Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Rent a Snorkel…

May 08, 2013

My wife and I just returned from a beach vacation. One thing we enjoy doing when at the beach is snorkeling, so we went down to the local surf shop to rent snorkel equipment. As we were about to pay the young man for our equipment, he pulls out a one hundred dollar bill and slams it on the counter in front of us. He then asks us “how would you like to get paid while on vacation?

Now who could resist such an offer?  Not only was the young man willing to give us the equipment rental for free, but he was prepared to hand me a straight up c-note.  Sounds too good to be true, right? So what’s the catch?

The young man insisted that there was no catch. All we had to do was just sit through a very benign 90-min presentation on vacation properties and poof, we could enjoy the rest of our vacation knowing how we scored an easy Benjamin. So what do you think I did?

Well, let me put it to you this way–this ain’t my first rodeo. The time share, vacation club, “get paid on vacation” trick has been around for years, and you only have to get burned once to know it is NOTHING like what they claim it will be. For those of you that may not know what I am talking about, allow me to explain.

It begins with the hook. How’d you like a free dinner, a free round of golf, or a free stay at any of our wonderful resorts around the world? Are they really willing to give away valuable awards for free? Absolutely, but it will cost you something–your time.  In order to get the “free gift” you have to sit through a sales presentation.  That doesn’t sound so bad, but trust me, it is.

When Susan and I were first married, we were invited to listen to a presentation about a vacation club in exchange for a free dinner.  We agreed, and so at our appointed time, we sat with a pleasant young man who simply told us that it was a formality for him to describe the program before handing us the voucher for our free dinner.  He then walks us through the details of the program for about an hour, and then asks us if we would be interested in purchasing it.  As great as it sounded, we were not, so we said no thank you and he gave us our voucher and we walked quietly out the door.

Yeah, right!  That’s not what happened.  When we said no, they were just getting started.

After we said no, the salesperson turned up the heat.  Suddenly, things were no longer a formality. Suddenly, us saying no meant that the salesperson was not going to have a job, or a home, or a meal ever again.  But we held our ground. We stuck to our guns. We kept saying no, and thus made it through the first psychological hurdle.

Next came the sales manager. Before we could get our voucher, he had to “sign off” on the fact that we sat through the presentation. If we thought the first young man was a bull dog, this guy was a wolverine. He tried everything under the sun to convince us that we were foolish for not joining the club. Suddenly a simple, friendly “short” presentation was turning into a heated exchange. Alas, the sales manager agreed to sign off, but we had to wait just a few more minutes while they “processed” the paperwork.  Hurdle number two cleared.

So we were escorted to another room that just so happened to be occupied by another “random” couple who supposedly sat through the same presentation.  Amusingly, this couple could not contain their excitement for having decided to join the club. They couldn’t help but mention how smart they thought they were for doing this, and how their family and their lives would be so much greater. It was the final straw.  At that point, we didn’t even care about the free dinner. We just wanted to get out of there.

And that’s my point. High-pressured sales tactics work. Why else would this tactic still be deployed (see http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/does-hard-selling-still-work.html)? Thinking you’re somehow going to beat the system is a bad idea.  At worst, you’ll end up buying something you’ll later regret, and at best you’ll ruin an otherwise perfectly good vacation. I will never accept such an invitation for as long as I live…no matter how much I’m paid.