AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Timeshare sales

Larry,

The above was not focused on your complaint, my apologies if I offended you. This was focused at those pushing personal opinions as fact.

Cool on the proverb, it was actually my dad, I guess, in his own words.

If you liked anything at all, anything about the program at CM, go to www.mvci.com and check out the Marriott model, all online and no pressure.

SIN

OK - for sales professionals;

If you are reading, a little advice to you-

When we meet with clients we have two objectives.

1) Make a sale, if not then ...
2) Leave the client feeling better about you and your resort than when they first came in.

If you think about it this makes a lot of sense.

This is the rule for real professionals, a good thing does not need pressure to be sold.

SIN

Sorry SIN, I got a bit testy. Now that I re-read, I see that I took that wrong, and it is I who should and do apologize to you.

As to the proverb, I think it was Mark Twain, will look that up to be accurate.

And yes, CM had a lot of things going for it. Everything but their approach. I will check out the Marriott as you suggest. BTW I have provided telecommunication services to our local Marriotts, Savannah and Hilton Head area for the last 10 years or more. They are a class act all the way. As with CM though, I didn't realize they were into timeshares.

As to your last post addressed to sales professionals, I can tell you might be one, because that is the way I run my (3) businesses. You may not buy from me, but you will feel good about me when I leave. You will certainly not feel the way I do about Capt. Morgans. I don't understand how people can operate like that and maintain a viable business over the long term.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, my snide remark and a good evening to ya :-)

SIN

Just let people decide over 30 days-or is that a problem????????
If they decide not to go ahead with the purchase -give them their money back - no chance-you guys will always take the money-please reply and lie

"Timeshare opens up more opportunities for this island and nation. Timeshare resorts provide additional income for the various sectors of tourism."

NOT TRUE: The correct statement is: "Timeshare opens up more opportunities for this group of timeshare salespersons. Timeshare resorts provide additional income for the various individuals and companies involved in Timeshare."

OK, here I go playing devils advocate and probably getting into trouble. Let me first say that this is not an attempt to defend the unscrupulous sales tactics used by some. Those are indefensible and unjustified in many cases and hopefully will do more harm to their business in the long run than what they might gain in the short term. And sorry Crackerlarry for using your example for my analysis, but unfortunately from your experience, it does bring up some points I think worth consideration.
I frame this in the context of impending regulations that Belize is apparently considering for timeshare sales. I know that it is and will always be impossible to have regulations that protect the consumer from, let me phrase it, themselves. Although I am in total favor of legislation like a right of recision.
Consumers will always be looking, as they should, for a "good deal". That is why you see so much marketing saying "two for one sale, limited time offer, factory liquidation, inventory over stalked sale", or any of the other terms used to project a better than normal time to buy.
Now as to the unfortunate experience with Captain Morgans, I am not sure that you could draft legislation that protect the consumer from what Crackerlarry was put thru. They apparently offered an incentive that lured him to their "spider web". Granted, it appears the offer of $2500 was not completely represented by enough fine print and disclaimers stating it was not cash but rather value. But this is a case where human nature is used to the advantage of the offensive sales person. The offer could have been turned down. "If it looks too good to be true, it probably isn't true." But anyway, a conscious and personal decision was made to check it out. Once there, the potential "victims" were made to feel they had no option other than to listen to the sale pitch holding on to the hope the $2500 in cash would materialize. Now in reality, and granted possibly not know to the "victims" and not disclosed to them by the sales people, but they could have gotten on the water taxi any hour they chose and gotten out of there and on with their planed day.

Now once again, I am not trying to in anyway justify Captain Morgan's approach. I think what they did was wrong and gives the island a bad reputation. My only point is, how do you prevent things like this from happening as long a people want the "good deal" or that "something for nothing." I can see much difficulty in trying to have regulations that will prevent all of this and protect everyone from themselves and their own greed. Is not personal responsibility just as much a necessity here as government regulation.

Just some food for thought. Please don't put me in the camp of supporting all of the timeshare sales tactics that go on, because I do not. But sometimes the picture is wider than what we limit our view to.

PS: Crakerlarry, thanks for sharing your unfortunate experience. Hopefully it will help others to avoid this sort to thing. It was totally missrepresented to you and should not have happened. I just am not sure how to prevent anything like this from ever happening other than doing just what you did and let others know what to watch out for.

Hello By, always a pleasure...a voice of reason...yep, you're exactly right. I stated from the start that it was my fault for getting involved with this. I was naive, gullable and maybe even had a bit of a buzz:-) The lure of free money sucked us in. At least I came to my senses before signing anything. If I had even know CM was in the timeshare business, alarm bells would have rang in my head. I'm a little slow in the way of big time resorts as I always tend to take the paths less traveled and avoid those sort of places. Just a simple country boy, don't get out much.

How do you go about catching a water taxi at CMs? I didn't know one was available or we would have taken it for sure. Heck, I was ready to start walking when the boat finally showed up. The CM staff didn't inform me that was an option and I just didn't know. Live and learn....

Maybe this will help someone else from being as uninformed as we were, anyway.

Could the quote you are looking for be from the Bible? Proverbs 17:28 NIV says "Even the fool is thought wise if he keeps silent."

SIN

Please explain the justification of purchasing timeshare when you lose automatically 80% of your monies immediately you have given it to your favourite timeshare salesman!!

PS The Hyatt/Sheraton actually offer their own exchange program and you can exchange for any room in any of their hotels around the world-in the case of your resort there is only one location and we all know RCI and II do not work.

To SIN, as promised I researched our wise man quote with no definitive results on the author, but the quote itself seems consistent. A google search attributed the quote to Mark Twain, as I had thought, in several of the hits......

Speaking of fools, my pal Mark Twain used to say, "Better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt!"

But another (The History Channel)attributed it to Abe Lincoln....

The Best American General....


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"It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln

Hundreds of other hits had the exact quote and attributed it to "unknown" or "anonomous".

Whoever first quoted it I'm still not sure, but it is older than your Dad anyway:-)

And a very good quote to live by.....