The Day We Pretended We Could Afford a 25-Year Time Share to Win a Free 7 Night Trip
/It all went down when Chantal picked the golden ticket in the Seminyak streets. Me, being in sales, thought it was a total scam and that we shouldn't even waste our time checking it out. She was really pumped about it so we made it a priority the next morning. Googling Karma, it seemed like an upscale place and we wanted to dress the part to pretend that we "fit right in". Chantal had a beautiful, bright, yellow dress, and well, all I had was a collared shirt. (Sorry I didn't know we were getting roped into a timeshare coming to Bali).
The drive to Karma Jimbaran was pretty short, so I couldn't complain about that, but when we arrived in the sales office filling out paperwork, I knew it was about to go down! The hotel paired us up with an American representative who took us to a huge room filled with tables of other suckers getting pitched. There were some pros to the morning though. We had free coffee, chicken sandwiches, and assorted fruits while talking to our representative, Matt. He was an upbeat guy from New Orleans who was asking questions to get to know us on a deeper level.
An hour passed by and all I could think about was, "We just want our 7 night free stay in this magical beach villa, and we want it now!" Matt was a very nice guy and very friendly, but he kept saying, "Don't worry, we are getting there." I have been in sales for over 5 years and I know how all this works. They butter you up, they get you to say "yes"to all their questions and then they drop it hard on you at the end: that is exactly what happened.
Our one hour obligation quickly turned to four hours and then they were asking for an upfront cost of over $1,000, maintenance costs, and monthly fees to be able to have a getaway vacation to over 100 countries whenever we wanted. Chantal and I both looked at each other and said confidently, "Nope, we don't have the money to do it." It could have been no more then 10 seconds later when they turned cold and dropped us like a lead balloon out the back exit.
They threw us in a small office where we actually collected our prize.... 4 hours later. Chantal did win the 7-night trip, so sometime this year we'll be enjoying Karma Vietnam, Germany, India, or Thailand. Thanks Karma. Sorry Matt.