I knew better, but I went anyway. I was drawn, not so much by the "2 free airline tickets, blah, blah, blah," but by the $300 grocery certificate and the $250 in retail gift certificates. Those were really practical offerings that I could definitely use. More about that later.
First of all, everyone I dealt with at the presentation was very nice and treated me respectfully. The program does sound like a good value, if indeed you vacation a lot. But the upfront cost (which they don't tell you about until the end of the promo) is quite prohibitive. Nonetheless, I bit. I imagined enabling my kids and grandkids to take vacations they might not otherwise be able to afford. When I said I wanted to go for it, they took me into a private office. Prior to that (after the presentation), everyone is one-on-one with a sales agent in a NOISY room with fun, upbeat music blaring so loudly that you can't think straight. In the little, quiet office, the picture becomes clearer. The first red flag came when they rolled the first year's $389 "optional one-time activity fee" and the $199 "one time processing fee" into the financed amount. I balked because several times in the presentation we were told that the activity fee should only be paid once you are ready to book travel. Neither the presenter nor the VP who "just happened" to be onsite said "except for the first year." The VP even emphasized that if we bought that night, we should not pay the activity fee unless we were ready to book travel. Not so, I learned in the private office. Soon we were joined by "the boss." My sales agent told him I was troubled by this seeming discrepancy. His response was to waive the fee entirely for the first year. I didn't get any other offers to sweeten the pot as previous reviewers did--maybe I was too eager.
All through the process, I kept saying in my head, "I can't believe I'm doing this." I think the only reason I did was that I knew under the law, I would have the opportunity to cancel the transaction within 3 business days if I changed my mind. One thing they don't tell you is what the interest rate is that you'll be paying for financing. It also never shows up in the paperwork. They tell you only what your monthly payment will be. So I asked, and was then told what the monthly rate is. Of course, the monthly rate sounds ridiculously low--1.-something%. So I said, "Annual?" That was 19.-something%. It's not sounding so good anymore. I'm thinking to myself, even if this IS a good program, am I ready to commit to an $8,000 loan at this rate--after only thinking about it for 30 minutes? I was also a bit taken aback by the fact that they take your monthly payments by automatic debit. Apparently, there's no other option. You can't time the payment to coincide with deposits to your account, they just take it. Unbelievably, I continued on.
With everything signed and with my attractive little book in hand, my sales agent asked me what premiums I had been offered for attending. I told her about the grocery certificate, the retail gift cards and the round-trip airfare/lodging plus meal gift card at any of their properties in the US. Right off the bat, she told me not to take the trip. She acknowledged that there were a bunch of hoops to jump through and that it wasn't worth it. Kudos to her for her honesty on that. She said she'd give me 2 extra "stars" for additional vacation discounts instead. Then she took me out front to give me my other premiums. They are legitimate, but there is a catch. The $300 in grocery certificate? That's actually a rebate program. First you have to pay $12.95 to participate in the program. Then you have to log and submit receipts on a monthly basis in order to then get a $20.00 rebate--per month for 15 months. Okay, so maybe $300 is $300 (or, in this case, $300 is $287.05), but this monthly hassle makes it highly unlikely that anyone will follow through. Hardly was it the month of free groceries that I had hoped driven to Northbrook for! Then there was the $250.00 in retail gift cards. I had never heard of any of the places the cards were for!
After I got home, I looked at the whole thing realistically, and while it still appealed to me, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake. Today I called the company and told them I needed to cancel and why. Again, they were very nice. They told me I could fax my cancellation to them and follow up by mailing the book back. The lady I talked to even agreed with me that it would be better to cancel if I'm not really sure, and maybe I can reconsider it another time. No high pressure at all.
So I faxed my cancellation and mailed the book to arrive by the end of the 3rd business day. It cost $10.00 to send, but it seemed a small price to pay for what might have been a devastating move on my part, financially.
Lesson learned, for now. If anyone catches me about to do something like this again, STOP ME! read more
