(It's Not a) Timeshare Presentation

I suppose it was the promise of a free holiday, but somehow we we were inveigled into giving up our Sunday morning to attend this presentation. Must have been a dozen years since last I went to one. At that one, I got told I "had no balls" when I turned it down, which made me glad I had turned it down. Additionally, the "free" holiday turned out to have an "administration fee" of £50 each and to require us to travel out on Christmas Day, returning New Year's day (withouth the then, young, children) and additionally pay £200 for coach transfer from airport to resort. I told them I could buy a coach for that (in Egypt) and ended up not going of course.
The presentation today was a little better: you buy "points", which are replaced annually, to use during the year, or saved, or borrowed from the future. For this you get to stay in one of the company's "resorts" worldwide, and they find cheap travel for you. And your family can share it as well. For a cash top up, you get the choice of other companies' resorts as well (all apparently "5-Star"). Mel in particular, isn't above a little "5-star" treatment (her ex husband once took her to the Waldorf, with shopping at Bloomingdales and lunch on top of the World Trade Centre), but we also like a bit of camping and she isnt above having fish and chips sitting on a cold wet step in Penzance at 10 at night in November for her birthday. I do try to show her a good time.
Anyway, these "points" last 40 years so your children can inherit them. They also offer to buy the whole deal back after 2 years, at cost.
When you look at the finance, the average holiday expenditure per annum is around £2000. This deal gave us 40 years of holiday with free accomodation in posh places all over the world.
Except that:
£500 pa maintenance and management
Finance arranged by them (with a major financial institution) over a 10 year period, at a major interest rate (not quite at credit card rates), but with a discount (in exchange for the names and addresses of two further victims ("hmm, who don't we like?")). "Refinancing" could be arranged after 2 years and nothing to pay for 12 months.
And what if we didn't want to use their resorts (most of which appeared to be in hot (no thanks: skin cancer in the family) places with golf (yurrgh) and children (been there, done that)? We would have paid so would have felt obliged
Oh, and the actual cost of the "points"? Just shy of 12 000 of your english pounds.

I had warned Mel that they would be persuasive, and the resorts did look lovely. But she said "no" before I did (one of the very many reasons she is so wonderful).
Where is the excitement you get from "doing your own thing"? Would they enable us to travel from the frozen wastes of Helsinki to Devon by coach and train, via Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague, Munich and Luxembourg, not knowing where we would pitch up the next night? No.
Would they enable us to travel to northern Spain by Eurostar and TGV? Possibly, but then we would have the dullness of predictability.
Could we have driven to St Tropez, taking a week each way, for a few days with friends in their seaside apartment? Possibly also, but I wouldn't want to be stuck in a car with "friends" for a fortnight.
I dont think they could have arranged for us to drive into the middle of Morocco from Melilla, not knowing where we going to stay.

The look on their faces and their change in attitudes told a story, but they did manage to stay polite. Those that did agree got a glass of Sainsbury's Bucks Fizz before being whisked away to sign (classy, eh?) whereas we had to wait for our holiday voucher. Oh, and the "Administration Fee" for the "free" holiday is still £50 each.