Wyndham: Disneyland or Used Cars?

I received this comment buried on a previous post, and thought it worthy of a main post (with improved punctuation):

It seems to me that Worldmark [Editorial comment: It's actually Wyndham, not Worldmark] needs to police their telemarketing contractors a little (OK a lot) more closely if they are, in fact, not trying to use high pressure to try and make them sign the contract, even if they tell you that its not possible to afford.

[I just had a] phone call, telling me that I had entered a drawing for $75,000 and had been selected for the second and final grand prize drawing (first outright lie) and that I had "won" a 3 day, 2 night package for either Vegas or Disneyland including free airfare, hotel, and amusement park tickets (came to find out that's another lie as the tickets will cost $50 per person up-front).

So I tell her (the telemarketer) I only live about 45 minutes from Disneyland — just send me the tickets for the park, forget the airfare and the hotel. Then she says I need verify your info and asks if my annual income is more than $40,000 a year. When I tell her "not at this time", she tells me to just say it is when I go to pick up my tickets (no mention of sitting through a sales pitch). So I say OK.

Then she asks are you married or single and since I'm still married but separated I tell her "neither". She says "just tell them you're single and own your own business they'll never check that anyway" (OK now I'm being coached at what lies to tell I DON'T LIKE TO LIE!!). But I tell her OK anyway and she rattles off about 6 different time slots that "she" has available for me to come to a fairly local location and pick up my tickets (still no mention of any sales presentation), so I set it up for about a week from now.

After hanging up I start to wonder and can't remember entering any drawings so I Google the company name she gave me (Worldmark) and after looking at one of their pages I stumble on this page (there may really be a God after all). I may have become irate when I arrived at [Wyndham] and wasn't just handed my prize winnings and sent on my way since the telemarketer (I'm positive it was unsolicited and we're on the Don't Call List BTW) never once mentioned that this was just a 'come on' to get anyone over 25 and willing to lie about their income into their "used car" showroom for a pressure test.

I want to thank those that shared their experiences with [Wyndham] for giving me an idea about what's really going on there. I think I'll take the kids to Disneyland on my own.

Phew!

Tags: trendwest worldmark