Once gross receipts hit a certain middle class, who will no doubt be asked to attend a timeshare presentation. If you haven’t already, you almost certainly will in the future. Sometimes the app takes you by surprise.

My wife and I were staying at a budget hotel near Charleston, South Carolina for a weekend vacation. As we were walking through the beautiful streets of Charleston, a nice man called and asked if we wanted a tour of his appeal. He said they were just refurbished and will offer us a $75 gift certificate, plus 2 “ghost ride” tickets if we do a 90 minute tour of the station.

I’m not a fool, I thought. I would love to be crazy not to accept his offer. It might even be fun to have the tour for anything, but if he was going to offer a free night on the town, then this is too good an offer to turn down. He has given $10 to “secure our spot” on the tour.

As expected, my wife and I liked the use of the complex outdoor setting as we sat on a stone bench next to a beautiful fountain. They both vowed never to buy a timeshare here (we already figured out they’ll probably try to sell something). We knew they couldn’t afford it. We only want freedom of gifts. We came back half an hour later, got to $10 and sat down and waited some more.

The personal tour finally began. The rooms are very stylish. This is almost like a museum tour, but we charge! What a deal! Then came the hard sales pitch. We didn’t know what we were in for. About 3 hours later we were ready to buy. The seller has convinced us, that he made so much financial sense. Another 2 hours later they had signed all the necessary forms to become owners. He even sent a runner over to get us lunch at Subway (free), while we waited for him. What good people.

Driving home, we were a bit nervous because we had made a big mistake. We were also dizzy that we were now the owners of this great experience of time. A couple of days later, as I do with almost all purchases, I checked online to see if I had gotten the best deal. We had paid around $12,000 for our time the facts. (We can’t afford this, but the seller told us that he could rent for enough to cover the payments.)

Well I noticed the same time unit was selling on eBay for around $2000. My heart sank in my stomach when I realized I was overstocked by around $10 000. I went through all my contracts . Seems like hundreds of documents in the pile that came home.

I finally found my golden ticket. God was very good to me that day. I found the clause which basically said that you were free to terminate the contract at any time within 5 days from the date you had signed it. It was the third day. In fact, the day was 4, if it was taken on Sunday. Sundays? I was in a frenzy. They need to officially call this off, maybe tomorrow.

In fact, he referred to making an emergency plane flight to the headquarters of the timeshare company in Florida to make sure it was cancelled. I contacted someone at the company who said he could FedEx them overnight.

I gave up my time writing. What a relief. Now it’s time for the resale market to make me a real deal.