Now that he had explained the benefits of being an owner, he had our attention

And, as much as possible, my wife and I were thinking about all the potential risks of buying this timeshare

We were certainly interested. At that point we left the location of the initial presentation and went across the street to see the actual hotel rooms. And we ended up in a negotiating room at a table where we discussed the prices of a variety of options. The biggest question was: what if we buy it and it’s not beneficial to us. So we simply asked the representative what happens if we later discover that it’s not working out for us. He explained that they will just buy it back from us. And as I asked him a second time, we clearly remember he confirmed that they do indeed buy it back and generally around the price we paid for it. That is the grand lie that got us to accept the offer to sign the contract. He did not mention the estimated 75% to 85% loss that we are now faced with if we sold it today per email from HGVC.

After we accepted the offer, we moved to an office with an assurance manager (Amy Roake) to sign the contract. We didn’t think much about the agreement at that point because we had been told we could simply sell the timeshare back to them as discussed above. But that turns out to have been the grand lie to convince us to sign the contract. And there is a sentence in the contract that basically says the purchaser should not rely on representations outside of the contract. In other words, they can lie all they want during the selling process of the timeshares and hide behind their contracts. We might expect that to be something like: for example, if the sales representative had told us there will ALWAYS be apple juice and coffee and gravy and biscuits, and then we get to the end of the line and one of the items is not available. Or the room accidentally didn’t get cleaned as the representative promised during this presentation. Those are normal errors that happen by accident and that’s what you might expect the clause to mean. But we certainly did not expect them to be referring to a lie that involves a rep telling a lie at this level. This basically means they can tell you ANYTHING they want, true or not, and get away with it. As far as my wife and I are concerned, this is the most unethical and distorted way of doing business. And in the world of real estate, it’s certainly considered fraud and punishable by law.

This might sound like a situation that could have been avoided considering that we had five _1559e9fa_ days to cancel the contract

We could have certainly refused to purchase the timeshare, but the deal sounded reasonably beneficial and practical for us; and with the ability to sell it back to them as we were told, the offer was very appealing and sounded reasonable. And to discover that the timeshare would not fit our needs would take more than five days to be determined because we discovered the facts when trying to book our next vacation. In other words, the lies the rep told us during the presentation are not evident until you try to book a room. (There is not much available and certainly not as many locations as they claimed, and you have to book much further in advance than we were told). Furthermore, if we had done the research within the five day period, there are always disgruntled customers so it would not have changed our minds. And I spoke with a friend that had a similar arrangement with a different hotel, and they were happy with it. Nevertheless, we learned the hard way that the presentations are designed to trick you into signing a contract, a contract that is designed to protect the Hilton from the misrepresentations and lies that they tell during the presentations.