Last Friday Robin and I went to one of those things where they promise you free plane tickets if you sit through a 1.5 hr. presentation. I wasn't real keen on the idea, but Robin wanted to go so I said sure. The people are extremely courteous they signed us in and sent us to a room with about 12 small tables in it. We sat down and were interviewed by a woman. She asked us how much we spent on travel per year, what were are travel dreams, and some other small talk type things. She also explained briefly what the main presentation was going to be about. The main speaker dude, Jerry, enters the room and introduces himself to the couples. He looks sorta like Matt Foley from the "van down by the river" sketch on SNL only he's not nearly as obese and he did not destroy any furniture. He claimed to be a Baptist minister so I guess you have to trust him, right?
He starts out by honestly stating that he is selling something and that it cost a lot of money. Its a discount travel club. He painted glorious pictures of all the destinations that you can visit for what sounded like almost no money: 8 days in Hawaii for $700 which included hotel and plane tickets. He claimed that all the accommodations are 5 star. These prices extend to your whole travel party even if they are not related to you. He claimed he took 22 people from his church to some African country for like $2200.
He was very quick to get confirmation from the group that what he was describing was a good deal, and for the most part we complied. I mean if the deals he was spouting were true they were good deals. He went around the room and addressed us all by name (which were written on the back of a name tag so that they were not visible to the couples) and asked us some of the same questions that were asked of us earlier.
So now comes the price... $9000 membership + $300 admin and then $200/yr. I guess I forgot how these things work. I was expecting something remotely reasonable, something that most people might be able to drop that evening, but that was just the first price (more on that later). They say this is the "tonight" price and that if you don't sign up tonight you get this lesser deal, the "anytime" deal, which pales by comparison.
He goes on to quote how much people typically spend on travel in a given year and how this club thing could save everyone a ton of cash. After Jerry was done yapping the one-on-one seller people come back in in the room. After sensing our complete disinterest, no doubt, he proceeded to cut the price in half and diddnn't stop there. Once the first guy conceded defeat he had to have someone do a "survey" with us and I'm thinking that here comes the big guns. He introduced us to a gentleman who looked like one of the bad guys you have to fight at the end of an old Nintendo game. I don't recall his name, it had to be Oscar - no other name would have fit. His nickname was "The Hammer," no lie. I wish I had taken pictures of all the people who worked there, there were quite a few characters for which my feeble descriptions could not do justice. Anyway, Oscar had a brow on him that is beyond description - dude would not need to wear a baseball cap. He actually had a crease above his nose where his commanding brow protruded. And it looked like it had been cracked open and stitched up a few times. I have to admit I was a little scared. Before he did the survey he offered us a deal that was about 10% of the original cost and I told him "No" I guess Robin looked unsure so he asked me if we wanted to talk it over, again I said "No" and for a minute I though he was going to kill me. But the moment passed and we were on our way.
We did no research before hand, we just wanted to the plane tickets. What if I had jumped on the internet while we were sitting there and found that the top 2 entries that popped up when you Googled their company name "Royal Palm Travel" were from www.complaintsboard.com and www.ripoffreport.com. It would have at least been a good question to ask Jerry. After reading some of the posts on those sites I felt sorry for the people who signed up that night (assuming that they were real couples and not plants). Turns out the deals are not what they claimed and not any better than you can do on travelocity or expedia.
It was an interesting experience and it was good for me to see all those shady sales tactics first hand. They used them all.
The plane tickets turned out to not be free, but they might save us a bit of money down the road.
I grow weary of typing.
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3 comments:
We went a similar presenation for half off show tickets in Vegas a year and a half ago. They were selling condo timeshares. It was advertised as a breakfast presentation. Our tour guide and salesperson claimed to be three different denominations before we were through. Talked about how he loved contemporary worship music "all that I love God, we love God stuff." Those were his words, no lie. He tried to convince of how we'd travel when we had a family. He obviously didn't know how to vacation on a budget. Abbey corrected his bad math and he continued to use the phony number to justify the purchase. All in all we wasted 3 hours of our vacation. Tho the savings were nice we wouldn't do it over again.
We did one of those in Vegas, free (or half-price, as it turned out to be) Cirque du Soleil tickets for sitting through a "breakfast". The funniest part of ours though was that I had been taking freelance transcription jobs and had recently done a whole sales seminar that gave all these tips. Mirror body language. If the client crosses their arms or looks at a clock, back off the sales pitch and establish more rapport. Prolong money talk as long as possible. Etc. etc. etc., all this stuff that I could see playing out and knew exactly what he was doing. Especially that second one; he just wanted to keep building more and more rapport as long as we seemed uninterested, which we were utterly uninterested, so he basically just kept talking about totally random stuff he thought we'd relate to for like three hours.
I think every couple has to do those once, just to know never to do it again. We totally commiserate though, just so you know.
I have had so many friends get talked into these things and regret it. $900 sounds like a deal compared to $9000. Sorry you didn't get free tickets - perhaps to somewhere cool like China. You know people there you could stay with :)
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