If something is too good to be true, it usually is.
There's no free lunch.
I've been thinking about this recently.
My wife has received a free 3 nights stay at some hotel in Bali.
For this stay, we just need to attend their timeshare presentation during one of the days we are there.
They say it's expected to be just 1 hour.
To claim it, we need to give them a copy of our flight tix AND a credit card.
(So they already have my cc details.)
So I think... Yea right... got so good one meh?
I've heard about this timeshare thing, hard selling and everything.
I'm a bit paranoid about it. Cos we're in a different country and all that.
And we're stuck in the middle of a remote place with a bunch of folks trying to hard sell us something for 3 days. Sure they say it's just 1 hour but who knows what will happen when we get there.
So I'm pretty inclined to turn down the offer. I told her, look a trip is supposed to be fun.
This free stay, we can't control anything around it. We don't know what will happen when we get there. We might get harassed for more than just that hour. Is it worth it? I don't know.
Logically, I should just take the deal.
3 nights stay. I don't have to spend all the days at the hotel. There are shuttles out of the place. So I could just escape the place for a huge duration of the trip, then attend the presentation near the end of the trip and just run away right at the end.
On the other hand, we could just forgo the deal. Bali was never in our travel plans, we don't have any real desire to go there, besides that it's free. But the flight and everything else isn't free.
Like, if the talk was in Singapore and after the presentation they gave out a 3 nights stay voucher, I would definitely have gone for the talk. I mean. I feel safe in Singapore, the worst that could happen is that they don't give me the voucher. I can live with that. I can just walk out of the place and just go home if I was still in Singapore.
Whereas the uncertainty of being in another country does make me more concerned about accepting this deal. Of course that's also their objective, to trap us in a remote area so that they can hard sell the product. And I understand this business model. Just that I have concerns about their tactics when we are at a foreign country.
I do have concerns about my personal safety all the time. More so than most other people.
My wife even did research on how other people managed to survive timeshare presentations. There are blogs out there that describe how they do it. But usually it's done in the US and they just give out vouchers. In this case, we are "getting" the deal first, THEN they try to hard sell us in an enclosed space. I feel less secure cos of that.
Oh well, there's nothing more I can do except to think more about it and do a bit more research.
If any of you have any experience in this region, I would really really appreciate some advice/feedback.
Cos on one hand, it feels dumb to give up a free stay, yet on the other hand, I don't want to end up going there and it ends up being a stressful and un-enjoyable trip. Cos we still DO have to buy the plane tickets and the food as well. Not to mention they already have our credit card details and if they do any unauthorized transactions, we have to jump through hoops to get any form of recourse.
So please please, if you guys have any advice or previous experience with this please drop me an email or comment below.
Thanks a lot!
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