All up and down the strip there are people offering free vouchers like food and drinks, these are a scam as you usually have to spend at least $9.90 to claim it, also they have a stand that sells cheap show tickets or tours. After a quick assessment of your situation, ie are you married?, to each other?, what's your income etc, they start offering you the show tickets for free, all you have to do is attend a 2.5 - 3 hour presentation for a timeshare and they also give you some lunch. We haggled with the guy for 2 good shows for $20 and some other tickets that you have to pay $5 per person at the box office if you want to see the show.
We have been on one of these timeshare pressure sales scams many years ago in new zealand so had an idea what to expect. We booked in for the next morning as it was mid afternoon and there was nothing left for the day.
On monday we got up early and went down to the pickup point where we waited for the shuttle, from there it was about a 10 km drive south on LV blvd to the timeshare location. The place looks quite nice and of course has a casino. We were first seated in a room like a hotel lobby but full of rows of chairs and people. I took a pit stop to the dunny and when I came back there was only sharon there, we were picked up by our salesman and went off to the presentation, as we were slightly late we actually managed to skip the first part and went straight up to lunch. We had a sandwich and chatted, we were quite up front with the guy and told him we aren't buying anything we are just here for the free tickets. He was insistent that we still need to do the tour etc anyway so we went through the questionnaire about how we spend our holidays and what would our dream vacation be yada yada yada, then we went through how their points system works and how you can holiday anywhere in the world with your points and it's actually better points value if you stay in a hotel instead of your 1 week per year in the timeshare. Next we went outside to look around the property, pool, bbq area, casino, movie theater and finally the timeshare unit. The unit itself looks quite nice and is actually 2 separate 1 bedroom units each with their own locking door. From there we went back to the lunch room and had another drink, we skipped the sandwiches this time. Then it was sales pitch time, the price started at about 39000 for both units then he showed us a nice easy way we could pay out off, no we are just here for the free stuff, next he said he had to get a manager to sign off the sheet and came back with another guy, he didn't want to talk much when I started asking him about himself and got quite anoyed when I told him we are just here for the free stuff, he said he didn't believe me, but did drop the price in half for only 1 unit instead of both. Still NO. Then he said how about if out was less than 10000, still NO. Ok we can go now and get the stuff we signed up for.
We waited for a minute outside another room then were shown in, it was a huge room with basically us in it and a guy who wanted to do a survey on how we found the presentation. He started asking what was the guys name, what about the manager, what was the lowest price offered, did they offer it to you for 5000, did they tell you you have 1 month to think about it, then he got quite strange and tried to make us feel really guilty by saying stuff like, I know you are nice people, not professional gift collectors, the person you spoke to isn't even a manager, the manager is a woman not a man, that's wrong that they did to you, they didn't even get a manager to sign off the paperwork, then he went and got it signed off, onto the next waiting room, after a few minutes a lady came along and we went with her to a booth where we waited for her to get the tickets for us. Finally it's over. Back on the bus and back to the strip. Five and a half hours later.
Was it worth it? Absolutely, we had a great time and wouldn't have been doing much else anyway, we got free show tickets, lunch and even a five and a half hour sideshow.
Would we do it again? Absolutely, it was fun apart from the last guy who was trying to make us feel guilty.
The scariest thing is when you do the math on what any poor fool who signs up would pay. 5000 minimum outlay plus a maintenance fee of at least $380 a year for the rest of your life. And that is multiplied by 52 times for each unit because it is a timeshare, plus if it's not being used by any of the "owners" they rent it out like a hotel because that is what it really is.
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