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License to Shill

By Ken Wright

" The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away."

- Tom Waits

My family and I just got back from Sedona, Ariz., land of lovely pi�on-juniper forest, amazing redrock spires and bluffs, glitzy resorts and spiritual energy-field vortexes.

The only vortex we found, though, was the one our credit card number went into.

But we should've known. We headed down from our Colorado home to the self-proclaimed "New Age" capital of the West thanks to a friend, who gave us a free three-day stay at a resort. All we had to do was sit through a short sales pitch for the time-share program our friend was a member of. And for doing that, we would also get a free dinner in town.

This, of course, should have been warning number one. Like my mother always said, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Still, we treated it like an adventure. We could endure an hour and a half for a dinner and three free nights away in a beautiful place. We were even excited to sit there and check out the sales experience, like the cool skeptics at the hypnotist show.

I didn't know, though, that I'd end up feeling like the guy who passes the show walking around the room on all fours braying like a donkey.

Our show began at 9 a.m. on the second day of our stay. The same day, by the way, that Sedona was hit with the biggest floods in decades, washing cars and RVs down the scenic Oak Creek Canyon, and flowing over the bridge in town. Warning number two. But we missed all that because we were indoors. We hadn't eaten breakfast, because we'd been guaranteed the presentation wouldn't take more than an hour and a half. So while we sat at the little table with Travis, our own personal time-share sales representative, we filled ourselves with a stream of the excellent free coffee.

The scene was every bit the weird, wondrous show we'd expected. Once our group of free-loaders - us and another other dozen couples - were all gathered in the lobby, we were herded en masse into a bigger room with expansive windows looking out over a rainy resort courtyard, backed by the area's trademark sandstone monoliths rising impressively in the distance. As we dissolved into the room, each couple was ushered by a sales person to a small round table. Once there, like an orchestrated military movement, the sales pitches commenced at once all around us.

At our table, Travis delivered his own sales pitch. He was a nice guy. Young. Intense. Good looking. Good at what he did. And what he did was, for exactly an hour and a half, make us understand why we, as a family that traveled a fair amount and planned to go abroad several times in the next few years - information we gave freely, because it was true - would be morons and child abusers for not buying into this program, which would get us cheap lodging at sweet resorts all around the world, and that since it's treated as deeded property, we would pay off while using, letting us travel cheaply when we retire, and which our kids would inherit when we finally went on to the great cruise in the sky.

He then brought out a personal photo album of him and his pretty fianc�e in beautiful Hawaii on their own recent time-share excursion.

When the hour and a half was up, I needed to think about this. Because there was some logic to it - crazy logic, granted - but logic nonetheless. Sarah and I needed to at least talk about it.

"Don't you want to spend quality time with your kids?" he concluded with the sincerity and intensity of a minister.

Yes. I did. Right then, in fact. But our kids were back in the room engorging themselves on snacks with free reign of the TV. Around me, chatter filled the room, dense and energetic, like the caffeine burning an acid hole in my stomach and setting fire to my cerebral cortex.

"You deserve it!"

"A phenomenal lifestyle!"

And, "buy today ... buy today ... buy today."

Buy today, Travis continued, urging us, doing us a huge, huge favor, because there were huge incentives and extras being offered right now, and only now, in this room - in fact, if we were to leave this room, the offers would be gone, and the only thing we'd ever again be eligible for is the standard package at the normal retail rate. So, buy today, buy here and buy now.

Corks popped around us as other couples signed on the dotted line and celebrated with little bottles of champagne. I really needed to think about this. So did Sarah. This was a good time to talk, because Travis needed to go see if his regional sales manager, who just happened to be there that day, he said, would let him spice up our offer.

Now, I know you know where this is headed. But let me say, even though we went in to this thing without so much as a dust particle of possibility that we might actually be interested in a time share (actually, there is no "a" for time-share ownership, because even though it's treated like deeded property, what you really "own" are only annually-renewed "points" that can be redeemed for lodging around the world), there was an alluring reasoning unfolding here. Since our kids were now getting older, we've set our sights on doing several big adventures abroad in the next several years, before our kids are on their own. Then we hope to travel ourselves, like we did before we had kids, when our adventuring took us to Europe and Africa. And it would be cool to pass on this incentive to travel to our kids ... It was like an investment in nice lodging around the world for the price of a cheap hotel room, even if we just used the resorts as jumping off points to the more primitive traveling we prefer, and thereby reducing our planning by at least that much ...

A valid train of thought at least worth considering. If we at least had the time and space to consider it.

But we couldn't leave, of course, so instead Travis kept leaving the table so my wife and I could gather our wits and talk. And then he would return just before we could lay the cards out long enough to come to some resolution. And he'd come back with more sweeteners: Two free round-trip airline tickets. A free week of lodging. No fees the first year.

Our kids called our cell phone. How much longer would be?

"Just a few minutes," I whispered gruffly into the phone, feeling the "average to high stress" Travis had scribbled secretly, yet clearly, on the top of the interview form.

"They sound like great kids," Travis cooed, as I pocketed the phone and sat back down.

Then the regional sales manager, a serious, but gentle, older man in a sweater who looked like Andy Griffith in 1963, came by.

Why can't we leave and ponder this? I asked. Pleaded. We wanted desperately to just leave, but this was a big thing, and maybe a big chance, and maybe a really good offer - I mean, our friend does it, right? Lots of people do it, right? Why can't we just leave, soak in the hot tub for an hour, and come back with a decision?

"Because studies have shown," sweater-man answered, "if that happens, our sales go down forty percent."

Warning number three. But, you gotta love the honesty. He then personally authorized an extra several-thousand-dollar discount.

"I am in so much trouble for this," Travis confided with a frown after he left.

Well, you know where this went.

Sounds insane, doesn't it? But we did it. Before we left that room - hours later, and we were the last ones to leave - we had signed away a frightening number of thousands of dollars. And we had put the $1,400 deposit on our credit card.

I brayed like the jackass I was.

Trust me: I take crazy risks, even spontaneous ones, but generally, whenever I can, I pursue those painfully slowly and deliberately. Still, although the caffeine may have been a catalyzing agent, the purchase left us with a rush of excitement, like we'd done something zany that was a long-term investment and, most of all, was going to now force us to live that traveling life we had been envisioning.

Given that, at its best, this time-share arrangement struck me as a brilliant sort of for-profit world-wide commune, a kind of capitalistic socialism for travelers.

At its worst, it was $14,000 worth of advance hotel reservations.

That "worst" part settled in after a couple of hours, after the initial enthusiasm and caffeine wore off, replaced by a margarita and some very late lunch. Then what we had done sank in, like a hari-kari sword.

And that's why they didn't let us step outside and ponder.

After several tense, awkward hours filled with a mildly psychotic blend of giggling and soft whimpering, things turned out fine. We called a lawyer friend who, after he stopped laughing, did some quick internet research and found that Arizona has a seven-day contract rescission law, just for suckers like us, through which we could opt out of the deal. It should even be written into the contract, he added.

We looked again. It was. Right there above our signature.

The first thing the next morning, we gleefully exercised our right of rescission, and exorcised our consciences. Still, right then, I understood how old folks get swindled out of their retirement savings. How kids get sucked into crazy cults. How it was that 25 years earlier I had gotten conned out of all my money after being in New York City for only 15 minutes. How salespeople make their living.

Still, it was all above the board, all legal. And it's hard to blame Travis and his time-share shilling compatriots. We deserved it. We knew what was happening. We signed the contract, willingly, earnestly. I felt like a psychology experiment. And as for me and Sarah, it happened to both of us, right before each other's eyes. We couldn't even redeem ourselves by being able to point at the other and bark, You idiot!

In fact, in going back over this experience now, I'll admit that I even feel some admiration for Travis. He was good at what he did - polished, professional, trained, skilled, adaptable. I think even, maybe, somewhere, to some degree, he might have really believed he was doing us a favor, somehow saving our future. I think even we believed it for a few intoxicating hours.

Impressive. But, still, it strikes me as grim work. It was our fault, and it was completely legal, but it was nonetheless deliberately deceptive. It was shamelessly manipulative.

Still, Sarah and I learned a lot, about ourselves, and about the great big scary world out there. About how we really want to do our traveling - and which, because of this experience, we're now more than ever determined to do. And we will always hold the Great Time Share Adventure as one of the great stories between us.

Given those positives, maybe this predatory hard-selling has a function in natural selection. Maybe these time-share sales people are like, say, hyenas or dingoes, performing their own Darwinian culling of the dumb, the weak and the confused from the economic herd, and thereby strengthening the survivors.

Maybe. All I know is, I hope we evolved.

Ken Wright lives in Durango, where he keeps one hand on his wallet.