I recently got an invitation to attend one of those “travel club” presentations. In return for hearing the salesperson’s pitch, I would be awarded “4 wonderful” gifts that included 2 round trip airline tickets,  a 4 days cruise, a 3 nights hotel stay and finally a $1,000 gift certificate to buy thing from an website where I would have to pay only “shipping and handling fees” The travel club was owned by West Gate Resorts, the time share resort.

Since we had some time off to spare, my wife and I decided to go to the presentation last Saturday.

What a rip-off!!!

According to the salesperson, West Gate Resorts was doing this “pilot program” that allows them to sell unused weeks at their resorts to people who enroll on their travel club. In return for $6,900.00 you would have the right to purchase 2 weeks at one of their resort every year. Each week costing $500.00, plus you have to pay $199 every year in club membership fees.

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I recently wrote a post recommending that if you find a similar low airfare,  avoid flying in Spirit Air. I recognize that sometimes it is hard to resist the temptation when you are bombarded with emails from Spirit Air advertising round trip flights for less than $15.00. So I succumbed to the temptation and booked a flight to Fort Lauderdale -Puerto Rico. The cost? Just $130.00 for me and my wife (taxes included) I actually paid more in taxes that in airfare.

I’ve been wanting to go to Puerto Rico for the longest time. None of the cruises I’ve taken had gone to Puerto Rico, so I couldn’t resist booking a quick getaway for the two of us and decided to spend 4 days and 3 night on the Caribbean island during Thanksgiving week.

Once I booked the flight, I began searching for a nice hotel. I did the regular searches: hotwire, hotels.com, and the likes. I found several affordable hotels in San Juan, but when I read the reviews I was not impressed. So I dedicated my second round of searches to my favorite money saving technique: Timeshare presentation.

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