Lucky Escape - Vida Vacations/Grand Mayan Resort Vida Vacations, Grand Mayan, Vida, Mayan, Cancun, Timeshare, Riveria Maya Mexico

Beware Folks...

My future wife and I are seasoned travellers to Cancun and come here each winter.  One of my bucket list activities was to experience deep sea fishing.  I met a rep from Vida Vacations near Coco Bongo in the Hotel Zona.  We talked me into a fishing trip for 6 hours for only $199.00.  Seemed very affordable but also left me questioning....what is the catch?

The catch was to sit through a 90 minute sales presentation by Vida Vacations at The Grand Mayan, The Bliss and whatever else they have.  I said why not, because I really wanted to go fishing.  They promised all the normal stuff.  Free Breakfast, Tour and I knew the hard pitch was there.

We both agreed..we were NOT going to buy anything.  Since I am a professional sales trainer I wanted to hear how they pitched it anyways for my own training and they did not disappoint.

Folks...here is my warning...stay clear of these guys.  They make sure you have a credit card so you can't even use that as an excuse to get out of the deal.  And if you can...go in your own car.  Even if you rent one.

Our 90 minute presentation last only 3.5 hours...unlike some others.  My wife was told in the breakfast line that the person she spoke with was that her presentation was 6 hour when they caved.

I am not going to rehash how slimy these people are...everyone one of them is super slimy.  They are lower than the used car salesman.

First, our sales rep Katherine was very agressive and tried to offer us every thing she could.  Remember, we were not buying.  She was polite and some what professional.  She played on our Canadian ties to build rapport.  Good salesmanship.

She brought over a manager to sharpen the pencil and this is when it gets interesting.

We have been members of Palace Resorts for many years.  We love them and have no desire to change from them.  They offered to purchase our equity in Palace.  We have no equity in Palace.  Tried to convince us that our Palace membership was worth nothing with RCI and that our ITP number was around 2800.  Middle of the pack.  They claim theirs is 3.  I will be looking this up to confirm.  When they printed out the Palace Resorts report, they were using Cancun Palace as a guide even though we told them Beach Palace.  Guess what, Cancun Palace hasn't been operating as Cancun Palace in about 18 months...so they don't have up to date facts and my guess they were made up anyways.

They also told me that we can just stop paying Palace and they will go away but we can use our free weeks still.  For some reason I find this hard to believe.

Eventually we said NO.

This is when the in your face approach happens.

This other manager called Leanne came over and started drilling and convincing us to once again trade in or convert our Palace membership to them.  She won't take no as an answer.

I eventually told her that we wanted to go and not to hold us hostage any longer.

This is when she can extremely angry with us and storm us out of the sale room to yet another room where they tried one more time to sweeten the pot, with more aggressive sales tactics.

These types of people give sales professionals a bad wrap.  Especially those we train at my company.  A sales professional and marketing training firm in Buffalo, NY and Burlington, ON.

For some who really want to enjoy a vacation...they may never read this until it is too late.  We were lucky, our rep Katherine shared out her WIFI on her phone so I can check the exchange rates...but also Googled them and saw all the bad PR.

Buyer Beware folks