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Comment by ProjectArcturis | Hacker News Reader

Ah, Caitlin Flanagan, chronicler of the many modest tribulations of the upper middle class, back again to tell us about the immense anxiety she experienced when, um, she sat through the sales pitch she signed up for.

Timeshares are obviously a scam, but why did I just read 5000 words about how she agreed to go on a discounted vacation in exchange for a timeshare pitch, and that's exactly what happened. The hotel was fine. The sales pitch was a sales pitch. She wasn't detained or assaulted or forced into anything. Her husband seems like an absolute saint and I can't imagine why he puts up with her.

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I accepted the timeshare faustian bargain and regretted it.

I'd rather be dissuaded by 2 hours of reading an article at home than learning through the experience of a 2 hour sales pitch during my vacation time.

What exactly makes it so bad? I’m assuming you went into it thinking it was worth the trade for whatever you received, but changed your mind after - what can you tell us to keep us from making the same decision?

It's really not what I want to be doing on a vacation. The bargain is a hotel discount in exchange for a sales pitch. Sounded ok when I booked the vacation. Really annoying when it was preventing me from getting to the next fun thing.

Would you want to spend 2-3 hours of a 3-day vacation negotiating a new car price? If no, then maybe you also don't want to spend 3 hours saying, "No, thank you" to a very nice timeshare salesperson and you should spend it at the beach, in front of slot machines, or getting drunk instead.

Not all of your time is the same.

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.“

-George Bernard Shaw

True, it's exactly what happened. But the point is, there are people who are a lot better at making you want to buy something than you are at resisting their tactics. Think twice before you voluntarily put yourself in their hands, even for a discounted vacation.

That's the bait. The real point of the article is to showcase the upper middle class lifestyle, philosophy of the world, and petty concerns.

It's so kind of the elites to go out of their way to protect us from ourselves. If the elties were truly benevolent and generous, they would instruct us on how we protect us from them. Funny how they're never *that* insightful.

Why timeshares are a scam? I'm absolutely ignorant on the topic, just curious

One reason is that you pay up front for access to annual slot. You really have to want to go every year at the same time to the same place.

Second is that they charge maintenance fees. You have to pay ever increasing amount.

Third is that you can’t cancel the contract. And they are impossible to sell. There is huge depreciation and buyers want desirable areas. The only good way to get one is buy used at big discount.

For people with kids - yes many do want to go to the same place at the same time. There’s not a heck of a lot of flexibility when kids are in school.

I don’t do the whole timeshare thing, but I have family who do and they seem happy.

I wonder if they'll still be happy when the kids have grown up and they're still on the hook for those maintenance fees and can't sell the timeshare to someone else.

I suspect the inability to sell is in the minority.

I know people who buy "used" timeshares happily. The owners really want to get rid of them so they sell at a low price. As long as the rules allow it, they use them as AirBnBs for those two weeks and make a killing. Those locations are premium, so they can charge a lot per night. And they don't have to do any work as the resort staff handle most of the cleaning, etc.

Compared to buying a house/condo and putting it on AirBnB, the per dollar invested gain is much higher with timeshares.

Queue the "yo dawg" meme for rent-seeking.

> One reason is that you pay up front for access to annual slot. You really have to want to go every year at the same time to the same place.

Our neighbor's timeshare works by paying for X weeks/year, but then they reserve the weeks they want, reservations open a year ahead of time. The weeks are not fixed.

(Absolutely not defending the world of products sold with high-pressure sales tactics.)

Last Week Tonight has a whole 25-minute segment on timeshares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd2bbHoVQSM

25 minutes is shorter than 2 hours, I guess.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb that anything that gets sold with so many high-pressure sales tactics is going to be a bad deal for you.

I guessed that, just wanted to figure out why

No one forced you to read it.

No one forced you to react this way. Though you did.

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