Has anyone else ever been offered a time-share? or bought one?
We were told we'd "won a free holiday in a competition", but it wasn't as simple as that - we ended up going to a presentation about the company, which, as we were beginning to suspect from the correspondence, was about time-share. Well, to us the whole concept seemed bizarre from the outset, and became increasingly bizarre as the presentation progressed.....we didn't weaken and give in to the high-pressure salesmanship, although we felt slightly sorry for the girl doing the presentation, as she probably won't earn any commission...
She was trying to convince us that "owning a holiday" was a better bet that "letting all the money go to a travel agent". Well, we couldn't get our heads round the concept of "owning a holiday"....it's something intangible, that you can't own, surely? We tried to explain that we have a house in Italy, and we own that, AND we own furniture, books, the house has a garden, but she seemed to confuse this with "souvenirs"...and then we saw a DVD of all the resorts, which apparently offers all sorts of on-site facilities like SPORT, SPORT and more sport....We asked, can we go into the local town and visit the museums? theatres? other places of interest?......It was at this point that we began to suspect that we were not only not on the same wavelength, but on completely different planets.
We were asked, "What would be your idea of a dream holiday?" And I said...well, I go to the Edinburgh Festival every year, that's my idea of a dream holiday....the dreams I HAVEN'T fulfilled would be Glyndebourne and Bayreuth!" Oh dear...the poor girl wasn't really familiar with the concept of Arts Festivals at all, let alone the idea that going to one could constitute a "dream holiday". (So I thought I'd better keep quiet about Chartres Cathedral...another dream that I achieved!)
Then as a last resort (sorry about the pun! last ditch attempt, I suppose...) she started plugging safari holidays in Kenya and some 5-star resort in Goa....by tacit consent we thought it wasn't even worth STARTING the subject of responsible tourism, eco-friendly tourism, the immorality of diverting the resources of a Third World country to build 5-star hotels with swimming pools for wealthy Western tourists.....
Oh well, we DID get our free holiday vouchers, AND some free theatre vouchers....but I reckon we EARNED them!
