HTOA seems to be in the business of misrepresenting itself. Typical mode of operation: You (aka "sucker") get roped into a time share presentation (aka "rip off du jour"), often at some sporting event. Sucker goes to presentation, and chooses to buy or not. All of this with the promise of a free trip somewhere. Enter HTOA.
The HTOA trip offered in our case (aka Sucker #412,123, 121,978) was a 'fabulous two night stay, three days' in Hawaii. When you actually look at what you "get", it is 46 hours of stay in Hawaii with 13.5 hours of travel time — and not in a nice 5A place, but in some 2A or if youre really luck 3a "economy" room.
The hitch is that the 'sales' reps at both the invitation to timeshare, *and* at the time share place all say, 'sure you can make changes with no cost, as far as we know'. When you hear these words, assume someone is trying to screw you. We already have places to stay in Hawaii, so we simply wanted *just* the airfare as our free part, and we wanted to change the airfair to return on the exact same day as the original flight, just a week later. To do this we had to have a 'change' fee.
The key here is that if you make any changes over their lousy 'offer', then 'we have to create a custom package for you as that is out of the carriers hands'. This is creative double speak for 'bend over'. The result in our case was a nearly $700 ticket change charge. Mind you I can purchase the same tickets for nearly that price.in point of fact, the change we proposed to make actually resulted in a cheaper ticket than their Leave Tuesday, Return Thursday original ticket.
Their standard plan might look like this: Lv Tues 10:30 AM from SFO, arrive HNL at 13:47. Depart HNL Thursday at 11:30 AM, arrive SFO 8:45 PM (plane change over in Maui — " (see where we couldn't send you? Na na na...). This totals to 13:25 on planes and ~46 hours in Hawaii, not including time at the airport...
If you want them to book a seven night itinerary for you, then the costs go through the roof: $1500-2500 "adder" for nothing more than adding four days of stay! (If you don't know, check out tripadvisor.com where *you* can find out better deals than this in much nicer places)
Net net, it is not worth even trying to talk to these folks. We spent a numbr of hours on the phone, when we could actually talk to someone. Run away as fast as possible and (try) to get your deposit back. They will almost never call you back; and they absolutely do not proactively contact you like they say they will. When you do finally get a hold of someone, you will find them incredibly inflexible. This is a total scam in all the literal ways. Sadly, if you are reading this, it is likely already too late.
For us, we are getting our $100 deposit back. Or at least we will try. I almost hope they try to hold it!
This practice of timeshares giving away "free" trips should be a class action law suit. I've seriously thought about this for quite some time. If you've had similar experiences, please file them here so we can have an attorney look them all over. HTOA is likely just one of many such companies which are contracted to effect this practice. They seem to prey upon unsuspecting and uninformed consumers. Lets not let them keep getting away with this.
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