- Joined
- Jun 1, 2019
- Messages
- 221
Watched the fake guru video. It is simply excellent. I think it's the quality of the editing and the artistic presentation that made it successful, among other things.
Let me share my own experience of attending a Wyndham hotel "timeshare" presentation — maybe you make a future video about them?
After seeing people in the street offering a free gift in exchange to attending a presentation, I went out of curiosity, to learn more about sales. Man... They take people from the street and try to sell them a product for up to $30,000. Not even kidding. Effectively, they take all your vacations that you will take over the rest of your life, put a price tag on it, and then offer to take all those vacations through their network, but pay 2-3 times less. This makes sense in theory, but there is nothing requiring them to provide the same amount of value — which they don't: based on my Internet research, their network appears to mostly have crappy hotels in third-grade destinations, and the good ones featured in the marketing materials are always full. In the end you'll end up taking the crappy vacation, because you will get tired of trying to reach them on the phone to cancel, which may take you 30 calls. So in the end you just give up and take the vacation, and you keep doing it, always thinking that, hey, I had pay for it. Until you decide to cancel, and realize that you contractually can't, without paying even more.
Here is how the presentation went. First the guy comes out & says that he's supposed to give us a boring 5-hour presentation in exchange for a free certificate that we all came for, but because he's being nice, he'll shorten it to 90 minutes. Then he showed a video, how other people had doubts about the program but changed their mind. Then he asked people in the audience, how much they had spent on vacation last year. Obviously fake participants were shouting crazy amounts such as "Rome, $5000" or "Paris, $7000" — it was obviously fake, but I could still feel an effect on me.
Then he explained the details of the program. He was still talking in very conditional terms — "if you were to buy it", etc. Then the light goes down, light goes up, and he suddenly changes tone and starts speaking in terms of when you buy the program, not if.
I stayed till the end to make sure I got the full experience. Since I stayed there, one representative came and sat with me. I carefully studied their offer, but after computing in my head, something wasn't adding up. I have a Math Ph.D. and experience working in finance, so I was trying to go over the way they make a profit, and it just wasn't making sense: what they were offering didn't just seem too good to be true, it was impossible. So I started asking questions and, indeed, there was some fine print about me paying actually a lot more money than they explained, and with that the numbers started to add up. For example, they advertise that for $7,000 you get a timeshare that gives you minimum points allowing you a dozens so-so hotel nights per year — forever. That would not make sense, even at $700/year you will probably live for longer than a decade, and the hotels they advertise cost more. But in fact, after paying $7,000 you'd still be paying for those mandatory points, say, another $2,000/year.
Just to give some perspective, it's not uncommon for people to buy a timeshare with, say, $7,000 upfront, spend another few grand on regular payments while barely using it, then pay $2,000 on eBay just to get rid of it. That was the going price on eBay for those timeshares: negative $2000, considering the mandatory ongoing payments and the actual value of the resort accommodations offered. So that's the market value of the product they are selling. In fact, the market value is probably even lower (more negative) because some people still manage to cancel for free, by threatening court action etc.; only those who give up and decide to resell their timeshare on eBay pay 2 grand for it — probably reselling to someone who is an undercover representative of the company itself.
Since I was staying, the guy brought another guy and they started playing the "bad cop — good cop" technique: the new guy started yelling at me for wasting their time, which cost a lot as they are so rich and successful and busy, while the other one was trying to be soft and nice and to find ways to justify my behavior. I explained the numbers back to them and why it made no sense — I still felt the pressure to explain my actions — and they agreed that for a loser such as myself, who couldn't afford to spend even $20-30k per year on vacation, their program indeed had little to offer.
Let me share my own experience of attending a Wyndham hotel "timeshare" presentation — maybe you make a future video about them?
After seeing people in the street offering a free gift in exchange to attending a presentation, I went out of curiosity, to learn more about sales. Man... They take people from the street and try to sell them a product for up to $30,000. Not even kidding. Effectively, they take all your vacations that you will take over the rest of your life, put a price tag on it, and then offer to take all those vacations through their network, but pay 2-3 times less. This makes sense in theory, but there is nothing requiring them to provide the same amount of value — which they don't: based on my Internet research, their network appears to mostly have crappy hotels in third-grade destinations, and the good ones featured in the marketing materials are always full. In the end you'll end up taking the crappy vacation, because you will get tired of trying to reach them on the phone to cancel, which may take you 30 calls. So in the end you just give up and take the vacation, and you keep doing it, always thinking that, hey, I had pay for it. Until you decide to cancel, and realize that you contractually can't, without paying even more.
Here is how the presentation went. First the guy comes out & says that he's supposed to give us a boring 5-hour presentation in exchange for a free certificate that we all came for, but because he's being nice, he'll shorten it to 90 minutes. Then he showed a video, how other people had doubts about the program but changed their mind. Then he asked people in the audience, how much they had spent on vacation last year. Obviously fake participants were shouting crazy amounts such as "Rome, $5000" or "Paris, $7000" — it was obviously fake, but I could still feel an effect on me.
Then he explained the details of the program. He was still talking in very conditional terms — "if you were to buy it", etc. Then the light goes down, light goes up, and he suddenly changes tone and starts speaking in terms of when you buy the program, not if.
I stayed till the end to make sure I got the full experience. Since I stayed there, one representative came and sat with me. I carefully studied their offer, but after computing in my head, something wasn't adding up. I have a Math Ph.D. and experience working in finance, so I was trying to go over the way they make a profit, and it just wasn't making sense: what they were offering didn't just seem too good to be true, it was impossible. So I started asking questions and, indeed, there was some fine print about me paying actually a lot more money than they explained, and with that the numbers started to add up. For example, they advertise that for $7,000 you get a timeshare that gives you minimum points allowing you a dozens so-so hotel nights per year — forever. That would not make sense, even at $700/year you will probably live for longer than a decade, and the hotels they advertise cost more. But in fact, after paying $7,000 you'd still be paying for those mandatory points, say, another $2,000/year.
Just to give some perspective, it's not uncommon for people to buy a timeshare with, say, $7,000 upfront, spend another few grand on regular payments while barely using it, then pay $2,000 on eBay just to get rid of it. That was the going price on eBay for those timeshares: negative $2000, considering the mandatory ongoing payments and the actual value of the resort accommodations offered. So that's the market value of the product they are selling. In fact, the market value is probably even lower (more negative) because some people still manage to cancel for free, by threatening court action etc.; only those who give up and decide to resell their timeshare on eBay pay 2 grand for it — probably reselling to someone who is an undercover representative of the company itself.
Since I was staying, the guy brought another guy and they started playing the "bad cop — good cop" technique: the new guy started yelling at me for wasting their time, which cost a lot as they are so rich and successful and busy, while the other one was trying to be soft and nice and to find ways to justify my behavior. I explained the numbers back to them and why it made no sense — I still felt the pressure to explain my actions — and they agreed that for a loser such as myself, who couldn't afford to spend even $20-30k per year on vacation, their program indeed had little to offer.
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