When my wife and I first got married, we went to a timeshare promo (they promised a gas card and lunch for our time). I sat in the back of the presentation room with a complex analysis textbook working through some problems. The presenter saw me there, looked at what I was doing and sent us out of the room before I could damage his prospects. We did manage to talk a couple people out of buying during the free lunch (which was, as I recall, some kind of lame hamburgers and hotdogs).
Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
131–140 of 264 posts
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the fundamental economics of time shares are a scam. They are pitched as "ownership" but what they really are are perpetual rental contracts with no way out. (The rent is called "maintenance fees" but it doesn't matter what label you attach to it. It's a sum of money that you are obligated to pay year after year after year. If it quacks like rent...) And you even have to pay a hefty sum up front for the privi…
Serious question: how has post-pandemic inflation impacted the economics of timeshares purchased pre-pandemic? Is there any particular point in time where we can look back with the benefit of hindsight and say that a timeshare actually would have been a good investment?
Has to be "yes" with qualifiers.
I'm sure that certain timeshares (no inflation adjustment with good governance) have aged really well, and some people that wanted access to specific locations were able to pickup timeshare rights for a song.
The problem is that the "benefit of hindsight" question requires you to compare other investments that have probably fared as well or better without the constraints/risks of typical timeshares.
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#133Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#134> There are other types of car giveaways run by more legitimate parties (charity raffles, event promotions) that do deliver the goods — but if you win, you’re liable to pay a hefty gift tax. I don't think it's a gift tax, but ordinary income tax. A coworker won a living room sofa set on a game show, and the staff were waiting with a 1099 for her as soon as she stepped off the stage. The IRS says you need to pay tax b…
In Australia, the thing called an "art union" used to be how to raise money for charity, and the prize was often a home, and they really exist, and people did win and live in them, and some of them were classics of the low spot of the 60s and 70s, shag-pile carpet, sunken entertainment pit, volcano-stone fireplace... They still take place. I suspect the buildings have moved with the (architectural) times.
I think you mean the apogee of architectural refinement. I would love an entertainment pit.
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#135It's unbelievable that showing a car when it's not being awarded doesn't fall under any sort of false advertising law.
Don't worry, they've mostly moved on to selling crypto and NFTs for the most part... I haven't seen a car parked in my local mall for ages, there's a bitcoin ATM parked in that space now. There's a certain breed of huckster that even if they designated a prize winner, it would be one of their family members. The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to…
> The most important part of managing scams is to expose them,
Yes, because their targets will be reading Hacker News.
The Nigerian Prince scam still works, and every person in the world has heard of it by now.
> and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work.
I don't think they value their public image half as much as you seem to think. But you're on to something.
What if the alternative line of work they had to pick was cleaning toilets at a federal penitentiary, or stamping license plates, or maybe breaking gravel at a re-socialization camp somewhere in Siberia?
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work. Or we make these scams illegal. Sending scammers to jail is much more effective than finger wagging.
Cost of a police investigation, prosecution, and then housing them in jail for what? 2 years ? Public shaming is much cheaper
These people have no shame, much like a lion has no shame when he eats an antelope.
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#137A friend of the family recently won a million dollar house in the hospital raffle. It was a house on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which he immediately sold. I think he might also have won $20,000 of gold bullion in another hospital raffle. And off topic but my brother won a years supply of Kentucky Friend Chicken in the footy tipping..... and he is a vegetarian. Imagine that - you win the sacrifice of 365 chickens f…
When you say 'footie' that makes me think you are Australian. "Raffles" in australia have very specific legal requirements.
'Footie' is often used in the UK to refer to foo^H^H^Hsoccer.
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#138Welcome to the ecosystem of lead-generation, and the specialized marketing campaigns which drive business sales. One of my earliest technical jobs was writing the middle-ware systems that handled lead data, and tracked the sales conversion rates of the companies we served. As an aside, it is the worst job I ever had in any of my careers…
In general, you are never dealing with a single company:
1. An advertiser operating on Radio/TV/Web/Email to drive specific consumers to a company sales lead funnel
2. A marketer running a consumer data collection form (Web/1-800-Call-center/SMS/IVR) to sort which campaign is best suited for the potential consumers
3. A marketing data-broker cross-referencing and scrubbing user data to filter bogus/old/duplicate customer leads, and ascertain the time critical nature of which campaigns to deploy new leads into
4. A company sales campaign manager monitoring lead conversion rates between the data-broker and the company sales platform (often another web-form/call-center/IVR/spammer/SMS). In general, most professional firms will drop campaigns under a 17% success rate, but spammers are happy even under 0.056% terrible rates (where old lead data goes after everyone else gave it a hard pass).
5. A sales conversion success rate lead price adjustment by push back from the company campaign to the data-broker (higher % sales per lead pool mean higher prices). The data-broker also cross checks the conversion rate for a given lead pool, and will adjust the quality/price per lead by comparing many company campaigns to keep everyone honest.
While many firms will honor a Do Not Call record flag by law, once a lead is in the ecosystem it can be resold to dozens of firms all over the world. It was also common for call-centers to leech call lists to resell to other data brokers, which would predictably have terrible conversion rates equivalent to spam email.
I should probably mention the data-broker was also a social networking site owner, and this was the primary fiscal motivation behind running the platform. ;-)
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the fundamental economics of time shares are a scam. They are pitched as "ownership" but what they really are are perpetual rental contracts with no way out. (The rent is called "maintenance fees" but it doesn't matter what label you attach to it. It's a sum of money that you are obligated to pay year after year after year. If it quacks like rent...) And you even have to pay a hefty sum up front for the privi…
Most of what you've described can also be applied to condominiums. The only difference is that you can occupy them year round, but I don't think that's a relevant difference. Are the "fundamental economics" of those also "a scam"?
1. If you own a condo, you get voting shares in your strata/HOA. The owner collective collectively sets fees, maintenance schedules, etc. The owners act for the interest of themselves, so as an owner, that is usually in your interest. Legislature protects your rights as an owner.
2. If in some hypothetical world, you were unhappy with the fees, and you couldn't sell your condo, you can walk away from it anytime you want, and all you're out is the purchase cost of the condo.
3. You can't do that with the timeshare. You need to find another sucker to take the timeshare off your hands.
4. For what you get out of it, the cost of owning/renting a timeshare versus owning/renting a condo is horribly tilted against the timeshare.
5. Which is why intelligent people will pay a million dollars for a condo, but only idiots buy timeshares.
6. Which why you get screwed if you want to do #2, because of #3.
The reason people buy timeshares is because they are bad at math, bad at finances, and don't understand that they are getting fleeced.
Timeshares don't necessarily have to be shitty scams, it's entirely possible to design one that isn't a waste of money. But in practice, all of them are.
Re: Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall (2018)
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry, they've mostly moved on to selling crypto and NFTs for the most part... I haven't seen a car parked in my local mall for ages, there's a bitcoin ATM parked in that space now. There's a certain breed of huckster that even if they designated a prize winner, it would be one of their family members. The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to…
> The most important part of managing scams is to expose them, and cite the names involved so that they need to pick a different line of work. Or we make these scams illegal. Sending scammers to jail is much more effective than finger wagging.
In most cases if you dig a little they’re already illegal.