On the 16th of February I was notified on my work's computer that I was the millionth caller for that day and had won a $3000.00 discount on a terrific holiday. Being curious but very sceptical I entered the website and foolishly called the Sydney number on the web page. I was answered by a Katherine Bloom who had an American accent. She went through all the paraphanelia concerning the great vacation I was being offered and the fact that everyone that she had spoken to that day had only been offered $1500.00 off their holiday. That made me feel pretty special! (Yeah).
I told her that I would have to consult with my husband and would not make a decision until I had. She told me she would give me 24 hours to talk but to ring her as she was holding it especially for me - (it was meant to be for that day only).
After talking to my husband (who has, or never has had, any inclination to visit the US) he said "you go for it if you want, but I'm not coming". I mentioned this to Gene Persson (who was the person Katherine patched me through to) and he said 'oh you should just get a few friends and do it - an offer like this doesn't come along every day."
I feel soooooo stupid! These guys are seriously bottom of the shit heap and I am so glad that I have had my credit card cancelled so that they can't get any more money from me.
When I got on to a girl called Kerry (Gene Persson put me through to her) she told me that some of the trips had booking fees and all sorts of extras. I then told her to cancel my payment and that I did not want to proceed because I was not told of all these other charges. She then put me back through to Gene, who told me that he was going to waive the booking fee for Costa Rica/Can Cun, Mexico and also apologised for not telling me that it was only available for 2 people and not the 4 that I was going to take.
I know I should have cottoned on to this, but I was getting so excited, as was my 16 year-old daughter that you sometimes get caught up in the whole thing.
The only way I found out about this was that my 25 year-old daughter asked me (after I had told her excitedly about our trip - which I should mention that Gene generously offered me an extra 12 months to take this once in a lifetime holiday, taking it up to two and a half years (30 months) if I had Googled this website. I said I hadn't and she did it for me. This is when I felt my whole world crumble! She said I'm sorry Mum but this is a scam page!!!
I actually have my bank and the fraud squad looking into this and hopefully we can come up with a way of stopping this sort of thing happening over and over again.
Kind regards
Linda Boyle
P.S. I should mention that I also tried to ring their number and was put on hold for at least 30 minutes, a recorded message saying that someone would be with me shortly. I was also given phone numbers which I haven't tried yet, but may do shortly.
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