My wife and I received an invitation for a free week in Florida with SummerBay Resorts. We scheduled our trip in July and purchased a vacation package for $2900. This package included 30,000 RCI points, a cruise, and three stays at SummerBay Resorts.
The 30,000 RCI points was promised to provide a dream vacation to remember. They said that most vacations could be booked within 45 days of our vacation for as little as 9,000 points allowing us 2-3 great vacations. SummerBay promised to activate our points by July 1st so that we could plan a 2008 summer vacation. They did not have our points activated until after August 1st... Too late to book a vacation before the kids went back to school. Disappointed we scheduled (and paid for privately) another vacation to the Outer Banks of NC.
With our RCI points activated through SummerBay we called yesterday (01/13/09) to schedule our dream vacation for the summer of 2009. RCI told us that summer vacations usually book up a year in advance and that scheduling a vacation within 45 day of travel is highly unlikely unless they have a rare cancellation. Furthermore, most summer time vacations in the United States and abroad require significantly more than the 30,000 points that RCI sold for our "dream" vacation. RCI was very helpful, to the extent that they could be, and apologetic for the inconvenience and misrepresentation of SummerBay Resorts.
All said and done, we were able to find and book one (1) resort that had availability for our family for under 30,000 RCI points during the summer of 2009. For the $2900 we spent with SummerBay and an additional $139 booking fee with RCI we get to vacation in DeBois, Pennsylvania. We live in OHIO!
FLEE SummerBay like your hair is on fire. You WILL lose your money, you WILL be disappointed, your promised "dream" vacation WILL be a disaster!!! Please share this story with everyone that you know to protect those that you care about.
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