My family and I just returned from a vacation in Florida. We had purchased a travel package from Total Marketing Group that included 3 nights in Orlando, 2 nights in Daytona Beach, and 2 nights in Ft. Lauderdale. We agreed to attend ONE 90 minute "resort tour" in return for 2 free WDW tickets.
The 90 minutes turned into 4 grueling hours of being handed off from one sales rep to another, none of them willing to accept no for an answer, and being subjected to personal questions about our family and finances.
When we left for the second leg of our trip in Daytona, we were given vouchers for the first night of our stay and informed that we would have to attend ANOTHER sales presentation before we would be given our vouchers for the second night, which, by the way, was already bought and paid for.
Calling the company and speaking with several snippy phone reps gave us no help whatever. We were told that "Either you take the tour or you don't get your vouchers" When I told one phone rep that what his company was doing was illegal, he said it didn't make any difference, if we didn't take the tour we wouldn't get our room vouchers.
After speaking with the sales rep conducting the tour and telling him how disgusted we were with the whole deal, he gave us an "abbreviated presentation" which still stole 2 hours of our precious vacation time away from us.
All in all we ended up paying around $75 a night for our rooms. The Surfside Inn at Ormond Beach (that's right, they also lied about the location) was a rundown dirty hotel.
We couldn't even get into our rooms until after 6:30pm because half of the housekeeping staff didn't show up that morning. So the "great deal" they promised simply didn't exist. We could have spent less booking the rooms ourselves online and saved ourselves money and frustration. I will NEVER, EVER do business with Total Marketing Group or any of its partners and I would advise anyone who is considering a trip to Florida to steer clear of any timeshare scams.
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