how bad are westgate vaction villas?

[sln88]

I have read about westgate- don't know if there are differences. I know to avoid the sales pitch(but if I stay through Skyauction does it matter?)

Because of my DH dragging his feet, there is nothing much left to pick from

 

[spiceycat]

westgate can verify greatly.

most of the time the villa are okay. there will be something wrong with the villa. Otherwise you won't want to go to their 'maintence meeting' (sales pitch).

just don't leave any values - one lady did and she had a horrible experience.

 

[TotoToo]

The Villas themselves are fine - maybe not the newest but very nice. The only real problem is the unending sales pressure from the time you check in until you depart. If you avoid that, and they will bug you even if you already own and certainly if you are an "outsider", the rest is OK.

A quick summary of an approach that works for us is to go ahead and sign up for the sales pitch BUT schedule it for your last day at 10am (checkout time). Insist you simply don't have a free minute except for then. Then unplug your unit phone - plug it in only to call out and ignore any messages. Then on that last day checkout and laugh about them waiting around for you to show.

Enjoy your trip.

 

[bctripp]

We stayed there on an exchange through rci, and I unplugged my phone just in case. They are really focused on selling, i've done exchanges before and have never seen that amount of people going in and out before for the "salespitch". The villa itself was ok. Our AC was not working properly so we had to call maintenance ane time to look at it. The resort seemed crowded when we went. It's nothing fancy, but clean enough I guess. We had a room near the pool and heard the noise from it and went to sleep to the sounds of people screaming and laughing. I'm not going back. I hated driving through the place, it was always hard to get through, the employees drive stupid golf carts all over the place and don't move for anybody. People walk in the street and won't move.

It is close to disney though.

 

[gallaj0]

we stayed 2 years ago, and are going back in a week. The building we stayed in was newer than some of the others, adn it was very nice.

We got one call for the "maintenance meeting"; just simply told them we weren't going, and they never bothered us again.

Never had a problem "loosing" valuables, or getting extra blankets, towels, etc. wehn necessary.

 

[JudyS]

I have read about westgate- don't know if there are differences. I know to avoid the sales pitch(but if I stay through Skyauction does it matter?)

I imagine that they will want you to go to the sales pitch; coming in through SkyAuction won't change that.

However, if you are asking, "Are SkyAuction customers required to sit through a sales pitch?" the answer is definitely, "No." You have paid for your week, no timeshare presentation required.

There have been reports of Westgate resorts trying to make people think they are required to sit through a timeshare pitch even though they are not. If that happened to me, I would complain to SkyAuction (and/or RCI, if that seemed to be where the week came from.)

Westgate has the reputation of having the highest pressure timeshare sales presentations of any major resort or chain. Actually, I've been tempted to go to one of their presentations just to see if I'm tough enough to get through it!

 

[Kay7979]

The resort is quite nice. We own a week there. They have ten pools, volley ball, basket ball, many planned activities, a small pond for peddle boats, bicycle rental, etc. I usually trade the week and go to other vacation destinations, but we have stayed there twice and enjoyed the resort. The sales people won't bother you if they are sure you can't or won't buy a week. For one thing, you can tell them you are familiar with the income requirements and you make way less than $40,000 and that's why you are renting via SkyAuction! LOL. Or, if you don't want to use that approach, tell them you've seen plenty of resale weeks at various Orlando timeshare resorts sell for 3-4,000 dollars (which is true, we paid $1500 for our one bedroom there) and if you wanted to buy, you'd just buy a cheap resale week somewhere. Whatever you decide to tell them, just make it clear that they are wasting their time and you're either too cheap or too poor to buy a week, and they will go plague someone else

 

[erinch]

we stayed in a villa in the 90s, when they had the same golf carts and sales guys, persistent at hornets. We called them "hustle-buggies." Our big problem with them was they zoomed down the sidewalks, and we had small children. At that time, if you stayed off the walks in the mornings, things were okay. We had water heater problems which were fixed. We went to the breaksfast to "talk about check-in procedure changes." It was a hustle. We collected our 50 bucks, and left.

 

[Jason71]

Westgate has the reputation of having the highest pressure timeshare sales presentations of any major resort or chain. Actually, I've been tempted to go to one of their presentations just to see if I'm tough enough to get through it!

A couple of my neighbors actually work at Westgate doing sales tours. While they were training, I let them "practice" their spiel on me out by the pool. (Why, yes, they are cute girls, how on Earth did you guess? ) Heavy emphasis on the "cost of 20 vacations over the next 20 years" vs. the "cost of a timeshare." Stressed re-sale value, ability to go elsewhere. Granted, this was just the lowest level, but not too bad--if I had to go thru three more levels of supervisors I could easily see it getting annoying.

 

[LAS2AMS]

Actually Fairfield Resorts "offers" the highest-pressured sales pitch. I once sat through a two-hour presentation before letting the rep. know that I was 100% uninterested (and had made a decision for a competing property, which I did indeed purchase) & that he could stop wasting our time. He turned red-faced and started screaming 'if you don't buy right here, right now, you'll never own property in this state... you'll be blacklisted for life... we're a large corporation with connections... we can do this..." It was quite amusing in retrospect... although very uncomfortable at the time.

 

[kerry34]

I have stayed there a few times on a friends timeshare. I told them up front that I was not interested in buying any timeshares and they pretty much left us alone after that. As far as the villas go, they were always clean and well kept during all of our visits. One bad thing that did happen though was that I left my umbrella strollers out in the parking lot while I was packing up our car to leave once and when I came back out they were gone!!! Somebody actually stole my strollers. I wasnt even inside more than 3 minutes, but i guess that is all it took. Some poor slob apparently felt as though it would be cheaper to steal mine than rent one in the parks. I was glad it was the end of the trip because then I would have had to rent a double stroller for my twins in the parks the whole time. I was peeved though and I still can't believe people can live with themselves after stealing from others. Anyway, keep your strollers close to you folks you never know what stroller stealing fiends are nearby ready to strike