I had a similar experience as all of you with American Travel, Grand Getaways, MVI, and the whole bunch. I was also deceived by Francine Bauer with the promise of a full refund, no questions/problems if done within the first year. That is not the case. Other lies included the estimate of the fees for port taxes etc for our promo cruise... She told us $50 to $100 each (not including airfare), but when I called to get an estimate on from the fulfillment center they told me that it would be $1000 to $2000 each (without airfare) I called Francine and she told me that there had to be a mistake, so I called back the fulfillment center and they told me emphatically that I had never called there... Red flags were going up... More research on the internet revealed several lawsuits and complaints and news articles mostly on Grand Getaways and MVI.
So again I called Francine and told her I wanted out and she convinced me to wait since I had a whole year and try to use the program, for the discounts. Well, I got iterneraries for several trips from Grand Getaways, and compared them to Travelocity and in all cases, Travelocity was cheaper. I tried again to contact Francine and Kevin Raines for months with no response... At one point I was calling Francine every day for weeks. When she finally called me back she told me that she had been out with medical problems, but I found out later that she had been convicted in court here in Wisconsin of ripping off people by personaly cashing their checks. I contacted Grand Getaways to find out if they could get my money back, but I was told that only the distributor, American Travel, could do this. I must say, whether I think their product is good or not, Grand Getaways customer service has been very helpful. They are the ones who alerted me to Francine's conviction.
They also informed me that they had an enormous amount of complaints against American Travel, so much so that Grand Getaways has filed a Cease and Decist order for them to discontinue representing Grand Getaways. Finally a couple of other notes/lies: Francine showed us this wonderful exclusive, members only Site59 with last minute and reduced travel that she said was only available to us as members... Funny thing is that is the exact same as the last minute and discounted travel at Travelocity's site and several others. One of the biggest things to me which should almost constitute blatant fraud is the BBB report they show you, in fact they put it right up front and say they are proud of it, and use it as a big selling point... What they don't tell you is that it is doctored. They purposely omit the part of the report that discussed customer complaints of not being able to use the trips and other things. (you can easily find this report at the BBB) Here is the funniest part of my whole story to date: I documented my complaints, printouts, phone history with Francine and Mr. Raines, rate quote comparisons, all of the information above, and more, and sent off a 32 page document by fax to Kevin Raines. His response was that they had made no mistatements, had provided all that they had promised... Here comes the two funny parts... 1) he told me that the BBB report was abreviated because the rest was not important!?! And 2) he threatened to sue ME if I continued to slander his business!!!
If anyone knows a way for all of us to come together by name, phone, email, please post it
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