I got a phone call from a marketing co promising a 3 day "free" Bahamas cruise for 2, and free airline tix to Ft Lauderdale to take the cruise, in exchange for attending a 90 minute travel presentation in Lincoln RI. Ok... Nothing is free... But they convinced me that as a travel club they want to entice new members and would only charge $249 per person "port fees and taxes."
It sounded reasonable so I bit. Went to the travel sales office called Travel Solutions in Lincoln, RI. The offices were nice, lovely furniture, nice travel posters, attractive salespeople, and a surprisingly convincing sales pitch.
"This is not a time share." "This is different from other travel discount packages." Basically, they claim to be the nation's largest wholesaler of all kinds of travel - cruises (30-70% EVERY KIND OF CRUISE), deluxe beachfront condos, Paris hotels, anything you can think of - and named a number of blue chip companies for which they claimed to be the "corporate travel agent."
They said if you buy travel packages through AAA and other discount agencies you are really buying from Travel To Go at a markup. That they could offer tremendous savings for VIP members because of their huge bulk discount purchasing power. For a steep membership fee ($8995 starting price) plus $399 "registration fee" plus $199 "annual fee" you would get these fantastic discounts in 4- and 5-star travel for a lifetime. You could share these discounts with family and friends! Will them to your heirs!
I should have known better. Maybe there was something in the coffee. Anyway, the promises of 30-70% off my favorite cruise line for life persuaded me. With various "free" vacations thrown in for extra enticement, and some last-minute deals they made me, I got it down to just under $6,000.
The trouble was, you had to sign up on the spot or lose this superb deal. Hard experience has now taught me: REPUTABLE VENDORS DO NOT FORCE YOU TO MAKE INSTANT DECISIONS. Any company worth its salt will let you comparison shop and sign a contract when you are ready. Only the scammers make you sign up on the spot "or lose the deal." You don't need any deal where you have to sign "NOW". Anyway, I was stupid. I signed, and handed over my credit card.
Now the bad stuff. The contracts included an "acknowledgement" that the consumer understands there "is no right of rescission." In other words, the contracts could not be cancelled, no matter what. A bad deal. Again: NO REPUTABLE COMPANY tells you that you cannot cancel if you change your mind. It's not as if they are custom-building a car for your specs or something. This is just a travel club. Their investment in you is next to zero. But the profit they can make on you is limited only by your own gullibility.
The 3 free vacations I was promised, and the Bahamas cruise just to get me there, all turned out to be virtually worthless, involved incredibly restrictive availability, all kinds of hidden fees and extra charges, and were basically just pieces of scrap paper when all is said and done.
So I got home hours later, and started to have buyers remorse and some alarm about my $. I looked Travel To Go up on the web and found that the Better Business Bureau of San Diego had kicked them out for bad business practices.
I called some of the blue chip companies, and AAA concerning Travel To Go being their travel wholesaler - none of these companies had even heard of Travel To Go, never mind having them as corporate travel agent or any other official relationship whatsoever.
I did research and found the deep cruise discounts are a LIE, at least on the cruises I would want to go on. Maybe there is some good discount somewhere, but I found comparable prices on Travelocity and other websites.
I don't know about the supposed 5-star condos; another user of usacomplaints.com complained that they were a lie too, with rundown older properties not the deluxe beachfront condos promised. I wasn't really interested in condos so cannot tell you myself. But the cruises and slippery promises and lies about their other "member benefits" really had me worried.
Further research proved that most of their so-called deep discounts were either available elsewhere with no membership fees, or were only available at the very last minute when you would have to pay a fortune in airfare to get there.in other words, the whole thing was an expensive scam.
Calls to Travel To Go went unreturned once I said I wanted my contract cancelled. Travel Solutions (distributor) gave me the runaround, finally I got a very unfriendly "Customer Service Manager" who stonewalled, said "you knew there was no right of recission" and "it is against company policy to issue refunds."
So I filed complaints with the Attorney General and BBB in CA and RI and some other agencies. After much effort, time, and research, plus a hard fought battle with my credit card co, I have received my $ back in full from Travel To Go. Whew.
Meanwhile they are now threatening *ME* with a lawsuit! What for, I'd like to know? I am not the one who has deceived, told lies, or taken money from innocent people. It's probably just an empty threat to intimidate me, but I filed new complaints with the AG, BBB et al.
These nasty people cannot be allowed to dupe the public, take $1000s of dollars from the travel-loving people who just want to enjoy a lifetime of nice vacations, and treat people like criminals who demand their rights under consumer protection laws.
Meanwhile the RI AG's office (Dept of Business Regulation) shut down the distributor, Travel To Go, because over 60 complaints poured in about deceptive practices, unusable vouchers for "free" cruises, and so forth. The cruise fulfillment co just declared bankruptcy. Good luck getting your free Bahamas cruise. Other posts on usacomplaints.com say that Imperial cruises are a shabby boat, not a luxury cruise ship anyway.
Live and learn. And file reports with your AG, BBB, and the Federal Trade Commission. From what I can learn, Travel To Go has distributorships all over America, they all follow the same pattern, and you will NOT get your money's worth from these scam artists. Good luck to all of you travel - lovers out there, and only travel with reputable agents.
Paula
Cranston, Rhode Island
U.S.A.
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