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Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

thehustle.co

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Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#221

Post by yourapostasy »

pwg wrote: post #99
quickthrower2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the scam? "Free flight" if you buy the timeshare or something?

Roping the unsuspecting into an incredibly expensive time-share using hard-sell boiler-room tactics without ever being up-front about the true costs. I sat through one of these once, curious about how it was going to go, and with the intent going in of not ever buying anything anyway. They present the timeshare as if it costs only pennies a day, and never admit to the true cost unless pressed very hard (and even then…

> Roping the unsuspecting into an incredibly expensive time-share using hard-sell boiler-room tactics without ever being up-front about the true costs.

The hack is to attend, tell them you go once a year, sometimes twice, to some ethnic ancestral home town, and you'll buy on the spot if they have a timeshare there. Pick out some two-stop-light town in some out of the way country, that doesn't even have AirBnB rooms, and you can see the sales people visibly deflate as they vainly look for a listing in Borat-istan. Put on a show of being all sad, and explain that you can't imagine paying for their fantastic deal for only 15% of your annual travel budget, but to put you down in the wait list as the first to buy when they expand to your home town.

You are in-and-out in the allotted time, with the freebies, usually three hours max. I actually like inspecting the actual buildings to try to spot whether or not they took shortcuts, as how these scams work fascinates me, and some of these places have genuinely good ideas I scrapbook for my homebuilding notes, so I don't mind the lead up to the real sales pitch where I deflate them, but I'm sure you can modify the hack so you open with your counter-pitch and are in and out in minutes. I've seen people report they tell the salespeople up front they only came for the freebies, they're never buying, and if both sides agree to discreetly walk early so the sales manager doesn't notice, they'll rate the sales effort A++++ (there are always surveys afterwards), and are out in minutes.

I'm curious with groups like 419 Eaters why there aren't more organized scambaiters for timeshare scams. The freebies are legit, and if you're planning to be in a particular area anyways, three hours for a 1-2 day stay, especially if you like seeing how others solve various housing-related challenges, is a good trade.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#222

Post by gregpilling »

lysp wrote: post #215

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back qu…

There are companies that specialize in insuring risks like that. It is a whole sub industry of insuring unlikely to win contests.

https://www.holeinoneinsurance.com/how-much-does-it-cost.htm...

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#223

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

macintux wrote: post #203
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve personally experienced this, probably 30 years ago, in Canada. I’d call a friend, we’d finish talking, then I’d hang up and as a joke he’d leave his phone off the hook. I couldn’t make another phone call until he hung up or some timeout of unknown length passed.

When I was younger in the US the situation was similar, but I thought it was up to the originator of the call to disconnect. Been too long to be certain of my recollection. I never determined the timeout, and I haven't had a land line in at least 15 years to experiment with.

You could be right, I can’t remember if the times that happened were when I originated the call or my friend did. I know it didn’t work all the time, and I think it stopped working at some point too.

This was back in the days when you could tell roughly where someone lived by their phone number - 43x—xxxx was south Edmonton (but not Mill Woods or Riverbend), 2xx-xxxx was Calgary, area codes didn’t matter because the whole province was 403, etc. The phone system is a lot different now - you can port a landline to a cell phone (and vice-versa). The original phone number where that happened has been ported to the cable company and now goes through coax (the equipment that handles it is basically a cable modem with a phone jack).

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#224

Post by gregpilling »

pwg wrote: post #99
quickthrower2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the scam? "Free flight" if you buy the timeshare or something?

Roping the unsuspecting into an incredibly expensive time-share using hard-sell boiler-room tactics without ever being up-front about the true costs. I sat through one of these once, curious about how it was going to go, and with the intent going in of not ever buying anything anyway. They present the timeshare as if it costs only pennies a day, and never admit to the true cost unless pressed very hard (and even then…

The real scam is the ongoing, monthly, maintenance fees on your 'timeshare'. Worldmark wanted $100 per month, per week of ownership, in a presentation I saw in Vegas. Which means that 52 weeks x $100 x 12 months = $62,400 per year in 'maintenance' on each unit. So even if you paid cash, they still get $62K per year in addition. This was Worldmark Vegas, buying a 'week' in a townhouse complex of $150,000 units.

The movie "Queen of Versailles" was fascinating. Timeshare mogul builds USA largest house https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125666/videoplayer/vi191341081...

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#225

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

It also reminds me of loyalty programs at department stores. I get so tired of the disgusted look on the face of the cashier when they ask me if I want to sign up for some clothing store loyalty card today to save 40% or something. They can’t believe that the 40% discount on $50 isn’t enticing to yoke myself to their stream of ads and even more intense data sharing than whatever they are already getting from plain transactions.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#226

Post by jstarfish »

djsumdog wrote: post #147
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure there's federal laws that forbid that. Of course, it's not a crime if you don't get caught. Plus there's a small sub-story in the article about someone that did win a Tesla, but couldn't afford the taxes they had to pay to actually get it. You can win a car but you have to be able to pay taxes and insurance for it, too.

Some of these promotion companies pay a lot of money just to have their cars as part of promotions (and the sweepstakes companies can get into big trouble if their systems are not setup to give away x cars. Most of them are time seeded so someone is guaranteed to win one a week). If your already investing that much money, can't the company also cover the taxes, or do most states have laws forbidding that? It seems li…

For legit contests, there is usually a small cash prize in addition that covers the cost of sales/gift tax. This was the case back in the 90s through at least Oprah's car giveaway in the early 2000s. Maybe they dont do it anymore?

It never covered income tax though; thats on you.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#228

Post by Bartweiss »

bane wrote: post #151
pwg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roping the unsuspecting into an incredibly expensive time-share using hard-sell boiler-room tactics without ever being up-front about the true costs. I sat through one of these once, curious about how it was going to go, and with the intent going in of not ever buying anything anyway. They present the timeshare as if it costs only pennies a day, and never admit to the true cost unless pressed very hard (and even then…

I went to one to satisfy the same sort of morbid fascination as well. I really have to hand it to the sales people, it was one of the most incredible sales pitches I've ever seen. They shuttled us to one of their premier properties where they took us to a sales room and served us breakfast. After a few moments they had everybody gather around a large presentation screen and a salesman who spent the next hour not just…

I did one of these also, and I absolutely don't regret it. I think I learned more about (ruthless) sales tactics in two hours than I ever have from books or classes.

It was a timeshare tied to a big-name hotel chain, and as far as I could tell they were selling some hotel rooms as timeshare units to finance construction and maintenance. So the deal wasn't good, but it was substantially less of a scam than the stereotype because they had a non-scam business to protect. That, or the guy was so sharp that he really did persuade me quite effectively, and I was only saved by having a a prior of "this is the worst deal imaginable". (Well, that and the Odysseus bit - I decided in advance to refuse no matter how good the offer looked.)

The funniest part of the slightly-less-bad scam was that it enabled them to spend a while talking about how it's "not your parent's timeshare" and "not like those shady offers from the 80s". Which was true I guess, you got nice rooms in many places instead of one rundown house - they were just charging rates that were steep even before the multi-thousand-dollar "maintenance fees" kicked it.

Oh well, the free travel and event tickets were actually a great dollars-per-hour value - as long as you said no.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#229

Post by mathattack »

gregpilling wrote: post #222
lysp wrote: post #215

About 30 years ago in Australia There was a competition at the local shopping centre. Spend $20 at any shop in the centre, show your receipt and you get a chance to win the displayed car. The chance involved folding a paper plane, and then trying to get it into the car through the sunroof. Which was only open a small crack. A friend of the family tried about 5 times over the day and never got close. They came back qu…

There are companies that specialize in insuring risks like that. It is a whole sub industry of insuring unlikely to win contests. https://www.holeinoneinsurance.com/how-much-does-it-cost.htm...

If I recall, there was a basketball one where the insurance company didn’t want to pay because the shooter had paid college ball. The team wound up paying to avoid the PR disaster.

Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall

#230

Post by azinman2 »

nickik wrote: post #212
pknopf wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for capitalism, but I feel like this should be illegal. Yes, I know, "the consumers shouldn't be so dumb". But there is always the group of a society that will bite. The seller may make a good buck, but these tactics have many downstream effects that just get compounded for the people buying this garbage. There should be some kind of protection for the consumers in this case. I know it would be hard to define…

How would you even regulated that? This is the sort of detailed complex gray-zone law that is hard to define and harder to enforce. A more general increase in the power of contract and what the need to include to make them valid.

You could start by making it illegal to offer prizes to attend real estate sales seminars — decapitating their primary hook. Next, you could require interest rates to be in gigantic letters, and a whole host of other info to be required. You could also make it illegal for real estate developers to also be loan providers.
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