'Too good to be true' deals

Basil Murphy writes a blog called Non-Essential, where he usually posts about movies he sees, places he goes, and his everyday life with his dog Eva. The majority of his blogs get a smattering of comments from regular readers and friends, but one in particular has accumulated a surprising 124 comments. It is about a company called Club Par Excellance.

On Oct. 23, 2006, Murphy wrote about his experience going to a vacation club presentation with a friend of his, after getting a call saying that he had filled out a ballot for a $1000 gift card. He remembered filling out the ballot and the company said that he had not won the free gift card, but he had won one of five free trips instead; he just needed to go to their office to draw his prize.

"When I got the call [I wasn't sure], I'm generally skeptical about these things," said Murphy. "Usually it's never as good as it seems. As I said in the post, I called my friend Tammy [Blair] who had heard of similar things. They pitch you on some package, and in return you get a free prize."

Blair went to the presentation with Murphy because the prizes were only open to couples and you had to be at least 27-years-old. The presentation which was only supposed to last one hour to 90 minutes, lasted three hours, with the pair not buying the vacation club membership in the end.

The two were deterred by a few instances that made them question the legitimacy of the package and the company itself.

"I was pretty much sold on the idea until they couldn't show me some basic things," Murphy said. "For example, in the question and answer phase about the savings you get on day-to-day items, I told them I see a lot of movies. They told me I could buy cheap tickets [using my membership]. I asked them to show me the coupons I would use - the actual ones. They have a Web site where you print them. All I saw were US coupons for AMC theatres. Their assurances that there were Canadian coupons for Cineplex Odeon or Famous Players didn't sit well with me. If you have them, why not show them to me?"

Murphy also recounts in his blog entry the moment that confirmed for him that he was not going to buy into the membership: "Tammy asked about losing her job and what would happen. The response just blew me away. If my bullshit meter wasn't on overload already, it was now. 'We don't take your social insurance number or anything so if in a year you can't pay, who cares? It's not like we can find you.'"

"It was really a bunch of things like that," said Murphy. "The money was really out of my reach, even though Tammy and I seriously considered making it happen ... But that final comment from the sales lady about not paying if we didn't want to, because they didn't take our SIN numbers to track us down, I can't see any legit business saying that."

According to Ric Borski, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) of Midwestern and Central Ontario, the type of presentation that Murphy and Blair attended is not unique to this company at all, but rather is common practice within the timeshare/vacation club industry.

"The big thing is that you have to be cautious," said Borski. "They lure people in with promises of free holidays to get you to go into the presentation and then it's a pressure type sales situation, without knowing that that's what you are going into."

The BBB is an organization that handles issues from consumers with complaints against companies for poor business practices.

"Most people think of us as an organization that handles complaints against companies, and certainly, that is a large portion of the work that we do," Borski said. "But what we would like to see, and what we would like to encourage people to do, is to access our company reliability reports, essentially before they do business with someone. It's always a good idea to do some research when you are spending any large amount of money, especially if you are talking about a major purchase."

"Thankfully, we have a report on Club Par Excellance, and people should probably visit that report and get that information on them," he added. "This is a company that is in the business of selling vacation packages, and there is always a big price-tag with these sort of purchases, and this company happens to have an unsatisfactory record with us because they haven't responded to some of the complaints we have brought to their attention."

Borski said that the Internet has made researching a company incredibly simple, for anyone who has access to a computer. Simply typing the name of the company into a search engine will often bring up any accounts of customer experiences, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as any media attention the company has received.

The majority of the comments on Murphy's blog were posted from people who had received calls and were researching the company before attending the presentation, interested to see what the company was all about. Some, however, are posted from people who had already attended the presentation, and in some cases individuals who had made down payments and were struggling to get their money back after doing some research.

The posts include a description of a variety of high-pressure sales tactics, including one-on-one sales associates preventing couples attending the presentation from speaking to one another, no time alone to consult with the person you attended with, "today only" discounts, claiming the offer expires after your visit and avoiding discussing specific costs until you are sold on the idea; some posters even said that they had been followed into the washroom.

Borski said that searching the BBB for reports on a company is a great way to get a sense of the credibility of the company you are considering dealing with, since they report on both member and non-member companies.

"If a company is a member of ours then they must respond to consumer complaints in a timely fashion," he said. "If it's a member of ours, they must respond and do their best to resolve the issue. Essentially, we know there is going to be a level of cooperation there."