We went to a meeting in New Jersey - I believe it was Marlton and we were suckered into buying 20 weeks of vacation as well. We should have known better but they made it sound so good (we definitely should have known better!). They showed us photos of really nice places and told us how easy it was to book and they said if we weren't satisfied, they'd replace our week with another extra week vacation. Bottom line is we gave them $5,000 that night plus a one-time charge and then we were stuck! Of course, the paperwork says that you can't back out of the contract... And that should have been our first clue to "Buyer Beware".
This is how it really worked. We tried to take a one week vacation in Myrtle Beach (I was afraid to fly anywhere and use this program for the first time so we chose somewhere we could just drive to). I sent the form in early enough with our processing fee plus additional money because they said it was in-season. Well, it took forever for them to call us with a place. Actually, the first time they called they offered me something for the wrong week. The salesman at our meeting said that they would look for a place and even mail us brochures about the place and we could either accept it or tell them to keep looking. Well, that's not true either! They would call and leave a message on our home phone with the name of a place and the message would say that we had to let them know by 5 pm if we wanted it or not. We don't get home from work till at least 5 pm so that didn't work. Then we told them that they had to call us at work because no one is home during the day (this was a big problem because the office in Georgia that did the bookings had no evening or weekend hours). Well, they started calling me at work and told me the same thing... They said I had to let them know by 5 pm or else they couldn't hold it. They gave us no time at all to research the place, they never mailed us any brochures or newsletters which the salesman had told us we would get quarterly (I called to ask about the newsletters and they just said "we don't do that anymore"). Once they faxed me a picture of the place they wanted to put us at and the woman actually drew an arrow with the words BEACH on it. She told me I couldn't see it in the picture, but the beach was right there. That was another lie because I had a Myrtle Beach Book and there was no beach in the picture... Besides, the only amenity even listed for that place was NON-SMOKING ROOMS. It was a far cry from the places they showed us at our meeting. I looked the place up and I could have booked it for about $29/night on my own. I declined that place and told them again that we wanted to be on a beach!
Well, they gave us another place... At this point we wanted to make definite plans as far as taking time off from work so we decided to take it... I pulled it up at work on the internet for just a second and it looked like it was on the beach as the woman said - I really couldn't research it anymore than that at work. Well, the woman said it was a garden view and when I got home from work I looked it up on the internet again and found that the place was hugh and the garden view rooms looked really far from the beach. The next day my husband called the resort directly acting like he wanted to book a garden view room and asked how far those rooms were from the beach and the woman told him that we would probably have to use our car. So, now we called the manager in Marlton to complain because the woman in Atlanta told us we were right on the beach and that once we accepted, we couldn't change our mind. Well, he was going to Ga that Monday and he said he'd do what he could to get it changed, but that once you accept something, you basically have to keep it.
Well, he was able to get it cancelled that one time for us and then they found us another place and gave us till the next day to let them know if we wanted to accept it, so that night I researched it on the computer and we decided to take it because it was right on the beach. We received our confirmation in the mail from Vacation Network and it had said to call the resort directly within 48 hours of your arrival to re-confirm. Well, my husband called the place and guess what??? They had no idea that we were even coming! They had no records whatsoever of us. So now, he had to call Vacation Network back again and complain again... We were leaving the next day and didn't have a place to stay. (so now do you know why I would never make airfare reservations when using them to book my vacation). At the last minute they scrambled to find us another place - we really had no choice except to accept it or else we would have been sitting home. Problem is... We were meeting friends there and they were making reservations near the place we were supposed to be staying at and I had no way of getting in touch with them so our plans were all ruined.
This was the most stressful week of my life and I never had such stress while trying to plan a vacation. We paid the following years fee thinking that maybe we would give them another try... But after remembering what they put us thru, we decided to not pay the fee the following year and cancel our membership. It killed me to have these jerks keep my $5,000 and they did absolutely nothing for us except give us a lot of grief.
This is the first time I found anyone complaining about them on the internet so of course I had to add my 2 cents. I'm sure there's hundreds of people out there that have been fooled just like us and I wish I knew of way of telling them to stay away from Vacation Network, Inc.
I think this company just makes it so difficult to book a vacation and they give you such a hard time that most people would just drop out of the plan and Vacation Network can care less because they already have your money and they are hooking hundreds more every day. I really wish I had the power to warn other people about this because I really think it's one big scam!
We purchased this in 2002 and our vacation to Myrtle Beach was in 2003 and we ended up cancelling this plan in 2005. I can only imagine the hundreds of other people that are out there with similar complaints.
By the way... Right before we cancelled, we found out that the office in Marlton wasn't even there anymore.
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