I was called by Vacation Network in Austin TX about winning a vacation for two to one of three locations, a truck, or a 28 inch tv in early December. The lady that called was named Nicole at 1800-957-2759 at ext. 112.
She told me that there is no scam involved and that if I went to this seminar for vacations at 525 A West Drive suite 100 Round Rock TX 78681 that I would be awarded one of these three prizes.
Although still skeptical about the matter I commenced to go with my girlfriend to the seminar. At the seminar there was a guy there that gave a speech for over one hour about vacations and aggressively after it was over sent in salesmen to get the people at the seminar to buy a vacation package from the company.
I told them up front that I was there for the free prize and not for a vacation package so my girlfriend and I drove back to Austin TX with the form in hand for the free vacation. A few weeks later decided to fill out the form and noticed it saying that there is a $50 deposit per person. I then called Nicole from Vacation Network to ask her about the deposit and she was saying that this is a "in good faith refundable deposit" and that there is nothing to worry about.
I explained to her that when she called me initially, there was absolutely no money required for the vacation and that I would have to get priority mail along with a $100 deposit to send off for the vacation. Nicole says something like: " you know that you have to send in a deposit for any vacation that you take" and then continued to explain that I was in good hands and that I had nothing to worry about.
Still skeptical I called the BBB here in Austin and asked around to see if these names were listed and found out that they were not listed as fraudelent here. I sent in the information priority mail, like it said to do, and put in the $100 in good faith refund and sent it along to Tampa Fl. I was sent back a return letter, which was the same one that I sent off in the first place, and it said that I had to choose only one Month to go and not use any other choices.
So I sent off the letter with only one month chosen like it said and it has been over one month since I have heard of anything. I remembered Nicole at Vacations Network saying before that it should only take a few days before I would here any response from Mini Vacations.
Today (Feb. 22 2006) I called Vacation Network to see if I could find out the phone # of Mini Vacations Inc. And Nicole was not there. I talked with a man there that told me that he would call them, being Mini Vacations, first and he would call me right back. 30 minutes passed and there was no phone call from this guy so I called back and the man answered again and told me that he was still waiting and suggested that I could probably find it online but he said that he would still call me back.
I proceeded to go online to see if I could find the phone # and saw complaints about Mini Vacations. I read a article there that is saying the exact same thing that I am going through here and a light bulb went off in my head. I then called Vacations Network back to see if I could talk with the guy that was going to give me the phone # and a lady named Rachel answered saying that she could help me.
I asked her if she knew the phone # for Mini Vacations and she said that she had never even heard of Mini Vacations before and I instantaneously knew that these guys at Vacation Network were pulling my leg also. I told Rachel that I had every phone call recorded and that I was going to take them to court over this matter and Rachel hung up the phone on me.
I instantly called back and no one answered the phone, so I called again and no one answered the phone but this time the answering machine for Nicole came on. I knew from the first call, whose name I did not get, that they knew my phone # because he told me that he had caller ID.
I told Nicole's answering machine to call me back immediately when she got the message and that I am very upset on the matter.
Davy
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.
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