SMART TRAVEL & INCENTIVES This company is a RIP OFF LOCATED IN lake mary Florida

Hi Julie,

My husband and I attended a 90 minute presentation for a travel company. At the end of the presentation we were given a sheet to fill out before 21 days and send it to a travel company in Lake Florida named Smart Travel & Incentives. We did everything they asked and later realized in small print that they stated it needed to be certified mail. Why???? Certified mail protects us and you. Prior to that being a condition on our vouchers we had many issues. Customers would often forget to send the vouchers in within the 21 day period, and rather than lose out they would try and say that had mailed them into us, and we must have lost them.  It put us into the position of either calling the customer a liar or accepting copies of old vouchers for activation. We certainly do not ever want to call our customer liars, even when we did catch them in the act. It happened so many times that we were forced to add the certified mail clause. By adding it we were able to indemnify ourselves if the mail became lost before it got to us, or if the customer failed to send the voucher via certified mail and it did not get to us.

This evening I received a letter and the voucher that we filled out. All across the voucher it had a void stamp and they stated that they regret they cannot help us any further. They didn't even do anything except refuse to take our voucher because it was not certified mail. What a joke. Just as you’re required to follow the terms and conditions, we are as well. We do not get to pick and choose which ones we will follow and which ones we won't. The terms state that if they are breached then the voucher will become null and void. You breached the terms when you failed to mail the voucher via certified mail; therefore it was voided, just as the terms stated would happen.  The font size is the exact same as the part that stated to mail the voucher within 21 days with a cashier check or money order. In fact it is in the same sentence. I am assuming you were able to read that ok since you did both of those things?

After receiving this letter, I was furious and looked up on the internet and found all of these complaints about the company. They either have taken hard earned money from people, refused to give out airline tickets because of one reason or another and have scamed a lot of individuals. Our judicial system needs to get ahold of them and straighten them out. They should not be in business at all. They are getting paid by the companies that put on the presentations and then they are not holding up their part of the bargain.

We do get complaints online from customers that are upset with us for reasons similar to yours. People tend to get upset when they don’t get what they want and blame us. In this case you’re blaming us for you not reading a portion of a sentence, when in reality that is not our fault. We did exactly what we stated we would do. We even asked you to sign a line stating that you have read, understand and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions. We do everything possible that we can do on a single page of paper, so that you understand what you need to do, what you will receive and how it works. We are a full service travel agency and ARE governed by the State of Florida with approval for what we do.

You can be sure that I will let everyone know not to get sucked into anything like this in the future. I would recommend that you be more careful in the future with any dealings you have with businesses. A reputation is delicate thing. When you bash a company for something that you failed to do; you do unfair damage to that company’s name. That is something that can’t be undone.

Regards,

Kara Gallagher

General Manager