Raisin Balls and Time-Sharing

In Notting Hill, Spike – Hugh Grant’s sketchy roommate, played by an off-the-wall Rhys Ifans – announces, “I’ll tell you a story that will make your balls shrink to the size of raisins.” I’ve got a story like that. It’s about a time-share.

First, you need the background:

More than a quarter century ago, we bought a week at the Trapp Family Lodge. We get the same unit every year, on the same week in June, and we have been very happy. The kids love it. We still love it. One year we accidentally arrived a week early, and the Trapps instantly found us an empty unit at no cost. Awesome.

About 15 years ago we got one of those free weekends in Orlando, sponsored by Fairfield, a different time-share outfit. These folks did not offer the same unit on the same week. Instead they sold points, thousands of them; we could use the points to reserve a week at any Fairfield resort, and there were a number of these in Florida. I wanted to use the week to go to Florida during my spring vacation so I could watch spring training.

So, my wife Jane gave me her blessing (she not having a teacher’s schedule and not often being free during the spring), and we bought 120,000 points for around $12K. That sounds like a lot of points, but it was a really modest amount of them, just enough for a studio unit. Our “home” resort was Palm Aire, in Pompano Beach, and the Orioles did their spring training right next door, in Fort Lauderdale. Occasionally we stayed in a different resort if Palm Aire was full.

Of course the plan didn’t work very well. The resorts had few studio units and it was often difficult to find one for the right week. Eventually we had to buy an extra 49,000 points to be sure of getting a unit. Each thousand points, by the way, cost around fifty cents a month for taxes and upkeep, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider that 170,000 of them add up to $85 a month or over a grand a year. Time-shares aren’t free, even after you have paid for them. But I kept using my points, and going to spring training ball games. Each time I went to Florida, I had to attend an owners’ meeting, where sharp-toothed sales reps showed me how I really needed more points to become a Platinum member or something. Still, I was able to resist them, and my balls stayed at rest.

Then Fairfield was sold, to Wyndham Vacation Resorts. And the rules began to change. The monthly service charges started increasing. By this time I was going to a Kissimmee resort right outside of Orlando, because the Orioles had left Ft. Lauderdale, and in Kissimmee I could see the Astros and the Braves, and visit a friend 30 miles away in Lakeland, to see the Tigers.

Now comes the ball-shrinking part of the story. This year I got a studio unit at Star Island, an attractive resort right off the main drag between Kissimmee and Disney. I’d never stayed there before, but that was where last year’s sales meeting had been held. I mostly went to Astro games, which are cheaper than those at Wide World of Sports and which offer the chance to see Jose Altuve, a pint-sized slugger from Venezuela. Altuve is amazing. He can hit anything. I saw him blast a home run while I was there. He’s 5’6” on tiptoes, but his bat is almost as big as he is. He must have arms like iron bands, like Longfellow’s village smithy.

While there I had to go to one of those sales meetings. I was met at the office by a pleasant Latina woman named Mia Duarte, and we sat together at a presentation, where I was told that I could no longer combine my two blocks of 12OK and 49K points unless I bought into the “Wyndham Trust.” They told me that this program – which would guarantee my ability to combine the points – was instigated last year, but was never mentioned at my last year’s meeting.

“So unless I join the Trust, the 49,000 points are essentially useless?” I asked.  “I can’t combine them into one total?”

“That’s right,” said Mia ruefully. I explained that we’d bought them specifically to give us more flexibility to find larger units if there were no studios available.

“Sorry,” she said. “They no longer work for you.”

“How much to join the Trust?” I asked.

“This year,” she told me, “the cost is $100,000.”

The balls shrunk right to raisin size. Holy fuck.  I went white. Mia called over the sales manager, Wayne something. Mia had seemed nice enough, a single mom with grown kids, but Wayne was a razor-faced shark. He said, yes, the Trust was a hundred grand, but maybe he could help. And help he did. After talking with “Corporate,” he came back with a new offer, last year’s price, he said, about $25,000. He handed me the offer on a print-out with a lot of legalese. This was a temporary quote, he explained, that would apply only until I walked out the door. He would not let me take away a copy of the print-out.

Ridiculous, I said. No way. Twenty-five thousand dollars? We’ll walk away. Abandon the points.   Stop paying the service charge. I was sweating bullets.

Wayne said we couldn’t do that. Wyndham’s legal department would come after us. Ruin our credit rating. We were stuck. Privately I said to Mia that I might have to talk with a lawyer. Then, I formally declined Wayne’s offer and walked out of the sales building, my ball size well below that of raisins, now somewhere around B-Bs.

After lunch I went back to the sales meeting building to try to clarify some further questions, but Wayne wouldn’t even speak to me. “You mentioned a lawyer,” he said. “I can’t say anything more to you.”

So that afternoon I went to an Astros game, but I was so upset that I couldn’t stay past the sixth inning. I had been told that the points would remain as part of our estate, so that even after death, our sons would still be liable for their cost. I felt like someone in those alien films, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, with a huge alien leech sucking blood from my neck. That night I called Jane and told her what had happened, and what I’d done during the meeting. “There’s gotta be an exit,” she said. “And don’t walk out of any more games. You’re down there for the baseball.”

As it turned out, there was an exit. Two days later, I drove over to Wyndham Corporate Headquarters in Orlando, which was only four miles from Star Island. After asking to speak with a time-share representative, I found myself sitting down with Lurline Morris, a Guest Services Consultant. She was very kind. Almost everything the sales team had told me was untrue. The two blocks of points were still combinable. The “Trust” was not necessary for me to combine them. And there existed a program called “Ovation,” which would accept owners’ points if they wanted to opt out of the system. Owners did not get paid for their points, but the service fees would disappear. “You can get all the details from the Wyndham website,” Lurline explained.

As I left, I kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you so much,” I said, and the raisins began to expand back to normal size.

I thought about the sales staff. Mia had seemed so nice. She might not have known about the Ovation program, but I suspected she probably did. Did she know that the points could still be combined, even without the “Trust”? Wayne certainly knew all this stuff. How could they be allowed to lie so freely? I wondered what their commission would have been on $100K.

When I got home, I began the Ovation procedure, and after signing and notarizing forms and mailing them in, we eventually received a letter that “advised that the final processing of your contract cancellation has been completed.” If our Episcopal church had had candles to light, I would have lit a dozen.

I have to admit that I did not complain bitterly to anyone about the behavior of the sales guys, either Mia or Wayne. Who knows what would have happened? The whole corporation might have refused to have anything more to do with me, just as Wayne did, and I absolutely didn’t want to queer the deal.

One other thing struck me: during my happy conversation with Wayne, I was able to eavesdrop on another couple at a nearby table with a different Wayne, and they were getting the same talk that I was. Sign up for the “Trust.” They too were oldsters like me, and seemed less able even than I to resist the sales pressure. My God. There ought to be a law. Raisin balls.