My wife and I had been led to expect terrific prices, peerless service and a travel experience unrivaled by anything else we had ever experienced. This was at the sales presentation at Horizon Travel in early June
The claims were qualified by us in every way we could imagine. We demanded that they lay out and price itineraries to locales whose costs we knew from recent experience, including hotel, recreational activities, airfare, car, food and every other thing that cost or could be quantified. The travel representatives were also carefully questioned about their procedures, their guarantees of cheaper costs and everything else that came to mind. The answers were impressively complete and rapid. The quoted prices were well below what we had recently experienced.
Based on this investigation we decided to join Horizon Travel and TCI.
This past October we decided to set up a dive trip to the Caribbean and put our money to use.
The travel club was called and we were ignored for a week. After finally switching to another agent it took another two weeks to set the trip up and the reservations were wrong with regards to what we desired and when (even though a detailed requirements list had been emailed to the agent).
Please note that this had now taken three weeks of constant back and forth, with extremely poor response from TCI and Horizon Travel. It was necessary to call TCI and request information, it was difficult to imppossible to get agents at TCI or Horizon Travel to respond.
At the end of three weeks everything had been arranged to my satisfaction and I requested the final, total bill. It came to a thousand plus dollars over what I had been told it would be (the initial quote was very good indeed). We were already irked by the extended amount of time it took to arrange a trip and straighten out the details. This was nothing compared to the outright anger that ws generated as a result of the week long run around that occurred when I began to complain of the deceptive pricing I had been quoted.
We were passed from one concerned individul to the next who would promise to investigate and get back to us. Phone calls and emails to the president of the company, his lietenants and associates proved fruitless.
At this point I did what I should have done in June and started checking on line with the Better Business Bureau and usacomplaints.com.
The reports I read listed exactly the problems we had encounterred repeated frequently.
I felt stupid and angry (I had ponied up a lot of money to look like a fool). I also decided to get my money back or affect Horizon Travel in some way. I called the corporate offices and spoke with one of the presidents underlings (I think I was lucky in being able to contact her), she informed me that refunds were not company policy and it was certainly a pity that we had such a rotten experience, good bye and good luck.
The next weekend we picketed Horizon Travel starting at 9 in the morning of a Saturday. Several men came out and demanded that we go away (we refused). They then threatened us with the police (I had called the police, what we were doing was legal and sanctioned by Arligton ordinances, we could not block the sidewalk or be threatening or abusive).
Next was the argument that they could not give refunds at that location (our response was that they might wish to reconsider, as we were willing and able to stand outside all day, perhaps they should call someone). A third Horizon Travel representative joined the group, he was the manager and he did have the authority to refund our money and agreed to do so.
We went inside where the games began again. The manager attempted to give us less than the original amount we had shelled out. We were having none of that and insisted on a complete refund.
The full amount was returned and we left twenty fve minutes after we began picketing.
We still feel stupid for having fallen for the lies told us at the sales event but we look upon this as a vaccination for hard sales events.
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