I purchased travel certificates that are complimentary type of vouchers from Mark Berdysz with Travel Incentives of America & Ohio Valley Distributors. I have been doing business with him since May. I have also invested alot of capital in purchasing his product becuase I believed his product was an incredible offer for travelers. I began selling his complimentary travel on ebay and built a very good name and business for myself winning the trust of all my customers as I grew with this business. I was given in writing, by mark Berdysz, what he expected from my customers and what I should do in submitting all my travel information from my customers.
As time passed and we sold my customers these travel certificates for 2008 use i was given specific information from Mark as listed below:
1) My customers would receive their travel information/confirmations at least 60 to 30 days before their arrival date to their hotel. I have this in writing. On July 14th (about 40 days before my customers for September were supposed to check into their hotels), I received an email from Mark Berdysz stating that the Travel Fulfillment Center was running late on these confirmations and that my customers would receive thier travel information 5-7 days from their departure date. This was a major problem because many of my customers were already expecting their travel packets at least 30 days before their arrival dates.
2) On December the 3rd I received an answer to my question from Mark Berdysz regarding customer dates etc. My question was, "How do I know that these dates that I am collecting fom my customers are definitely guaranteed? Will I get some e-mail stating that xyz dates for xyz customer are secured or will I just get contacted by you with no availability for those dates etc...?". His response to this was, "All dates you requested are fine and are guaranteed and are locked in on my records with your name and customer names. If you don't receive an email stating that the date is not available everything is a go. What I will do is email you once a week stating this so you know..." On August the 1st (30 days before some of my customers arrival dates), I received an email from Mark Berdysz with the following, "The following dates below are now sold out for September September 2nd-7th, 12th-14th, 19th-21st, & 26th-30th 2008." So basically I received what is available and what is not 30 days before my September customers are supposed to use their travel. I was supposed to receive this on a weekly basis 7 months ago not 30 days before many of my customers were supposed to be checking in. I tried to give Mark the benefit of the doubt and see if he could help my 227 customers checked in on the dates that they were guaranteed but Mark denied this and let me know that nothing was guaranteed. I had only 17 customers that fell on the dates that were available and not even these dates did Mark honor but sent me an email stating, "I have not acknowledged that these dates are okay. I will check on availbility and see if there are any cancellations from other distributors. If space cannot be found then travel has to be moved to other months." After this email I decided to inform my September customers that we had a major problem and that Mark was not honoring what we had agreed to previously.
I also pre-purchased 68 positions for September and paid him for these positions and he still could not get any of my customers in on any September dates.
There are other red flags that i received around the begining of August that led to me shut everything down for the best interest of my customers. Now I cannot trust Mark to deliver anything for my September customers and I do not know if he can deliver for my remianing customers. It seems that I have to wait for other distributors customers to cancel in order to get my customers who have paid there refundable booking deposits plus their processing fees to get their dates filled. Had I known this from the begining I would not have gotten into this business at all.
I have lost all credibility with all my customers trust. I have lost my business on ebay and the reputation that I worked so hard to keep. Now my main goal is to work in making my customers whole and making sure that they are refunded in full.
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