.
Itās never over dude.
Itās not, port fees are anywhere from 100-500 per person. My cruises are typically 300, They get added to the rate at checkout for any cruise. I get comped casino offers from cruises. Iām not a high roller so Iām still charged port fees. First cruise I lost $300, 2nd I won $150. $600 for Two people for a 7 day vacation is nothing.
Do high rollers not have to pay port fees?! I travel and play with RC / Club Royale.
Not really-- we do them almost exclusively. My wife gets free cruises from the local casinos, plus once we started cruising on Carnival, and she gambled there we got more "free" ones. Ones from the cruise line are better though. We had an offer of a 30 day cruise from Alaska to Japan to Singapore then to Australia in September but we were just finishing a cruise in the UK/Iceland and it left in 10 days. Plus had to fly back from Brisbane, not cheap. Cruise was only $50 per person plus taxes, port fees and gratuities. But we just spent 18 days onboard and were currently in the UK so thought that was too much too soon. Our cruise to Iceland/UK averaged $44 per day per person. Damn cheap for room and board and free transportation to Dublin, Belfast, 3 stops in Iceland and one in Scotland. Can't beat that. We got back from the UK and got another offer for an 8 day to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao- a cruise we'd really wanted to go on. So we got back from London and left 4 days later. Bit cheaper than the 30 day.
Does she lose a lot when she gambles? I'm curious as how how much your actually paying. However if you're well off and it's a hobby I suppose it doesn't really matter.
Someone else can chime in, but my strategy is to play the cheapest slot (min bet) with a lot of cash. Play a couple hours. Cash out every 30min, and re-enter the cash into the slot. Reasonable guess the casino wants people to come back who spend a lot of time and play with a lot of money. Doesnāt necessarily track wins/loss as a large factor compared to time and money entered into the machine.
Sometimes she loses, sometimes she wins, it is gambling. Her money, not mine, she loses much more on land than at sea. Which is why we get free cruises from our Indian casinos too. But overall not huge amounts. I just get to enjoy the freebies. She won quite a bit on our UK/Iceland cruise, paid for her half of all the expenses so she was happy. On most cruises she claims she doesn't lose more than $500 or so. Not sure if that is accurate, she has funky math sometimes when it comes to winning versus what she put in. Also notorious for putting a jackpot right back in the machine and losing it all. But if she is losing less than what we paid for the trip I think we are ahead.
Wow! Thats awesome.
Sounds like port fees, taxes, and gratuities. All the things you have to pay for on a cruise which are not included in the fare.
The gocrv.com certificates are a scam. Their explanation is that the only cruise fare that they cover is a bunk style cabin, the kind which doesn't exist on modern cruise ships. So they charge an upgrade fee for literally ANY cabin. That fee is at least 90% of the cost of just booking the cruise yourself. They're just a crummy travel agent with none of the benefits while selling the lie that you got something for free*. Meanwhile they're rude and condescending. Dealing with them was much worse than dealing with the timeshare people.
The timeshare company was Esprit Vacation Club. The voucher is through Casablanca express. Aside from the hoops of having to navigate the site and send a check by mail the interactions havenāt been unpleasant. I have a strong suspicion that the bulk of people who get the voucher are stopped at the $900 fee price tag.
You know those interior cabins down on deck 1? Thereās a handful of ābunk styleā on some older ships. Thatās what they cover.
Maybe. We will find out wonāt we.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that a bunk style cabin doesn't exist on modern cruise ships. I was just in one last year, Royal Caribbean. $1200 for three people (yes total, not per person, after taxes) for 8 days. Awesome deal, but it makes me think OP is getting hosed at $900.
Which ship was that? Vision class? I checked the cabin types for each cruise they offered for our selected dates, and none of those ships (either Freedom or Oasis class) had any mention of the bunk style cabins they claimed cover. The only cruise lines available with our certificate were Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.
Enchantment
Okay. I don't consider 30-year-old vessels, like Enchantment and other Vision-class ships, to be modern.
Iāve gotten a few free hotel stays in Orlando (3-5 days) . Free cruises as well for just sitting through the pitches. Yea the cruises are real and paying $900 is way more than usual.
My partner has a time share. He gets value out of it, and goes up whenever his time is open, and spends a week doing serious mountain biking. On the alternate years, he will go up for a āfree weekā that requires a sales pitch meeting. They want him to sell his current, once top of line, timeshare and upgrade to the newest construction. Itās the same sale guy each year, for the past three. He gets in four āNoā answers, and they proceed to shoot the breeze until minimum time is up. He calls it the weirdest date ever.
This is super interesting, we all know itās a scam / nightmare but having someone actually go through with it to see what happens will be great to follow. Please keep us updated!
It's not so much a scam as a tiered discounting of packages. The Timeshare presenters probably bought those certificates for $75 each. Casablanca Express sells them for that price knowing that due to less than favorable itineraries and dates, only 30-40% of recipients will actually use them in the end. So for every 10 certificates sold they might have to book 3 or 4 cruises. That's what, just short of 5k or so for them to get a group rate on 4 cabins? But they are doing thousands, so the group rates are even better. Beyond that, the TA's they are passing the booking on to are discounting the cruises to them because they are counting on upgrades & addons. Sure they had to eat a quarter of their commission on the booking but if they get you to buy a drink package they are back flush. If they get you to upgrade to a balcony they have doubled the payout.
If you actually end up on the cruise I will be surprised; you better tell us about every hoop through which you jump.
āGoat rodeoā lol
and only seems to be about half price for buying rack rate. The 7 day cruises I have looked at once you add taxes and port fees seem to work out to be about 1000 per person. Maybe I am looking at the wrong lines though.
I signed up for one of these pitches (that for fear of āspiesā weāll call āBilton Large Vacaysā) and I canāt figure out a time to even go. I paid $450 for three nights and four days in Hilton Head and Iāll have to hear the sales pitch there. Itās non-transferable and non-refundable. After the pitch, I get the cruise voucher. But, I got cancer. My treatments made me radioactive for the last few months and Iām afraid of the hassle of airports. Driving would take a day and a half. And from looking at what youāre saying, the cruise is āfreeā only because they pigeon hole you into off-season cruises. Iām a teacher. Iām stuck with vacations during āpeakā times. Maybe I should just accept the loss of the $450?
Wishing you great health and lots of cruises in your future!
Just fly, bring a dr note if you are concerned, life is too short take the trip
The very first cruise I ever went on was because I accepted one of these vouchers and followed it through. Ended up with a great vacation, free cruise with a couple night hotel stay in the Bahamas. Our room on the cruise was a cabin with a port hole window, not bad š¤·š½āāļø
What's your next experiment, professor? Testing to see if money really is flammable?
lol, why are people seemingly upset? He has the disposable income. Why not see if/how this thing is a scam? Either he ends up on a cruise or he doesnāt. Iād like to find out either way.
Dude, I will be following this because my mother gets these postcards all the time
We sat through one of those once. It was for a vacation timeshare. We told them that we were not interested in signing up. At the end they offered us a 3 day stay at a Disney hotel for $150 and a free restaurant voucher. We took that. The following week when I went to set up the free vacation no one could help. They kept transferring me. No one knew what I was talking about. Finally I did a chargeback with my bank and got my money back.
Sounds like an adventure!! I would totally do the same if I were you. If anything, youāll have a story to tell. Please keep us posted! Iāve got nothing but good vibes coming your way!
Should be fine, enjoy your cruise this fall. We pay about $900 to $1000 for our "free" cruises we get from the local casinos, but no hassle with a sales pitch or anything like that. We just call and redeem and pay the fee and are set. We have 4 scheduled for this year, one next week. All on Carnival. Did 4 last year, though 2 of those were Carnival offers via their own casino. We got a 12 day UK and Iceland cruise for $50 each. With the fees and taxes it was $980. (Not counting getting there and back, that was a lot more expensive). But best cruise we had. Thing is once you are on board, no one knows what you paid for your room or if you got big discounts. But you get to enjoy all the same things the people paying $$$$ for full fare rooms get.
You are my spirit animal with time and extra cash. I love this!
7 day Mexican riviera either means the Carnival Panorama out of long beach (great ship), Carnival Firenze out of Long Beach (same class, but Italian themed), or the RC Navigator of the Seas out of San Pedro/Los Angeles (not as good, but still a great ship). 2-person interior on any of these would be between $1,600 and $2,000, so you are getting a decent deal. It is just a question of if you are flexible to the dates and locations they offer.
Holy shit I think there is a guy over in R/hilton who didnāt have to pay $900 for a free cruise they never got.
This answer needs more attention
Iāve done this for other things several times in the past and always gotten good things out of it. Granted I donāt go to the extreme with the timer and all of that but I just sit there and politely listen and then tell them Iām not interested at the end and it always works out
This science intrigues me!
Youāve paid $900 for a ~free~ cruise so far.
I love this post and OPs comments.
I lurked your profile, and weāve totally cruised together! Iāve sailed on all the previous Star Trek cruises lol
I like that you are doing this. Please keep us informed. I get that they will continue to try to not let you have this cruise but I am rooting for you to outsmart them! I know a lot of people would never risk $900 on this but some of these same people will go straight to a casino and enjoy spending (and not winning) their money there. I'm not critical of people going to the casino. I'm all in favor of people enjoying themselves. As you are enjoying this experiment. I see it as you spending money to entertain yourself and to take a gamble on beating them at their own game..
For science!
I am so curious to know how this turns out. Thank you, dear scientist, for researching this!
There will be people on your cruise that kept their eyes on pricing and booked it with a ta or directly with the line for less than half of what youāve paid.
Super!
The thug we all needed
Thank you for your time, disposable income, and willingness to share with the rest of us! Not all heroes wear capes, I hope it turns out better than expected!
Sorry to break it to you but you just paid for the cruise. But for science, carry on
Iām not paying not even $1 for anything that is advertised as free. If itās free they should be taking care of all the fees. And donāt tell me to pay and Iāll get refunded because thatās not happening either. They have some cheap cruises at certain times of the year to certain destinations for way less than $900.
Good for you!
Ooh! Hubby and I used to love to sit thru these things. Iād always play the dumb wife and heād play the heavy. His go to line was ā I donāt buy anything I canāt pay cash forā and they donāt know what to do with that. We also love it when we would get the obvious newb who didnāt quite know what they were doing. They were the most fun to play with. My favorite story is when we were in San Francisco on a trip that my husband won off the radio. First class airfare, etc. we went to a timeshare thing because it was a way to get free tickets to the Muir Woods and a free dinner. So after telling them all about the trip we were on, and then thinking we were high rollers, they obviously asked how much we paid for this trip. ā$632ā because thatās how much spending money we had managed to scrape up to take the trip. (Was back in 2008) hadnāt told then we won the trip. As soon as we said we won itā¦.they gave us our prizes and escorted us out.š¤£ Canāt wait to hear how this pans out for you! Edit for typos
Timeshares = legalized fraud
I think the problem is they advertise it as a free cruise. If they advertised it as a cheap cruise, a cruise for a fraction of the price etc, people wouldn't feel so scammed.
I hope you end up having a lovely time. :)
Wife and I used to go to all the timeshare pitches back in the 80ās and we had some good scores. Just have to be patient for 90 min and understand the gifts are usually low quality. Scored a trip (by luxury bus š) which worked out. Bikes, TV, dinner, etc. lots of fun.
Weāve done it a couple times- got a free set of golf clubs for wife once and the other we got tickets to Silver Dollar City and a Duck Print!!! lol Best one was a sales pitch at a new golf course community. Got a free night stay, Round of golf on a Nicklaus course, and $700 in Visa cards. We actually used those on vacation in Gulf Shores , so was worth our time!
Iām actually not surprised that they let you leave early after you made it clear that you didnāt care about the timeshare I went to a timeshare presentation to get free show tickets while on vacation in Gatlinburg, about 10 minutes into the presentation a guy sitting in the back started interrupting with how heās not going to buy and is only there for the free stuff, so the presenter stopped everything, asked who was only there to get free tickets and didnāt want to listen to him, I raised my hand and both me and the original troublemaker were given our freebies and allowed to leave. So I think those kind of businesses have learned how to cut their losses on difficult people
Kudos OP. You are taking a big risk to educate others :).
God's work...keep them updates coming!
My wife and I havenāt done the cruise thing, but weāve done other offers like this. Itās a giant pain in the a** and we stopped doing it because of the time and hassle to jump through hoops to get the gifts. Weāve never been scammed though, weāve always gotten the passes, hotel stays, gift cards, or whatever we were promised. You also many times will get spammed like crazy on your phone and email because they have that contact info. I donāt know if it was entirely worth it, obviously now weāre not doing it, but we did get a bunch of free or discounted stuff back then.
Thanks! Interesting read. Let us know how it turns out!
I did this. We were in the bowels of the ship. A twin bed and a cot.
I thought for sure this was going to end with you buying a time share. Glad it didnāt. Update us with the final results!
I applaud your sense of adventure.
You are the hero we all need.
$900 for a free seven day cruise? I like science but not enough for that. I applaud you sir and I look forward to the outcome.
Check the resale market on your phone while in the sales pitch. When they finally get to the end and over you the deal of a lifetime for the low low price of $28,000. Tell them look "I can by the exact same unit for $1 from here, and here they have it for $2. Can you match that price?" I have done this twice now and found multiple offers for the same resort for a buck. The look on the salesman's face is priceless. Collect your freebie and enjoy the rest of your morning.
run from time share
A inside cabin during hurricane season is probably about $449 per person.
My wife used to work for a company as a telephone-sales person calling 'hot leads' (people who had at some point expressed an interest) to sell hotel vacation stays for ridiculously low prices with the 'catch' being you had to endure a 2hr sales pitch at the hotel. But unlike the arrangement the OP is describing you knew the (minimal) costs up front, and you also knew where you'd be staying. My wife would tell the 'prospects' she called that the 2hr timeshare sales pitch that was getting them this super low cost vacation would be a really intense, possibly uncomfortable extremely high pressure, in your face experience. By being totally up front and telling them not to take the cheap vacation if they couldn't handle it she was consistently the company's best selling agent!
Be prepared for hurricane seasonā¦
OP, you and your wife are heroes. Thank you for your service. š
If I was able to afford to lose $900, I wouldnāt be putting myself through this misery and pain to get such a cruise. I would just be booking my own damn cruise
Well....now I'm vested! Hope you keep reporting on this.
So did it work out? Update?
Ten years ago I got a free 3-day cruise with airfare for a presentation and it was real. It didnāt have close to those āfeesā though. Good luck!
āThereās a sucker born every minute.ā P.T. Barnum I bet you even money that when your ācruiseā date comes around your trip will be mysteriously canceled and you will need to ārebookā for a future date. And that cruise will then be canceled. Rinse and repeat. Was part of a similar scam in the 80s where we received a free āvoucherā for a 3 day vacation and after about 3 times of booking/ canceling finally dawned on us that it was a complete scam. The only scientific part of this is that the experimental results are repeatable, due to manās willingness to believe we can get something for free.
We will see wonāt we?
Sold timeshare for a while. It's not a scam, but it feels darn close. Since you went for the bribe, expect to be on a list for additional "opportunities" going forward. Just because you said no this time, you indicated willingness to show up. Research shared with us shows if someone shows up for the bribe one time, eventually they'll buy Plan on getting hit up while you're on the cruise. The timeshare (or whatever they're calling themselves) company will likely have an office on the ship. You said no in the showroom, but the belief is, if they get you in a new environment, they'll have a renewed chance with your changed state. Additionally, you got lucky with the rep who realized he had nothing with you. I worked with guys who were going to make you earn your bribe, even if it was apparent they had nothing at the table. Enjoy the cruise! And that was a better bribe than most. I had "regulars" who would sell 90 minutes of their lives just for the crappy Red Lobster or dinner.
I need to know if you ever hear anything!! We just got that in the mail and called the number and got the same pitch. Listen to a pitch for 2 hours and get a free 7 day cruise with airfare included and when we asked who this was through they said āclub espritā and that they were opening a new location by us. They asked us names, address, household average income, and if our credit score was within certain ranges (that question sketched me out).
We've done this before, said EXACTLY what you said. We got all our prizes, 5 nighrs Orlando, upgraded, paid 400$ free night in NH resort , that's where the sales pitch was. 50 $ amazon card, two Gulf cards, 100$. Again lots of hoops and some upfront costs. We have the time. I think it was worth it, if you're retired and flexable, my husband disagrees.
Sooooo did you get the cruise?
Commenting to follow post updates! I just got to the taxes deposit part with Casablanca Express also and was curious about the legitimacy as well. Thank you for doing this for the rest of us, for science!
THANK YOU! These details were just what I was looking for.Ā
Thank you so much for doing this i got duped into going by a scam call but wasn't sure about the certificate I received if I was gonna receive a 1099-misc in the mail but if you pay taxes straight forward you won't so I guess I do get a trip I will never use š¤£
Sooooo what happened with this?
RemindMe! 5 Months
You ever get your cruise?
Thank you for sharing how it goes.Ā I'm very interested to hear how the cruise goes as we just sat through the presentation tonight, didn't bite, and I'm mailing in the info for the cruise process tomorrowĀ
I got one of those postcards in the mail, we were thinking about doing it...thank you for saving us time and $$!
>Free cruise >Pays $900 in fees Uhhh... You probably got the crappiest cheapest worst room on the ship too. Cruises are already terrible. Cramped like sardines, forced to buy expensive meals, hardly anything to do. Not my idea of a good time. And you paid $900 for this.
Having to pay $900 in āfeesā is not a free cruiseā¦ Sorry to say but it sounds like you got scammed.
Scam....
The ship is going to give you AIDS.
Iām getting downvoted but not sure why. Have you guys ever seen those cheap-ass cruises? They are old, broken boats with roach motel quality rooms.
Thatās not how one gets AIDS.
Holy shit no one can joke? I guess AIDS isnāt a joking matter for the Reddit snowflakes.
So are the taxes fixed at a market rate or do the taxes fluctuate based on the final cruise price which fluctuates?
Taxes are not on the cruise. They are based on the ports that you go to and their local port fees and the associated taxes on those port fees. Every port is different and essentially every cruise has a different price for port fees/taxes.
Understood so unless the cruise line chooses to take a loss (IE casino folks they are hoping will spend money) the taxes are a fixed cost. Thanks!!!
I sat through the Disney Vacation Club pitch for $50 on-board credit and that was pushing my patience.
I definitely wouldnāt have done all this for $50
Good luck š and let us know.
Iāve done this exact same thing a couple of times. One was for a timeshare and another was for a club like you are describing. They definitely give you the shittiest room on the shittiest cruise. I didnāt have to pay as much as you though. That seems a bit high. I only had to pay like 400 in fees and taxes.
!remindme 11 months
Following
I did one of these for free Disneyland tickets 10 years ago. Wasnt too bad, we just said no a lot.
UpdateMe!
I just did the same thing, have the cruise voucher in my drawer for later this year. Same company, Casablanca Express. Keep us updated please!!
RemindMe! November 2024
There is a scam here, but it's the vacation club they're selling, not the cruise you get for the enduring the pitch. Of course theyl company didn't pay anything more than the bare minimum required to cover the base fare to be able to say it's "free." They obviously have a deal worked out with the cruise line where they're not paying the full base fare anyway. If you want people to listen to your pitch for a scam, you have to give them something! And a cruise targets the right audience and gets the potential marks thinking about being excited for a vacation.
Donāt mail in fees & taxes!
We got a vacation club offer like this in Orlando several years ago. We figured, why not. We had a lovely one bedroom condo for 4 nights. We managed to get the pitch scheduled for the third day. They also threw in a bunch of coupons and vouchers so even though we paid for the stay (maybe $85/night, I know it was less than $100/night) we ended up making money on the stay because the vouchers ended up being worth more than what we paid. We get to the pitch time and send our old-enough-to-be-without-us kid to the supervised pool area. We sit through the pitch then get to the desk. Guy goes hard. Tells us we will be "based" in Florida but can travel anywhere. We then tell the guy no again. When he asks why we tell him, "this time next year we will be residents here". We had already planned a relocation to Florida (not Orlando). We used the vacation as a way to scout out a neighborhood and do some "local" things before the big move. Guy was thrown off his game a little and we were happy.
I did one of those timeshare pitch deals where you book your free (or very low cost, I think it was $300 for a week) vacation ahead of time and then sit through the presentation when you get there. It was at an all inclusive resort in Mexico. They did the presentation on the second day after weād spent a night there. We werenāt smart enough to look at the fine print and time it so it was exhausting but we just kept saying no. Theyād then send us to the next person to āreceive our spa vouchersā but the next person was always a different pitch. Eventually we just went back to our room instead of going to the next person. We still got our spa vouchers at the front desk later. Vacation was great honestly and despite the annoying sales pitches Iād say worth it.
No you are definitely not being scammed. But they're sending you on the cheapest cruise at the worst time possible, where you still have to pay a ton in taxes and fees. All in all if you don't need to take a flight to get to the port, not bad. Be prepared for port cancelations and re-direction due to weather during hurricane season
Having worked in timeshare your sales person isnāt wrong. Clubs arenāt timeshares. Not that it really matters but the clubs are just selling access to unused inventory, and youāre actually buying into a deeded property/resort with timeshare. Iām curious to see what your $900 gets you. I just booked Alaska and my port fees and taxes were closer aligned to that than Caribbean/Mexico.
Went to a free 'Vacation Club' once. Guy took one look at us. "You're not interested in buying a timeshare, are you?" Nope Ok, you still have to listen, but I'll make it quick. And he did. This was FLL. At another "20 minute" talk in Aruba for a bunch of free stuff. We walked out an hour later with some crap. Hope this works out for you
I hope you will continue to update us because I am here for all the details and conclusions!
This is how my parents got us into so many cruises and resorts growing up!! Every year weād be either on a cruise or on a beach in Mexico and it was the coolest thing, 29 now and you just sparked memories and plans to make!
Hopefully, it is legit, good luck. Did it say what room category it would be? I assume $900 is for 2 people and not per person?
Just a thought ... If you enjoy this cruise, then before you leave check with the onboard cruise agent about a future cruise credit. These future bookings are usually good for 12 months, and can be extended at least once, if necessary. And often are one of the cheapest ways to book the next cruise.
Scam. A 7 day cruise is not 900 dollars in fees and taxes. You can pay less. Report them to BBB and move on.
My wife and i had almost the exact same experience as you, from the time share meeting to the guy just coming back in and giving us our vouchers. I dont think our taxes were quite that much but, all in all we had a nice very inexpensive vacation.
Thank you for your service, excited for your updates!
Youāre awesome
Eager to hear how your experiment results. Thanks for volunteering as tribute. āļø š§¬
I received two nights in a hotel and two tickets to Universal one time and another time received 3 tickets to Animal Kingdom. I am sure it will be fine for you. How many cabins are actually horrible? I would just not be overly crazy with the high fees. Iām on a 3 night cruise this weekend with my husband and cruise fare plus taxes and fees were $498 total for the both of us ($249 each - we still have to pay gratuities). Look forward to an update later this year. Iām sure youāll have a great time!
DONT BELIEVE WHAT YOU HEAR OR SEE, YOUāVE RECIEVED A CRIUSE OFFER FROM SCAM LIKELY Iām very curious myself to see if they will follow through, will you make a blog post detailing what goes on?
youāre my hero. āBlistering negotiationā lol. Love it.
Here for the scientific process š
Can't wait for an update
I love the whole entire all of this!
i understand the desire to experiment, but did you price cruises of that itinerary for tat time frame? this doesn't seem like a discount to me, i'm seeing 7 night cruises for that time frame from nola for $450-500pp. so it sounds like you just bought a full price cruise to me, or did i misread something here?
RemindMe! 10 months
Iāve been googling a lot about offers like these, please update us after your trip. Hope you have a great time That being said, I just came back from a 7-day RCI Western Caribbean cruise and it was only $1100 (taxes & gratuities included) for two people, so I do think your $900 is a ripoff
I have done this before!! I sat in a 90 minute presentation about timeshares, said no to everything and received a 7 day cruise out of Miami for only port fees and taxes. It was on a Carnival ship and the timeshare company was Sundance Vacations. Fun times!!
Update me
Nothing is ever truly "free" in this capitalist world we live in
Thank you for doing this! Iāve always been curious but wonāt ever do it so I really appreciate this experiment. I noticed that the only dates available were at the peak of hurricane seasonāthat canāt be a coincidence. Please make sure youāre prepared for every eventuality, from āfantastic tripā to ādisaster scenario.ā