Recently, my wife and I walked into a Mazda dealership in Toronto, Canada. After, a while we were approached by a salesman who explained to us all the car's features and the extra values we'd get if we bought the car from them. One of those extra "values" was our choice of one of three "free" travel packages offered by a company call Travel America, Inc. We thought this was a really nice value: a "free" vacation, plus we could pick between three different destinations (Cancun, Las Vegas or a cruise in the Caribbean).
Well, our sense of extra value was quickly shattered when we went ahead with the travel's booking. Our final intention is to show you how this company is total scam and how what you think is a win-win situation for you is in reality a win-win situation for the company that sells you the product (a dealership in our case) and Travel America, Inc.in the end you are only left with a sense of emptiness and deception.
How the scam works?
We'll tell you how both the Mazda dealer and Travel America, Inc got us badly. The car salesman always mentioned the value of getting a free trip, but he NEVER mentioned we had to pay a fee to make the trip. This fee, as we later discovered, is charged by Travel America and includes government taxes, port fees and other "miscellaneous fees" (we'll explain this in more detail later on). So, when we signed the contract to buy our car, the dealer gave us a nice postal-size card with a nice picture of a beach with the name Travel America on it and some explanation about the package. BUT, once again, NO MENTION OF ANY FEES on this card.
Since we had some questions about the package, we tried in vain to contact Travel America using the phone written on the card, however, not a single time we were able to talk to a human being and all messages we left in their machine were never returned. We tried to call at different hours with the same results. This seemed a little bit strange to us, but it wasn't a major concern.
Four days later we went to pick up our car. Only then we were given a brochure explaining in detail the terms of the trip. To our surprise, one of the clauses states that in order for us to travel we needed to detach and fill a travel certificate that had our package code on it and send it to Travel America along with $40 for registration. Also, they stated that we needed to pay $198 per person to cover for taxes, port charges and miscellaneous fees. Also, we were able to see that all the dates available to travel were from September-December, although we were told at the dealership that we could travel anytime within the next 18 months. All our calls to Travel America were sent once again to a machine with no return calls.
We decided to sent the membership application along with the $40. Three weeks later we finally got a letter from Travel America.in it was that appeared to be photocopies of a brochure stating our options and dates available for the cruise.
(all of them in low season).
Of course the vouchers are of value: for the company that sells them and for Travel America. The first sold us a car with the help of this promotion and Travel America, that sold the voucher to the dealership for $238, gets $436 from us ($198 x 2 $40 registration fee) a gain of $198. Nice business.
Our Value? Let me tell you what the value for us is.in the case we selected to do the cruise in one of the dates chosen by Travel America, we would spent $436 for the cheapest room in the ship (category A1). If we book the trip using Carnival's website, the same trip with the same room would cost us $452.42. Our savings? $16.42.
Someone has to stop this company to keep operating in this way, they are ripping off consumers all around North America with this phony marketing strategy.
Carlosl
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
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