Watch out for sales tactics from hungry timeshare industry

At some point, you’ve probably been pitched.

Maybe it was a phone call with a too-good-to-be-true offer of a free vacation.

Maybe you were approached with the promise of a gift card if you’d just spend a few minutes watching a video.

Regardless of the method, if you declined the offer, you likely saved yourself the fate of the ever-growing number of Floridians who have experienced a “Timeshare Nightmare.”

Our organization — the Florida Alliance for Consumers and Taxpayers (FACT) — has been shining a light on these stories. Every tale I hear seems to set a new low for the tactics used to score a sale. Yet, there are common themes — marathon meetings, changing offers, a revolving door of “sales managers.” And, finally, probing personal questions that lead to often-despicable sales tactics.

FACT recently spoke with Armando Ruano and his mother Mercy.

The Ruano story is heartbreaking. The family of four from South Florida became a family of two in a matter of weeks. Armando’s brother died in May of 2017. His father — Mercy’s husband — never got over it and passed away just three months later.

In between those deaths, the Ruanos got a random phone call to come to Orlando and spend a couple nights for free. All they had to do was listen to a pitch.

In the midst of their grief, it seemed like a good idea — a chance to start healing.

Instead, timeshare salespeople preyed on their grief.

By the time the trip to Orlando was scheduled, Armando’s father had also died. Raw with grief and anxious to get through the sales pitch as soon as possible, Armando and Mercy instead found themselves trapped in a never-ending succession of salespeople who kept offering “better and better” deals.

After a couple hours, one of the salespeople extracted from the Ruanos the news that two of their loved ones had recently died.

Then they pounced.

Armando tells the story like this: “I’ll never forget what he said: ‘Wouldn’t your father want you’ … ‘“an emotional Armando has to stop relaying the story for a moment. “I’m sorry, it just makes me really angry.”

He resumes. “‘Wouldn’t your father want you two to enjoy the rest of your lives in a vacation home?’ ”

Who does such a thing? This young man just buried his father and brother, and now, that grief is being leveraged into a pitch for a timeshare that the family will carry around the rest of their lives? It’s disgusting. And it needs to stop.

In addition to the emotional trauma, these timeshare nightmares come with a lifetime of escalating hidden fees and obligations to the victim’s heirs.

In particular, the never-ending “maintenance fees” have added hundreds of dollars of expense to the Ruanos and other families.

Oh, and in the Ruanos’ case, in three years, they haven’t even been able to use the timeshare — more than $10,000 in debt, all for nothing.

“If we could get this timeshare out of our lives, it would be a godsend,” says Mercy.

Their best advice if you are approached — run away as fast you can.

You can learn more about the danger of timeshares at timesharenightmare.com

By Jim Messer