A boiler room is an active place of business where questionable or even shady products or services are sold over the telephone. The sales people use high pressure sales tactics which are commonly unfair, dishonest or blatant lies to get the sale made. A sale is made when the person on the other end of the telephone (let’s call them a victim) gives up their credit card or banking information to the suspected timeshare boiler room where in MOST (not all) cases they will never hear from that company again. The main goal for a timeshare boiler room is to make sales and put money on “the board” as quickly and as many times as possible.
Office Setup
Most timeshare boiler rooms are cramped and very tight, that is why sometimes when you are on the phone with a sales person you can hear others in the background. Cubicles are placed close to one another to fit as many sales people into the office as possible. The more sales people, the greater potential the company has of making a bigger profit. It is a numbers game where the more phone lines and chair space the timeshare company has they are increasing the potential to turn higher profits each week.
Office Location
To the owner, the location does not really make a difference as they are not expecting or even wanting any walk in traffic. The less noticeable the office is to the general public, the better. A common sales pitch used by a timeshare resale person would be that of “our office has a high volume of walk in traffic of potential buyers looking at our showroom of properties. Let us put your timeshare property up in our showroom on display to get it sold fast”. Well like we first stated here in a post regarding timeshare resale scams, they do not even have a showroom. Most of them use a 3-ring binder that has ads printed out or they just use a computer to view all of the properties they have listed. The truth to the matter is they are not getting any walk in traffic because they do not want to attract the unwanted attention to the real meaning behind their operation.
Multiple Office Locations
Some timeshare resale companies will list multiple offices to have the appearance of being much larger then they really are. Yes some do have satellite offices that is either run by them or a sharing partner. That sharing partner is allowed to use the business name and merchant account (that is a company that processes and charges the credit cards) for a percentage of sales each week. The other common thing companies are doing now is using a service like Regus to setup virtual offices. For a small monthly fee these timeshare resale companies can have the appearance of having several offices in major cities across the country while not even being there. These virtual offices can still be used by the timeshare company, however they would have to setup an appointment with the building to use the meeting room. By no means are these true offices that you can visit, just another way for the timeshare resale company to put up the image of being much larger then they truly are. By doing this they hope to gain the trust of the unsuspecting person on the other end of the telephone, which means the boiler room can make more money.
Type Of Sales People
You would imagine that MOST timeshare resale offices are professional, well dressed and highly educated individuals. That is far from the truth as many are drug abusers, convicted criminals and live week to week by selling a bogus advertising service that most of the time returns little if anything to the buyer. These sales people can care less, they only thing on their minds is making new sales to bring in more money for themselves and keeping the hopes of existing customers (victims) high so they do not get mad and either request their money back or call their credit card company or bank and charge back. We will get into charge backs another time as that is a very important topic as well. Keep in mind that not all offices are full of these types of sales people, some timeshare resale offices are very nice with well dressed employees to keep up the image of being a successful company. Do not be fooled though as really their results in selling a timeshare speak louder then anything they can really tell you or what the office looks like.
Selling My Timeshare is about educating the public about how timeshare resales work and what timeshare resale scams to avoid. If you have been scammed by a timeshare resale company, please let us know or search for them and leave your story.
