Coral Sands Resorts and Palmera Vacation Club. Hilton Head Resort- Good, PVC - Bad and the Ugly
Two separate comments here, first the Resort with the brand new buildings, and staff attentiveness is outstanding and yes we did book our week in for Easter week (school break) with 3 bedroom villa in January of 2017 for April 2017. The Staff and maintenance extremely helpful. That is the 'good'.
Now for the Bad and Ugly. First my background is 20 plus years in Professional sales management and sales training so I pay attention to a lot of nuances through the sales process both what is said and what is not said. My wife is also well educated and can speak several languages so neither of us are babes in the woods. With in my family we have obtained/have access to numerous weeks of time shares all owned free and clear. So when we went to attend the presentation it was with a certain amount of 'if the package is good you never know' because we do like Hilton Head.
We were very clear about our ownership status up front, as well as being clear we had to see what the advantages for PVC over RCI were if were to 'buy' into the resort. As our presentations was going on, i was also 'listening' to other presentations close by to get and idea of the dollars they were asking for and what i was hearing did not make sense $5,000 for 3000 points at one table,, and another behind us was $9,000 for 8,000 points (yes i thought very low considering the first i heard) while across the way from us later i heard $14,000 for same 8,000 points. both of these presentations I kept hearing 3 weeks of vacation for the 8,000 points.
At this point I 'clicked in to our presentation, and was paying much more attention to what was being said, and not said, regarding the points and RCI. I mean 3 weeks vacation for between 9 to 14 grand at a resort as nice as Coral Sands of course I will listen.
- He knew we were not interested in selling our time share, and that if we did anything it was to augment so he switched gears to touting the benefits of PVC. The exact same spiel as mention by others that they had taken back their weeks to make a better vacation club, limited access to Hilton head.
- Was told that we would be 'guaranteed' a week in peak season in Hilton if we bought the appropriate amount of points, when we tried to pin him down on the amount of points that would be needed to do that. He never answered the question directly, he kept going back to stating we could also get weeks for as little as 1,000 points. He did say the minimum was 3,000 points.
- He spent a lot of time carefully dancing around the questions about the points and exactly what one could get for their points.
- Then he touted he website and portal, and claimed how easy it was to use and he had just booked a week for himself in Florida via RCI. This confused us because we knew 3,000 to 5,000 points would not get your a week in Florida this time a year.
- He implied, that PVC Points had a 'ratio' with RCI, (being analytical) i tried to pin him down on what the ratio was he kept changing the subject saying it was something that PVC had arranged with RCI and the ratio changed depending the resort and time of the year.
- At this point we were like "Great where do we go on RCI to see that?" Because saying '3 weeks' and actually getting it are two different things. He responded it was a 'special portal on RCI set up for PVC" , we asked if we could see it or log in to it just to do a comparison. First answer was we would have to be members to log in so we couldn't. The look on his face was priceless when i said Well can you log in to your account so we can see the comparison. (Which we thought was odd) His response was he would have to check with management if that was okay. I asked Why do u have to check? Its your account, you can even cover up your ID info,, don't you want to make a sale ? He went in back for about 5 minutes, during this time i notice the 3 sales people that had computers with them all went in to the back. When our salesperson came back he said' well there are no computers that he can show this to us' on. We even offered to bring in our lap top and he said that he couldn't.
- Well I went for the 'close' at this point and said 'you have some one here ready to buy all you have to do is show us in writing what the ratio is of the point conversion is on RCI" and or give us access to the the PVC portal for us to look and you can do neither ? He shrugged and said 'it is out of my hands that is what the manager said"
- At this point i asked again 'exactly how many points would it take to be able to be guaranteed a peak week every year in Hilton Head" because you have never given us a price. His response was 'what is the point if you will still need to confirm the ratio, or the website information', and he ended our sales presentation. (legitimately it was close to end of the sale day for them)
- Even the 'manager' that has to log you out on the other side, made ZERO attempt to save the sale when he asked about the presentation and we said we found it hard to believe you can give us access or show us anything in the writing regarding the points, RCI. His response, 'i don't know why that is, and what would like for your gift so i can get it for you.
Bottom line is
"IF A COMPANIES Sales practices can not stand the light of day,, do business with them at your own risk'
IF all the verbal claims they made during our time there were true then they would have at least some printed material to back it up, since nothing was provided, we decided not to do business with the PVC>
The bottom line it is a great resort, however i would not spend a dime on the Vacation club, I will however transfer in through RCI , (AGAIN) .
