It has to be timeshare - No this is not time share, there is no purchase required at all - you have won a holiday - congratulations.

Just ring this number ***** and quote your unique reference and all the arrangements will be made.

How did I win - I asked - It must have been an application you filled in - I never do those sort of competitions, I replied - Have you been on a recent flight? Yes, in November - it must have been a questionaire you filled in.

I knew it was some sort of marketing ploy - and it was . . . . .

The FREE holiday, turned out to have a £40 admin charge, per person and you had to attend a presentation of the holidays - so you could choose which holiday you would go on.
Read the small print and the cost rose to £70 a person, for four named people, on one of 4 dates from which the company would select the date for you and the first date you could select had to be at least 6 months from the date of the offer. Only one prime week (ie school holidays) could be selected - so as a teacher only one week was actually possible and if not selected for that week and you had to change names at a £50 admin charge, per person changed. Plus Insurance from them in the from of World Wide Travel the company who provide the free holiday vouchers.
Oh - and did I mention, you had to pay up front at the time of sending in the voucher, which had to be within 7 days of the presentation.

I choose to quit while it had only cost me the fuel to pick up my 'FREE Prize' and a wasted 5 hours, with a set of characters looking like the cast of a very 'B' movie.

This was 'timeshare' by another name - regular GTS site visitors will know that I have no objection to timeshare, (in an attempt to finance 'a mother and child safe house' in Gambia, GTS was offering timeshare), but this was very different.

Nearly £8000, purchase 50 points - enough for a 2 week holiday for 2 or a 1 week holiday for 4, in 'genuine' 5 Star self catering, luxury apartments in worldwide locations. Then just an annual UK index linked maintainance payment of £256 a week - PLUS the cost of your flights and self catering or 'meals out' once there - a real bargain - not really

But it seemed that way - when compared to holidays at the same 'resorts' in the Kuoni catalogue. But where your world wide dream holiday with Kuoni may have been a special holiday of a lifetime - Atlas were offering you the dream come true every year for the next 45 years.

At 58 years old if this could be guaranteed I was willing to sign and pay there and then in anticipation of a Caribbean break to celebrate my 105 birthday in 45 years time. Silly me, I could leave it to my children or some unsuspecting friend.

If you wanted a change from 5 Star luxury, for an extra £130 a year, you could choose any one of 3500 holiday locations at no extra cost and booking within 30 days of travel you could double your weeks allowances.

BUT you had to decide and sign up there and then and incidently Steve Clarke the Atlas presenter and a professional footballer 10 years ago - told us that there were 4 types of people who attend the presentations.

Well it was an interesting study in sales techniques. Atlas say they sell to 1 in 4 groups who attend. I'm not surprised - the sales technique has got you there on the offer of a free holiday and demands an answer from you before you leave. The whole pitch is based on you saying Yes or at least nodding at every point of the presentation, so it gets harder and harder to say No when asked at the end 'so what sort of person are you from the 4 we get'.