Last night it took 4 1/2 hours, but I finally escaped timeshare hell.
Remember when I said I won that cruise at the bridal show? The only requirement was to go to a 90 min timeshare presentation. Easy, right? wrong.
I was expecting something like this
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| minus the palm trees of course, I am in New England! I wish I had taken a picture of what it really looked like! |
I was expecting prompt service, professional salespeople, and the timeshare folks to try & wow us to buy with them. Not so much. It smelled, there were crappy cookies & popcorn, and the sales staff looked & acted unprofessional, yelling out at each other & egging each other on. They had told us to come for the 4pm session, so I figured we would sit with a big class, watch a video, hear a presenter, then meet with a salesperson & tell them we're not interested.
Well, we waited an hour to be seen, since apparently you are seen one on one with a bloodsucker salesman. I see this short, fat older salesman in a shirt & tie & say to Kevin, "I hope we don't get him." Who calls out our name? of course, we're stuck with him. At the beginning he asked us if we just wanted our gifts we could take them & leave or hear more, I foolishly said hear more. I was a little curious about what the program offered, and how much something like this costs. BIG MISTAKE.
The guy was ridiculous, telling us more stories about his life and vacations that I cared to know x 100. Kevin & him actually got in a fight at one point because the guy was drawing crap everywhere, circling numbers that didn't even include a price and we didn't care about & making a mess. He made us drive to go see a unit, that was nice enough, but nothing special. At one point Kevin said "listen can't we just get to the point of all this?" He was so longwinded, and lengthy in his stupid stories. Once he finally told us the price, we told him no. Then he slashed the prices in half. We said no. Then he said "Would you do it if it were free?" I told him of course. He said "Well let's sign you up then, we do it as a promotional piece, you write a blog or something online."What???
Kevin & I had already added up the numbers. They charge a yearly matinence fee of $750, then you have to pay $200 to "trade" your week at the crappy place in the Berkshires for a beautiful place in Jamaica. Then they charge you $70 a year for travel books they send. You have to pay taxes & fees, for airfare, food, drinks. Probably about $1800 a year for that week vacation, which is probably what we spend anyways on a really nice vacation. But we don't need the big 2 bedroom suite right now, and we were not looking for the commitment. Maybe at some point in the future, but not now. Plus, if someone is offering me something for free that 20 minutes ago required a mortgage and $15,000, now I'm very skeptical.
Finally we got away from him, to wait longer to get our prizes. We got our cruise with airfare, a $40 american express card, a weekend at the cape, and hotel for a 5 night stay in jamaica, aruba, hawaii or puerto rico. I missed a friend's birthday party, we stopped by On the Border to say Hi & pick up an order to go, and came home exhausted.
That was the major adventure, but the better news is my Red Sox tickets!!!
Typically, they do a virtual waiting room the day tickets go on sale, and you are randomly selected from the room, so it could take 5 minutes or 14 hours (typically I wait about 8-14 hours). This year, they changed it so you are actually waiting in line, and get in to buy tickets in the order you were waiting in. AWESOME!
I was in the waiting room maybe 15 minutes, and left with some awesome tickets!
All friday, saturday or sunday games. 4 good ones in the grandstand, 2 good ones in the right field box, and 2 sets of 2 for awesome seats in the Lodge boxes. Probably better than any seat I've ever had at Fenway (besides the Budweiser roof deck). So excited for baseball season to be here!
In workout news, I got dressed for the gym saturday morning, just to get there and have there be absolutely no parking spaces, unless I wanted to park by Walgreens and walk over. I said screw it, and ended up with a short ride on the trainer. Shelley and I decided to do a treadmill long run again this week. The snow/ice is still no the greatest and we are nervous about hurting ourselves so close to race time. I'm off in a few to plug 12 miles away on the treadmill, wish me luck!
