My husband was on a Dog Training website when all of a sudden a message popped up out of the laptop screen all in bright colours stating in bright writing CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE THE MILLIONTH PERSON TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE. You have won a fantastic prize. It gave a UK number to contact to see what our prize was. It was a fantastic holiday package offer. A trip of a lifetime for up to 4 people for $898 with a saving of $3000 to be taken within the next 18 months. We even got the Itinary sent to us of our holidayIwas put through to the customer service dept in a resort in Florida and was convinced on speaking to a female for overan hour about our fantastic holiday package we had just won that it was genuine. The female was very helpful, chatty and we had a joke about me being a technophobe as she talked me through the different stages onmy laptop to enable me to see where we would be going to be staying. 5 nights in Florida, 3 nights in the Bahamas, 4 nights in Daytona Beach and a choice of going to Mexico or Las Vegas for 4 nights. Free car rental for a week or this could be exchanged for attraction passes. The only thing we would have to do is attend a 90min presentation once on our arrival. This offer was the resorts New Year promotion Iwas told. The female gave me her name and direct number to call her personally if I had any queries. I was also told not to worry about my phonebill as my call was free. There are actually 3 different websites I was instructed to go onto to get information about our offer. Numerous phone numbers to contact as well as ref numbers I needed to quote. I came off the phone and went onto the varios web addresses I was given. When I went onto START VACATIONING NOW, a scam report came up posted 1st Jan. Funnily enough when I tried to put the date in my scam happened, 4th jan the date keeps going to 1st April. I actually paid the $898, which is £607.93 UK pounds by my debit card. How stupid was I? At 2.52pm Ireceived an email from a company which I later found out was in the Netherlands thanking me for my order. ANOTHER COMPANY? Who had taken the £607.93 out of my account. They sent me a receipt for me to print off. On it it says nothing about 4 people the payment I made was for. It states the amount 1 @ £607.93 each. Alarm bells were ringing. I called my bank to cancel the payment. TOO LATE! It had been taken out whilst I was on the phone to the resort customer service rep. Im absolutely devastated. Iam going on my very first holiday ever very soon and this money was part of my spending money I had scraped by to save. I am disabled and am not working and then reading the terms and conditions that were emailed to me, it states the company were aiming at people who are in fulltime employment and making $40, ooo plus a year. So I do not fit the criteria anyway but was not asked age, employment details e. T, c by the female over the phone. I stopped my bank card but was told there was nothing my bank can do to recover my money. I called the UK number which had flashed up the message of our prize and told the female I wished to cancel. Again I was put through to the resort and spoke to a man called Mark who gave me his direct dial number and ext. He was made aware that I wanted to cancel. I told him I had been made aware that this was a scam. He assured me this was a genuine offer and that if it had been a scam then they could have taken out every penny in my account. As a gesture of good will he said he would refund $300 into my account and the holiday package offer was still there if I wanted it. How can he reinburse me when I have stopped my card? There is no way I will ever be taken in like this ever again by anyone. These people involved are heartless to do this to innocent vulnerable genuine trusting fellow human beings. Very cunning. This scam seems to be a very large organization of people who are involved in itVarious different companies who come across as being genuine through their website s, which are very appealling to a person on watching video and review footage. Dont be fooled like me. If its too good to be true then trust me IT IS.
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