On Dec. 20th, my husband and I, were in Daytona Beach, Florida staying at the Grand Seas Resort. The resort is located at 2424 N. Atlantic Ave., Daytona Beach, Florida 33813. While there, we were asked by the sales staff to come to a dinner and listen to a sales presentation about the Great Escapes Travel Club, which is owned and operated by Advantage Travel, from Lakeland, FL.
During the presentation they made many claims for the club and used high pressure sales to get us to agree to spending $5450 to join this club.
The primary false claims made were that the club would exchange our timeshares that we already own for their condominium properties, that their prices for travel were 50%-70% lower than retail, and that they had properties available in Russia (where we were traveling in 2012) and other worldwide sites.
We signed the contract and paid them. We tried to check on the club within the 3 day rescision timeframe in the contract, but we could not access the website — www.grandseasonline.com — until we had a member number that they assign. I called several times trying to get this, unsuccessfully. Finally on Jan. 9, I got the member number. I then went online to check on their claims and found virtually everything to be false. No discounts, no properties in Russia at all and the exchange procedure was not automatic but required us to sign a contract and to hope our timeshare would let them rent it for us. They also held us responsible for damage caused by their rentals. I then spoke to a travel representative to double check my findings. She gave me a price on travel to Russia that was higher than the prices I booked for myself and higher than those on several other retail travel sites.
I attempted to contact my sale representative at Grand Seas who said he would call with the manager from Grand Seas Resort (the distributor for Advantage). They never returned the call. I also spoke to Advantage travel's customer service head who referred me back to Grand Seas. I then notified the company on Jan 11 in writing to terminate the contract based on an effective date of Jan. 9, the date when we first had access to the services. They never replied and never sent back the money.
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