080217 Not So Roughing It

It was not so long ago that I could go into a strange city hundreds of miles from home and step into a totally unknown establishment to enjoy a refreshing adult beverage or two… or three. Somehow I must have gotten old. Last week while I was in Williamsburg, Virginia, a big night out meant stopping off at Chili’s or Applebee’s for a single martini and then heading back to the suite.

Maybe it is not just me. On my last evening in town, there was a group of guys in their late twenties having a guys’ night out at Applebee’s telling Chuck Norris jokes while drinking Appletinis. On my way out of the door, I passed a table surrounded by burly guys with tattoos climbing out from their eighteen inch shirt collars. What did I hear them talking about? Jimmy Neutron. I hate to think of what is going on in the biker bars these days.

Heading back to the room is not what it used to be either. Gone are the days of cruising into a town and finding a room when I get there. I remember my ex-wife asking if those were bullet holes in the door. Now I have a unit booked at a resort weeks or months before I pull out of the driveway.

I would never encourage anyone to buy a timeshare during a tour or a sales presentation. It is usually the same scene. The potential customers or “marks” mill around a waiting area drinking watered down coffee and day old danish until a very upbeat and hyped up sales rep leads them to an office which inevitably involves a winding path through corridors disorienting the customer. The sales rep is the customer’s best friend and hopefully a bond can be made that will make the customer feel comfortable paying full price and let the time share company finance it for them. Failing that, a smiling manager will stop by the table with a fantastic discount. If that does not seal the deal, the exit interview will hopefully finish the customer off. A series of questions that involve repeating back what was just set puts the customer in a very calm almost hypnotic state before the interviewer throws out the question “And did so and so mention the ____ deal?” Of course, it is something the customer never heard of. Then the third and last price comes out and compared to the first price it is incredible.

Having said that, I have a time share. Actually, I have three contracts and I will add to it. The first contract came from the secondary market and I bought it online from a reseller. It was the old weekly format for red time at the resort fifteen miles from my house. I bought it twelve cents on the dollar figuring that at the worst, I could rent it out to leaf peepers from New York City or resell it on Craigslist for more than I paid. In the meantime, I intended to use the pools, hot tubs and saunas as well as catch a few movies in their theater and do some snow shoeing and cross country skiing. What happened was that I found the previous owners had never been given the option to convert when the timeshare companies were pushing points. Because of this, with the use of different discount options, I was able to leverage four to six weeks a year in luxury resorts for much less than the original owners paid for one week.

There are two next steps for me in the world of timeshares. One is to increase my point ownership the little bit it needs for V.I.P. status which is a fancy sounding term simply meaning I won’t be charged for sundry things like extra housekeeping credits. I will not buy at the prices the companies sell for. I will go to the foreclosure market. The other thing I need to do is go back to the secondary market where the better deals are and buy up extra points which, as a V.I.P. owner, Wyndham will rent out for me and cover the maintenance fees for all of the contracts. Once those maintenance fees are removed, I truly will be vacationing for free for the rest of my life.

So what have we learned? The older we get the more we crave comfortable known surroundings where there is virtually no chance of a guy named Bubba hitting us across the face with a pool cue. If we decide to go the timeshare route, buy on the secondary market. The only thing you should buy from the happy people who hand out the free gifts are foreclosure property. Only buy deeded. Only buy top line as the run down places are no cheaper. Buy more than you will use and rent out the extra to cover maintenance.

Now I need to take a nap.