Timeshare Nightmare

Some days, I just cannot manage to get a post finished. That's today.

Darling was sick all night.

The thing is, aside from throwing up she was also cold - like ice cold.

The last time that happened we were vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, at a super-nice club.

We booked it with an exchange of our timeshare, so had to attend one of their sales meetings.

Let me just say, if you EVER are in a timeshare meeting - don't buy. The high-pressure tactics are designed to influence you to buy what they have. Just. Don't.

Walk away. They'll come after you and make deal after deal. Keep walking and enjoy your vacation.

We bought. Yeah, you read that right. The pitch they made us was incredible. The young salesman was our best friend, our son, our brother - all rolled into one. He was willing to consolidate all three of our existing timeshares (I confess. We speak from experience here.).

I wanted to get our timeshares down to a single one. We signed. That was Saturday.

Oh, and the half-hour sales pitch lasted three hours. The entire morning gone in a sales meeting.

Back at the room I thought to do some research. Turns out, this is a standard sales pitch. They get you to sign papers to buy their property, and have you sign papers to sell your other timeshares.

Which they never do.  You're stuck with ONE MORE timeshare.

I called on Sunday to cancel this deal. The business office was closed Sunday.

First thing Monday morning I called. After much persistence on my part and resistance on theirs, I managed a meeting with someone to cancel the deal.

At first, the guy was conciliatory. He even continued to drop the price of the timeshare, down to ten percent of the original cost.

Not a chance.

Then he got belligerent.

Too bad.

Then he cancelled, and basically threw us out of his office.

The story isn't quite over.

Some fellows outside his office caught us and made us a sweet deal. We didn't have to buy a timeshare at all, and they could help us sell ours.

Sell our timeshares! A dream come true!

Just sign here, sign here. These are worth a lot of money. We guarantee they will sell. We'll send the money to this credit card account we're setting up for you...

I should have seen it coming. They charged my "new" credit card over seven grand and it took months to get that straightened out.

Another scam in Mexico.

To make it all worse, Darling shook hands with a guy that was sick. She became ill.

Cold as ice, deathly pale, feel bad sick.

We had no travel insurance for this. Plane tickets to come home early cost a fortune.

I dampened towels, put them in plastic bags and micro-waved them. I used those to warm her up.

She was a trooper, though. Two days later we got home and the Doctor said she had pneumonia.

Worst. Vacation. Ever.

So - Timeshares NO. Mexico NO. Deals in foreign countries NO.

Please learn those lessons from us, and not the hard way.

Thanks for reading. I'll post pictures later. The resort was beautiful. The people, not so much.