Now let me share my story with all of you. I hope you all learn a valuable lesson from our mistake. My parents have been owners with Westgate Vacation Villas for over 5 years. They've never had a problem. They have a 2 bedroom unit and it's lovely! We love using it. Last year my parents decided not to use it so my boyfriend and I, along with another couple who are close friends of ours, took advantage and flew down for the week. We got the whole spiel at check-in about the free breakfast the next day and we would get vouchers for a cruise etc etc. We knew it was a sales ploy but we went anyway because we wanted to learn more about timeshares as there was a possibility that we would buy our own somewhere down the road. We were greeted by Hector. He was very nice, clean cut and whitty. We spent 4 hrs with Hector. He took us to the Town Center and showed us the newest condos. He kept offering us deals we just couldn't afford. He showed us a 1 bedroom unit that had the hot tub and balcony...it was gorgeous! We loved it. However, again, we couldn't afford the deal he was offering us. He took us back to this large room that was really really noisy. Finally his skeeze of a manager came over and they were talking. As a final offer (so he said) he offered us the 1 bedroom unit (he referred to it as "the big room") every other year. This was perfect because we can't afford to go on vacation every year. He played on the fact that we would have a balcony and we could see the fireworks from Epcot every night blah blah blah. We went over everything in great detail..we're no dummies. We verified everything more than several times. My mom even got on the phone with Hector and was asking him questions just to make sure everything was in order. So after all this time we went over all the paperwork, signed everything and BAM we had our own timeshare.. and it was brand new!! We were ecstatic! We had so many plans to use it to travel the country.
1 year goes by. We booked our vaca for May 2011. This would be the 1st time we would get to use our new timeshare so we were super excited. We got there on time and checked in and they again told us about the free breakfast (to try and upgrade us) however if we went we would get over $200.00 off our tickets to Disney. We were planning on going to Disney so we were just considering taking one for the team and going just to get the money off on the tickets. We were escorted to our room..the 1st thing I noticed was our room was not in the buidling where we were told we were going to be in--no view of the fireworks from this buidling. I thought ok, no big deal, whatever. We get to our room and the escort opened the door and we walked in...shock. The room we were in were one of the eficiency "lock offs" as they're called. My boyfriend said woah wait, this isnt the right room - we bought the room with the balcony etc. The escort called the front desk and they said they had it in their system that we bought the efficiency. I was like this has got to be some mistake. I told him I had the name and phone number of the rep who sold us the unit as i had it in my cell phone--He said the rep who sold us the timeshare is no longer with Westgate...that's when I knew something was seriously wrong. He said we would have to have a new rep assigned to us and we could do that tomorrow at the morning BS meeting with the free breakfast. There was nothing they could do until the next day (we called corporate and everything). So we had to sleep in the efficiency the 1st night..which let me tell you, was depressing. The room had 1 window. It was terribly small. I didn't like it at all. I called my mom to tell her what had happened - she actually went to my apartment and got the paperwork we signed. In the paper work was a blue print so I asked her to take a pic of it with her phone and send it to me. Low and behold, the blueprint was of the efficiency. I was livid. I'm no architecht..I wouldn't have known the difference between the blue print of one room vs. the blue print of another. They bait and switched us... and we signed the paper work. We knew we were really screwed at this point. My mom was LIVID by the way..So we go the next morning at 9am which was when our appointment was. We waited nearly a half hour for our newly assigned rep to come and get us. He was very nice..I know none of this was his fault, however we were quick to voice our dissappointment. He got his manager who was the biggest slime ball I have ever met. He basically told us that this situation happens all the time, in his words "more than we'd like". He said people misunderstand what they're being sold which is BS - they are lied to, they don't misunderstand!! My blood pressure was sky high at this point. He said there's so many different "types" of rooms that he doesn't even know them all. Again, never explained to us. We knew they weren't going to give us the unit we wanted without making us pay which we were NOT willing to do. I wasn't paying them another dime of my money. We asked for a complimentary upgrade then just for the week..NOPE...we were so tired of arguing with these people that we just paid the $400.00 (it was $80.00 per night however they gave it us for $60.00 per night. wow..what a discount) to upgrade the room and called it a day. We were unbelievably dissappointed. Our plans for the future were shot. Anyway...we put that all behind us and had an amazing vacation anyway!! I hope this helps others to be incredibly wary. We learned the hard way..