Time Share!?!?

Well, our 3rd day didn't exactly get off to the type of start we were expecting for it, that's for sure! After being late for quite a few stuff the day before, we decided to get u a little bit earlier - 8am instead of 9am, so we could be on the road that bit earlier and so not get stuck with getting places just as the sun was at its hottest and everything was shutting around us for the siesta. So, up early and out of the hotel by 9:30, all set for the day - or so we thought.

We were just after literally crossing the road from the hotel when we were approached by a guy who said he was working for the Malta tourist board and wanted us to fill in a questionnaire. After we did it, he gave us a few scratch card type thingies as a "thank you" for doing the survey. I got a bottle of wine on mine, and Michelle got a free holiday!

Then the fun bit started. Apparently to collect this prize we had to pretend to be married, as it only applied to married couples, and we had to go collect it at a hotel down the road, where yer man told us we'd probably have to take about an hour of listening to them trying to sell us time-share in the hotel before we could get out with the goods. So, we headed down to collect our winnings, thinking "an hour isn't all that bad for a free holiday!" :-)

FOUR HOURS LATER we were leaving the hotel. The first hour of the meeting was ok, we were asking the rep guy about all the things to see/do on the island, how to get there etc, and he was giving us bus numbers and times. One thing we hadn't realised was that one of the main bus terminii(?) for the island was only 5mins walk away from us on the Sliema waterfront, we'd thought that to get anywhere we'd have to go to the main bus terminus in Valetta first. After that though, it was the hard sell for 3hrs. Apparently what they were doing wasn't a timeshare scheme, oh no, you just paid your money up-front and then you had your own room in a 5-star hotel, pre-booked, for a particular week every year, for 37 years. For a small change fee tho, you could change the week of the year, or change to a different hotel in the chain, and at the end of the 37 years you got your initial fee back. And all this for a mere €12,000, payable in one lump sum or a series of easy instalments (plus interest of course). No mention naturally of the fact that your €12,000 now isn't likely to be worth anything like €12,000 in 37 years time..... Plus you had to decide on the spot, no thinking about it, no waiting around, sign the paper and pay the deposit or "lose this fantastic opportunity"

Everything was pleasant enough until we told them we weren't likely to sign up for it, at which point the hard sell really started, with varying degrees of higher management dudes being brought out to try to convince us by dropping the rate, planning more flexible payments etc. When eventually they got the message we managed to get out, me with my bottle of wine and Michelle with a pamphlet on all the places we could get out free holiday in, with a promise that they'd ring us a few weeks after we got back from hols to see when and where we wanted to go. At that stage it was nearly 1:30pm, so we headed out to find the bus we wanted to get to Mdina, our original plans for the day. Only problem is, when we got there around 2:30 and finally got something to eat, we discovered that we didn't have enough time to do everything we wanted to there as most things (like the cathedral museum and the dungeons) closed at 4:30 or 5. What we saw was nice enough tho, the view from the citadel walls covered pretty much the whole island, but it would have been nice to see more of the museums and stuff.



Well, at least I got the wine I guess, which turned out to be not too bad...... Am not going to hold my breath on those dudes ringing us asking which holiday we want tho! ;-)