Tactics: High-pressure sales and deception still common

To sell apparently overpriced timeshares, many developers still rely on the personal sales pitch. Many owners say that includes high pressure and sometimes deception.

"I have been lied to, threatened, ordered out, cursed at, followed to my car and held hostage — and all in timeshare presentations," said Marylyn Carlyle of Monroe Township, N.J., a self-proclaimed timeshare consultant who offers advice online. Her experiences are based on many timeshare purchases, including two in Utah's Park City.

She loves timeshare vacations but advocates buying on the resale market instead of from developers. Still, she said she has often attended developer presentations to see what they offer or to get freebie incentives while she is staying at their resorts through timeshare exchanges.

Carlyle said one saleswoman at a Sheraton resort had told her several lies, including that units there could not be bought through the resale market and misled her about what she knew would be the value there for exchanging for units elsewhere. "Lie after lie. I had had enough after three hours," she said.

"But they followed me out to the car. They were banging on the car trying to get us to come back in," she said. "I started screaming that I was going to call the police."

In another presentation, at a New York hotel, Carlyle said she and her husband had taken a granddaughter who was being watched by development company employees in another room. When they decided to try to leave, the large salesman would not allow retrieval of the grandchild until he said his presentation was over.

"We bought the timeshare just to get out of there and then rescinded it the next day," she said. Most states allow buyers about a week to change their minds about a timeshare sale, through laws often enacted because of past horror stories about high-pressure sales. Utah by law allows up to five days for a timeshare buyer to rescind.

Timeshare presentations attended by the Morning News locally were not obnoxious with pressure tactics. But while they were lower key, they were designed to create urgency — with promises of extra discounts or freebies if a purchase were made immediately.

Virtually every time a reporter declined an offer, a lower offer would be made. Salesmen said many discounts would be made "for today only." Sometimes they offered longer periods of ownership at no extra cost or bonus weeks for use in timeshare exchanges — but supposedly only if purchases were made on the spot.