Made a friend today and got invited to join an inverted triangle scheme.
Well, not really a friend. I think he was a little nervous about getting too close …
Did a multicache along the beach today, but unfortunately couldn’t finish it. Too many fisherman. Specifically, the one sitting right on top of the cache. Literally. But, I did get some decent shots of some of the locals.
After that, we wandered over to a pitch for the Accor vacation club. Short story is, pay your money up front (or at a low, low interest rate of 12% per annum), and you get to accumulate points. But, and this is important, it’s not a time share. In fact, that’s so important, we were told three times. And presented with a letter of recommendation from a happy member saying it wasn’t a time share.
Long story, we wander in and get shown to a room with around 16 other people, all sitting watching smiling people on a DVD telling us how great it all is. By joining, they get to stay at five star hotels and don’t have to worry about poor accomodation! After 15 minutes of this, we get the happy chirpy salesman who tells us what a great offer it is. You see, Accor is losing money hand over fist in Europe, so they’ve decided to set up this vacation club to compete. They’ve built 9 resorts in Australia, and through their contacts, can get access to over 1,000 more overseas.
What’s more, apparently inflation is going crazy, and by paying today, we could avoid the horrible expense we’d have to pay in 20 years! You see, the membership is good until 2080! Unless, of course, the non-profit organisation is wound up prematurely. But we glossed over that for some reason …
Anyway, each year you get points. You redeem those points for a room at a resort. The Platinum plan, for a low, low price of $26,000 (plus $605 per year for rates and maintenance) nets you 5,000 points a year. For comparison, booking a studio in the Melbourne CBD in mid-season (not peak, not off-peak) will set you back around 2,500 points for a week’s accomodation. Peak clocked in around 5,000 from memory. You don’t want to know what a three bedroom cost in peak periods.
Of course, there was an even better offer (isn’t there always?)! By joining today (and only today!), we could have become chartered members. In other words, we would have got $3,000 off the retail price for membership. By being a member, apparently we get access to exclusive rooms not available to the general public!
We did the sums, and it worked out a little more than what we’ve just paid by booking over the Internet. Tell you what, the Internet has to be seriously hurting these chains - it takes minutes to work out whether you’re getting screwed or not.
His pitch needed work. Ignoring the fact that he didn’t understand (or want to understand) that wages normally track with prices (so all his talk about the increasing price of vacationing was bullshit), he also misrepresented their rules and regulation. On top of that, his logic was a little strange. Apparently, Accor is losing money hand over fist. So, they’re offering a membership that’ll go until 2080, but they want me to pay cash up front.
It gets better. Apparently they’ve got around 1,000 platinum members (I asked). The Platinum membership is the most expensive. So, they would have garnered around $25 million through these sales. Now, I’m just a simple man, but I can’t quite work out you can build 9 fully featured resorts with full service facilities across Australia with that kind of cash. Neither can I understand how they’re paying maintenance and wages for those resorts on the ongoing costs they’re getting.
Now, considering that they’re asking me to pay cash up-front for a club that’s going to go until 2080, I can’t help but feel they’re funding it through selling additional memberships. Especially given that there’s no way they can expand given they’ve already taken the main chunk of our “investment”. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think I smell a modified pyramid scheme somewhere around here …
So, we took the free stereo and went home, happy in the knowledge that we’ve actually just paid for a vacation cheaper than what they were offering. The stereo’s a laugh - the panel on the front cycles through three colours. But, it was free for sitting there for an hour and a half. And, we got a laugh, so we’re all happy. All except for Accor, of course. 
