Most successful businesses invest a lot of time and money so that their customers know how much they appreciate their business.
 
After all, customer appreciation is fundamental to building customer loyalty.
 
Apparently, Hilton Grand Vacations never learned this lesson in business school.
 
In fact, as a recent post on Reddit reveals, Hilton has chosen to go in the opposite direction.
 
Hilton Grand Vacations Sales Rep Told Me They “Depreciated My Equity” for Attending Too Many Presentations — Is That Real? 
 
Yup – this is a real headline. It’s from a Hilton owner who has been all too happy to take advantage of all those “customer appreciation” sales presentations the company is so famous for.
 
As it turns out, at Hilton, customer appreciation only goes so far.
 
“Ok, so I own a timeshare with Hilton Grand Vacations and have been attending multiple sales presentations over the years, mainly to get the free incentives like gift cards, money, experiences, etc.”
 
Pretty crafty. If you have the time.
 
“At a recent presentation, the sales rep told me that Hilton has been slowly taking away my ownership equity because of how many presentations I’ve attended and how much I’ve received in freebies.”
 
Let’s get this straight. The owner accepted too many invitations to sales pitches from Hilton?
 
Makes you wonder why Hilton kept sending the invitations in the first place.
 
“He claims that ‘nothing is ever truly free’ and that I had lost about $9,000 in value because of it.”
 
$9,000?
 
And just how did Hilton arrive at that figure?
 
“When I asked for clarification, he brought someone else that was the supervisor to explain and used this car analogy: just how like a car gets miles on it and loses value, they said my timeshare had lost value because I’d gone to too many gifted presentations without upgrading.”
Ummm.
 
Who is going to tell the financial geniuses at Hilton that that’s not really how depreciation works?
 
After all, your car wouldn’t go down in value faster if the manufacturer kept sending you new tires, brakes and headlights for free!
 
“They said this ‘depreciation’ is done on the back end and not visible to me, and that they can ‘try’ to get that value back by upgrading – so I did.”
 
Hilton’s solution to a secret downgrade was…to upgrade?
 
What a surprise!
 
“But the whole thing left me feeling confused and honestly a bit manipulated. I can’t find it online or anywhere about it. I’ve never heard of equity being reduced just for showing up to their presentations.” 
 
Neither have we.
 
“I thought these were optional and meant to encourage upgrades, not penalize owners.”
 
By now, it should be clear that penalizing owners and encouraging upgrades are the same thing at Hilton.
 
It seems like Mark Wang, the CEO of Hilton Grand Vacations, could use some lessons in customer appreciation. Email him at mark.wang@hgv.com to instruct him to stop devaluing Hilton owners. 
 
And when will Chris Nassetta, President and CEO of Hilton Worldwide, learn that depreciating customers is also going to depreciate Hilton’s global brand? Ask him at christopher.nassetta@hilton.com.
 
Let’s also contact Jason Gamel, the President and CEO of the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the trade association that represents the timeshare companies in Washington, DC. Email him at jgamel@arda.org to see if he thinks secretly penalizing timeshare owners is any way for Hilton to show its appreciation.
 
Feeling unappreciated by your timeshare company? Use this list of ARDA VIPs to let your company’s leaders know.
  
Has your timeshare experience depreciated appreciably? Tell us how at info@timesharefacts.com 
  
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