Victim Location 80474
Total money lost $3,000
Type of a scam Travel/Vacations
This company is very cruel to have the intent to take advantage of military members and their families. I signed up two years ago and every time I have used them, there has been some kind of catch. I have booked several vacations with this company, thinking is was really discounted prices on vacation and in this time I have paid even more then going through the original party. I kept using them thinking I had a bad experience once or twice and because I paid $2000 for these services. These workers are clearly paid by commission and if you do not agree with their nonsense and sales scams they really let you have the bad end of the stick. I paid $2000 in return of points that can be redeemed for vacation like air, hotel, resorts, rental cars and cruises. Also included were quarterly deals as very discounted prices, the companies free vacations agents, use of the discounted website, and this was all for 10 years of these benefits.
I began looking into renting these quarterly specials I paid for after two years. Today I went to book one and there were several catches just like all the previous times I had booked with them to use my benefits. Apparently my account expired in 2 years which was coincidently happened to be today. So in order to continue using the website and my benefits I had to pay $28 a year to finish off the 10 years I originally signed up for. So I paid the annual fee to continue booking my vacations special. There was another catch, the quarterly specials also expired in 2 years and the annual renewal fee does not include those specials. Also, from the very beginning I let the sales associate know I was only renewing to book those specials for 3 rooms. After I paid the specials were expired and I could only book one room with that special price either way. So that was the last scam.
The scam before I booked a hotel stay. The price showed cheaper and when I went to check into the hotel there was a catch. There were hotel fee that said were covered on eh website but were not really covered at all. So that ended up being more expensive.
The scam before that, I was booking a cruise with my points and had been on the phone with agent for about 3 hours. When I went to book my cruise he told me everything was good to go and paid for. Then they have to have another agent come on the phone and read the disclaimer. The disclaimer clearly said I would have to pay extra fees and several items were not covered that the agent told me was. He thought I would not catch on the disclaimer being read so quickly. So I stopped the booking at that point and told the disclaimer personnel that I did not agree because those were not the correct terms I had booked and agreed upon with the agent. After this the agent was mad and I told him I was upset spending so much time on a lie, that I would book with another agent. So he took my points and cashed them in for a very low value amount of cash credit on the website. So I had to call back to reach another agent to contact their manager to get that fixed. This was literally a 6 hour phone call with this company past midnight!
The first scam was when I actually paid for these benefits to book my very first cruise. They offered me points that would cover the entire cruise for my husband and I for $2000. This was to be paid for in $200 monthly payments and this would cover our benefits for 10 years and pay for a discounted cruise I was booking. After I set up the payment I wen to book my cruise with the same agent who had signed me up for this vacation benefit program. He told me if I wanted to use my points I had to pay at least $1000 down instead of the $200 payments. He didn’t let me cancel so I had to pay that $1000 that night, just to free up the points to use for the cruise fare. After that I was charged $450 a month until is was paid off and they took out an extra month that I had to call and get fixed. I booked the cruise with them and everything was supposed to be set. When I got to the port the port fees were not included like they said and neither were some other fees. I had to pay an additional $600 at the port to continue with my cruise.
They also had sent $1000 of gift cards for another vacation website when I had signed up as a bonus perk. The gift cards were vouchers to get discounts on other vacations and they didn’t even work when the number was put into redeem them. This was never fixed.
It is beyond sad that they would use the military for their money scam. I told the agent today that we are already away from our families and vacation is a way to make up for lost time with them. I hope in the back of their minds they know what they are doing in wrong and that they are doing it intentionally. I hope they come across a soldier back from war seeing their family for the first time in over a year for a vacation, and I hope they suffer from guilt. Their name literally represents military vacations, it is so upsetting.