Ay, there's the rub!

We knew there'd be a catch. Of course, there would be a catch. A free trip to Hawaii just for enduring a two-hour timeshare presentation was, indeed, too good to be true.

Last June, a guy in a booth at the San Jose Gay Pride Festival caught our attention with a pitch for a three-day Hawaiian vacation as a reward for attending a Shell Vacation Club timeshare presentation. The vacation included round trip airfare from San Francisco, with lots of black-out dates, and two nights at an economy hotel. He told us we could extend the three days to however long we wanted and just pay to change the ticket--about $100 each. With healthy skepticism, we read all the fine print before signing up for the presentation in Fisherman's Wharf. At the very least, we'd get a free lunch, we reasoned, and we were planning to be in San Francisco the following Saturday anyway.

I'd been through this before. I have zero interest in actually buying a timeshare. I already knew buying a timeshare from a developer, even if you want one, is the worst way to buy. I already knew that you could buy just about any timeshare on the resale market for about 60 percent of the developer's price. I'm aware that the maintenance fees are extraordinarily high and that you'll never get to stay the week that you request.

But I've had pretty good luck taking advantage of the incentives all these timeshare companies provide just for sitting in on their presentation. In Cancun, I got a blanket, a bottle of cheap coffee liqueur and a daytrip to Chichen Itza. In Kauai, the whole family got a great boat excursion on the Na Pali Coast. A couple of years ago, Robert and I got two nights at Harrah's Lake Tahoe and $200 cash. I've been pretty smug about my ability to withstand so many wily plastic-smiled, scaly salesmen and leave with pretty decent rewards.

Of course, not everything is as advertised. That Tahoe incentive also included $40 for gas, but they cleverly put enough restrictions and unnecessary hoops to jump through that I gave up--just as they had planned. The $40 was actually a certificate for four $10 rebates for gas purchased within a narrow range of dates. I was instructed to send the original gas receipts in separate envelopes no less then ten days apart or some damn thing, and I think I was supposed to streak naked all the way from the Sigma Chi house to the quad at midnight--whatever.

And I nearly didn't get the $200. As they were leading me out the door with a goodbye, thanks for coming, enjoy the slopes and all that, I smartly asked about the money. Only then did the woman behind the reception desk pause and call someone on the intercom informing them that Mr. Grimes was asking about the $200 cash. Then she hung up, opened up her desk drawer and pulled out two Franklins and handed them over. I signed no receipt, so I deduced that they bank on most people assuming they'd be getting their $200 in the mail. Once they're out the door, the chance of ever seeing their $200 is about the same as hitting a royal flush at the poker slots downstairs.

The presentation at Fisherman's Wharf was exactly as expected. We were led into a room filled with activity, small tables with a sales rep for each couple, balloons, and upbeat music. Every few minutes, we'd be startled by a balloon popping which announced that another sucker had just been screwed.

The mood was just like that of a presentation a (now-former) friend once dragged me to in a hotel ballroom for a multi-level marketing scheme, creepy and cultish. I began to suspect that we might be the only real people in the place and all the others were planted there to make us feel like "everyone is doing it."

Our "lunch" turned out to be cheap deli sandwiches. We were matched with a cute, sweet-talking, flirtacious young sales rep who did her best to be chummy. To bond with us, she managed to mention that her dad is gay. For all we know, she loaths him for it, or maybe it's not even true. She pulled the "Oh, I'm not supposed to tell you this" ruse. She looked around and in a hushed voice told us that you can actually make money by renting your week to someone else if you don't want to use it one year. Later, she was exposed when the bad-cop supervisor came over and openly gave us the same pitch.

Two hours later, after they'd given their best shot, and we were adamant that we were not buying it, our pretty new friend turned as cold as ice and we were dismissed without fanfare, holding our two vacation certificates. The sweetheart that seemed ready to invite us to her two dads' guest house for the weekend was giving us one of those Glenn Close looks that made us fear we'd find our cat simmering in a pot when we got home.

We knew that this Hawaiian vacation may never materialize. We've been telling people we're planning to go to Hawaii this year, Robert's first trip there, but we'll believe it when we actually land in Honolulu. Perhaps the roundtrip flight was to Bakersfield and "Hawaiian" just referred to the decor. We saw that the flight would leave on a Tuesday morning, but that didn't concern us. Certainly the hotel, we figured, would be one of the cheapest, outdated monstrocities in Waikiki. We figured we could endure that for two nights and then arrange our own lodging for the rest of the trip. The contrast in lodging would allow us to appreciate the latter part of the trip even more.

The guy in San Jose also threw in a two-night stay in Lake Tahoe. We only had to pay $25 for taxes. The incentive programs are run through a different outfit called Holiday Travel of America--already a misnomer because with the date restrictions, the only "holiday" you might be travelling on is "National Administrative Assistant's Day." On their website, they pitch their travel products as a great incentive with "high perceived value." Uh-oh.

Of course, they make you send in a request form with your choices of dates. A few weeks later, we got a notice that we'd be staying at such-and-such cheap motel--no surprise. The fine print never said we'd be staying at Caesar's. A few weeks after that, we got a notice that we'd be staying at the Knights Inn since the one we were going to be in had closed down.

Uh-oh. Another bad sign. I googled the new motel, Knights Inn, and reviewers caution that this motel is a major dump. It's only redeeming qualities are that it's close to gambling and the Heavenly Valley gondola, it's dirt cheap, and it's got indoor plumbing. So, we've already made plans to stay in a condo with a bunch of friends and we'll just use the Knight's Inn to store our wet skis and boots.

So, with all of that, it was absolutely no surprise to find out yesterday that we could extend our Hawaiian vacation from three days to seven--for a fee of merely $250 per person. I asked why no one mentioned this amount previously and why the guy in San Jose said it would only cost $100 a ticket. Even as the words were leaving my mouth, I heard how stupid they sounded. The answer, of course, was that the San Jose guy has no affiliation with Holiday Travel of America and they can't be held accountable for his lies.

I said that this $250 fee is unacceptable since I was expecting a free Hawaiian vacation, she retorted with a challenge: "I'd like to see you try to find a flight for that price" in the same tone I remember from grade school: "I could lick ya!" "I'd like to see you try!" I held my tongue, refusing to allow the conversation resort to "Make me." "I don't make garbage. I burn it."

Well, I can find a flight for about $350 and we can go when we want and stay where we want, and we won't have to wonder if the return flight includes an 8-hour stopover in Wichita. We've given up--just like they planned. But, hey, at least we got a cup of cheap coffee and a deli sandwich.

Tags: timeshare, rewards, Hawaii