In May, we went to Mazatlan, MX, for a one week stay at El Cid Resort. At the airport we were offered free taxi fare, a city tour and a day at Rock Island if we listened to a 90 minute talk about the El Cid Vacations Club, which was presented at the resort the next morning. The sale representative, JOSE DIAZ SUAREZ, presented a computer program showing the different El Cid Resorts and other resorts that were available.
We explained to him that we were mainly interested in cruises, not resort stays. With that he began to demonstrate, using the computer and a calculator, how purchasing 105,000 points would more than pay for a Mexican Riviera cruise, in a balcony cabin, for two. The net cost of the package for 20 years was $13,400.00, plus an annual fee of $504.00 per year.
After listening to his presentation, we told him that had we not purchased a vacation package through Carnival Cruise Lines, the year before, we probably would purchase the plan. With that, Jose went and spoke with another gentleman, they both came to our table and he was introduced as Jose's manager, RUI VELOSO FERREIRA. Mr. Veloso went right into explaining how we would be able to use the 105,00 points to cruise every year for the next twenty years.
We attempted to have him look up a cruise to Alaska on Holland America with a balcony room, he was unable to locate one, so we had him demonstrate a cruise to the southern Mexican Riviera, once again the cost of the cruise was shown to be covered, in full, by purchasing 105,000 points.
We explained our previous purchase to Mr. Veloso, to which he stated, "It's no accident that you were sent here, we all work together." He went on to say that he could get back $4000.00 from Carnival if we faxed him copies of our certificates. He stated that we would receive a check directly from Carnival within 90 days. This would bring the net cost of the package down to $9,400.00. With that, we agreed to buy into the program and charged $13,400.00 to our credit card.
Shortly after returning to Arizona, we faxed six pages of documents, pertaining to our Carnival vacation package, to Mr. Veloso. A couple of days later, we were online and looking at a cruise vacation and we couldn't get the points to compute as both, Jose Diaz and Rui Veloso did. We began to suspect that we were lied to by both of them and that we had been ripped off.
We then contacted the reservation service and learned that our 105,00 points were equal to only $577.00. E-mails were sent to Rui Veloso and he continued his lies. He stated in an e-mail that we could cancel the contract if we desired to do so. On May 17th, we sent back a reply that we wanted to cancel the contract, to date have heard nothing further.
We contacted Carnival and learned that El Cid Vacations Club is not connected in any way with Carnival and that they would not have authority to redeem Carnival certificates. Further Internet research revealed several other similar complaints for others who had been ripped off and in fact, Rui Veloso was mentioned in one of them as one of the sale people involved. Our presentation was witnessed by two of our relatives, who were smarted than we were, they didn't buy in.
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