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TimeshareMLS.org resale scam (by Gary M.):

Here's my experience with Timeshare Resale Companies from a different perspective.

My experience is with TimeshareMLS.org. The parent company is CHL Marketing, Inc. and there are a few sister companies, TimeshareFSBO.com and TimeshareresalesUSA.com.

I'm writing because I have inside information on the workings and sales tactics of an industry that has apparently scammed hundreds of thousands of people across the country. This industry is well known around the country and after in depth research I am of the conclusion there is no real value in what the various companies in this industry offer to those who purchase the service. I have insight to how I got involved with this industry.

Around March of this year I came across an Ad in the USA Today Newspaper in the classified section. The ad was advertising for Individuals with Telemarketing Sales/Management Experience to open a Call Room representing this company and its service. I am a bit of an Entrepeneur and I'm always looking for a sound business endeavor. I contacted the company and spoke with the General Manager and was impressed with what he had to say. His sales pitch on opening a room was that this was a service that owners of a certain type of property were very interested in and wanted to hear from anyone marketing this service because it would be of great value to them. Another great selling point was that the sales were low pressure and usually took 3-5 calls before the customer purchased according to the General Manager. Thus allowing the customer to check out the company, talk it over with their spouse or just give them additional time if they needed it to think about the purchase.

After speaking with the GM I decided to let him send me some information on the business and service they offered. The information packet looked great, I checked out the company as best I could and talked to a room owner who was introduced to me as an Ex FBI agent. I couldn't find any bad reports on the company and got a glowing endorsment from the room owner I spoke to. As it turns out later I was looking for information on the company when I should have been searching for info on a different business name they use. My research should have gone much deeper on investigating the Owner and his parent company. It turns out that this company may change its name or at least ad another DBA name once too many complaints are lodged against it. I admit I could have done a better job in my research.

There was no real upfront investment for me to open up a marketing room other than a lease and furniture and supplies so after a few months I decided to give it a try. All this time I thought I would be marketing a service needed by a certain group of property owners as well as a low pressure sale. This was the impression given to me from the company representaives I had dealing with the whole time.

When it came time to open the room I had the GM, his dad who was a VP with another of the owner's businesses and a Sales Manager from the Corporate office fly up from Florida to Tennessee to set up the phone system and to do 2 days of training. The first day went well but on the second day the trainer went on the phones to show my sales reps how to present the service and make a sale. During this time I and some of my reps got an indication that this was not going to be a low pressure sales job. The trainer got an elderly lady on the line who may have been foreign as well and the trainer basically "slammed" this women into buying the product. I and my reps were able to listen in on the call. I was not comfortable with this type of sales and neither were my reps. Luckily the women's credit card was declined which was a relief since I thought she was :slammed" however, the trainer did manage to call her back twice and get 2 more credit cards from her which both delined as well. One of my reps told me she approached the trainer on a break and said she wasn't comfortable with how this was handled and the trainer said she did her job, she pitched the woman and she gave her the card so she didn't feel guilty. This was on the sat. before labor day. The trainers flew home that sunday and I opened for business on the following tuesday.

The first thing I addressed in my sales meeting that tuesday was that we would not make a sale to anyone who did not understand what was going on and we would not lie to make a sale. I told them we had to feel good about what we were doing and no amount of money could make up for being unethical. I had 5 reps and all of them were very releived that they would not be made to do that type of sales. At this point I would like to add that many of the sales reps in the 9 florida offices make extremely good money doing this as it relates to telemarketing. The best sales person for the company made over $100,000 last year and the avg. rep makes $40,000 in most cases. I do have a sales report that shows sales figures for the company for one week. I did have more reports but at the time I wasn't aware that the company wasn't ethical and I didn't keep those reports.

By the end of the first week of business my room had made no sales and I was getting very concerned about how the company operated. My concern was that many of the people who actually would speak with us had been burned by similiar types of companies in the past. Usually they had been burned 2-3 or 4 times. After a week of hearing this time and time again I had a very uneasy feeling in my stomach. Once that first week ended I knew I had made a bad business choice. I can not represent and put my effort into something I don't believe in and I asked myself if I would feel fine in selling this service to a friend a relative and my answer was no. I knew then that I couldn't keep doing this. However, once Sept 11th arrived I felt extremely guilty that I had hired 5 people who trusted my judgement and I had sold them on the idea that they were representing a good service and could make a good income in doing so. Although I didn't want to make any sales that day I did stay open for the 11th and for a couple of hours on the 12th. During this time though I did a lot of researching on the internet in the office with a friend who I had brung to the office the previous week to help me manage the operation. It took us a long time on the 11th and the first part of the 12th but we were able to track down info on the main corporate name and found information that sealed my closing the room immediately. After discussing this with my friend/manager we came up with how to break the news to the reps. About 2 hours into the shift we pulled them off the phones and explained to them that we no longer felt comfortable in representing the company or its service and we gave them what info we had discovered. I thanked them for their efforts and told them I would pay them for the rest of the week since this was no fault of theirs. I do take comfort that we made no sales during the week we were open.

As far as the company knew we were still open for the rest of the week. They were very concerned about no sales being made. I kept putting them off as to the fact I had shut the room down until I decided how to handle this situation. Then on Friday the 15th the GM programmed the phone system so that my reps could listen in to how the florida sales reps were pitching and making sales. I took full advantage of this by taping the pitches and high pressures sales tactics the reps were using. I was given the ability to monitor the 4 best sales people in the company and I have taped about 3 hours of their pitches and pressure tactics with their customers. This includes flat out lying about what the company can do. Basically, after hearing the 4 reps that night I know then beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only way this service can be sold is to pressure the client, and to make false claims and statments. Today, Sept. 18th. I called the GM of the company and told him I had some questions regarding the conversations and if it was ethical and needless to say he opened up and gave me the low down on how to sell this service and admitted that their reps do lie to make a sale and many times they do go into a "Gray Area" when talking to cusotmers. He also gave many other comments that puts the company in a bad light and he even said the industry as a whole is not a good one. I have this on tape as well.

I am ethical in my business practices and could not in good faith sell their service. However, I can not just walk away, knowing what I know and one way or another some light must be shed on this more than already is.

I do have recordings of the reps and the GM which are very incremidating to the company and I have the training manuals supplied by the company too. I may make one more call tomorrow before I let them know I'm closed down. I would like to get the Verification and Customer Service Supervisor on the line and have him reiterate some info he had told me last week which was actually my first sign of the true nature of the company. The day I opened I spoke to him and he said that when my reps upset customers called in and the reps didn't want to talk to them to give his dept. the customer's phone # and they would handle the call. He was pretty much saying that we will get angry customers because the service isn't a good one. He said this was important to give them the #'s since his customer service agents were trained to make sure the new customer's didn't cancel. He said they were very good and once a customer spoke to them they seldom canceled because the used every "trick" in the book to make sure they didn't.

So in short, I'm at fault for falling for the slick sales presentation on opening a room with this company and literally thousands of people have been conned into purchasing this service valuless product. I do think the company is just legal enough to get past the the state attorney general's offices and the fcc but more publicity needs to be given to this industry.

I know this company has sold at least 13,000 people on this service since about 1997. That's just the # I have been able to run down I'm sure there's more. The average price for the service is anywhere from $399 to $1,000 depending on what they think they can get the person for. However, it is the exact same service no matter the price.