Etour and travel company KGI group Crooks!!! Orlando Florida

Where do I begin?? We purchased our original package from this company in 2008 for the magic price of 99 dollars.  We could not use this package as we already had trips planned for about four years.  During that time, they still called from time to time trying to collect more money to extend the original package.  My husband was the next victim as he purchased two more packages from them in 2012....one was for a 6 night package in Orlando and the other was for a four night package as well in Orlando with air buck coupons, Universal tickets and rental car coupons.

We booked the package finally and the trouble started before we even left home!  We were a party of two families with a total of 8 people.  We were adding this trip on in Orlando for just four days being that we had a rental house in the keys before that.  I phoned the company and had it set up.  They were putting us up in the Doubletree Hilton in downtown Orlando and only offering double beds in each room.  I had to get another room as I have football sized boys and they definitely could not share a double bed!!! So figuring we had 10 nights total to play with I thought they could accomodate us!  Nope wrong!  I had to pay an extra 69 dollars for a third room...they would not cover one night.  See a pattern developing here?? Always trying to get more money!!! 

So we had everything booked and our friends who were coming with us gave their share of the vacation to us...all settled or so I thought!!  The day before we are to leave I thought I would phone and get our vacation plans all in order.  I phoned etour and got a girl who could not find our reservation at the hilton at all....say WHAT??? After being on hold for about 30 minutes she finally found it with my husband's last four credit card numbers.  Ah yes she says...I have found your reservation but you still owe 552 dollars on the account or you will lose your reservation...they did not charge you enough for the extra room!  Remember this is the day before we left home to fly!

I was really pissed by now and replied to her "how can you charge more on this vacation...this trip was already booked and a charge went through on our credit card!"  "Well she says, you booked this trip when we were just one company etour and travel and now we consolidated with another company and we are now KGI and your original reservation is no longer available!"  Well by this point I just felt sick to my stomach...we were literally packing to leave and told that we no longer had reservations for four nights for eight people. She asked what I wanted to do.  If I wanted to cancel or keep the reservation.  I told her that I would phone back and to hang on to the reservation.

We are RCI owners for the past nine years and I phoned RCI to see if there was anything available for the four nights.  He said there was and he could put the eight of us in a two bedroom unit...cramped but doable!  I held that reservation but I was so mad at this point that I phoned etour back and demanded to speak to a manager.  The girl said that maybe she could help me first and I explained the situation.  I told her that I was not prepared to pay an additional 552 dollars for a trip that was already booked!  

She said she would see what she could do and for the next 45 minutes it was a cat and mouse game of her talking to a supervisor and coming back on the phone.  By this time I was spent and ready to pull my hair out!!! The final offer was a deal of 149 dollars but they would apply a Visa card of 50 dollars making it yes again 99 dollars to hold that reservation.  Yes under great duress I agreed...they were playing with me and I knew it but they were taking advantage of our time crunch!

Flash forward to our vacation now!  After spending two glorious weeks in the keys we travelled to Orlando for the last part.  Our friends arrived at the Hilton first and saw that papers were on the front desk with our names on it.  They thought everything was in order...nope wrong again!  They pulled the old bait and switch routine which I hear they are famous for!! Our friends were able to text us while we were still in transit and tell us that we have been moved to the Sheraton in Maitland.  Okay we arrived at the Sheraton and even the front desk felt terrible about what happened.  

She says it happens all of the time and that the hotel was really sorry that it happened.  Now the Hilton or Sheraton have nothing to do worth etour...they were just the messengers.  We checked in with our etour papers and saw that there were three vouchers for our rooms at the hotel.  Unless we went to a scheduled timeshare presentation at 9:00 am on Monday morning, our hotel rooms were not covered and we would incur the cost of the rooms....some package hey???  So off we went to the time share presentation in Kissimmee from Maitland in rush hour traffic on a Monday morning.

Arrived at the welcome center with a line up of people.  We get Keith who claimed he was a manager and that they pulled him out of his office because they had so many people there that day.  Now this was not our first timeshare presentation...after all we bought our weeks with RCI in Mexico at our home resorts and we know how they work.  Keith promised that the presentation would not be long and painless as well.  I have to give it to Keith..he was entertaining and knew the talk.  So now they were selling condos with the KGI group..yup the Kosmas family that also owns etour and travel.

 We listened to what he said...only offered coffee or juice...no fruit or breakfast buffet!  After being there for almost three hours he saw that neither of us were interested so then he called in manager number two....Vinnie!!!  Vinnie was as smooth as a copperhead snake and offered us an even better deal that had to be that day.  For 1495 we could take three vacations with them and come back to Orlando.  My husband replied "nope, not interested."  Well Vinnie was going to give it one more try....well for 995 he would give us those vacations just to slide in to the program and "get our feet wet" with the the points system.  Again my husband replied "no" and Vinnie asked," man to man..what is stopping you!"

My husband replied "because of etour and travel and the bad experience we had!"  Vinnie said "well what has that got to do with it...they are just one of the marketing companies that we use and if the telemarketers there do not sell so many packages then they are fired!"  

Okay side note here...that is our problem if a company is so unscrupulous that they treat their employees that way???

Anyways Vinnie saw that he was done with us and their favourite term that was used for selling the condos was "stop the bleeding"..."Stop wasting your hard-earned money on paying extra for your vacations".  Now I think the points system really is not a bad plan...it is just that we already have our weeks system in place and we have gone on vacations for the past nine years so we are jot suffering!  But after what etour did to us and caused us so much grief I really will not deal with them again and we are considering legal action back home to get our money back.

We thought we were done with any more bad experiences but when we went to get our hotel vouchers stamped so we did not have to incur the hotel cost we found out that the 8 universal tickets we were promised were only actually two.  I told the girl there that we were promised 8 and said that we had three packages rolled into one.  After several long minutes she phoned etour and travel to confirm this and the end result was that we got six tickets in all...still short of the promised 8 and oh yeah...two only had entrance to both parks at Universal so we had to pay 45 dollars each per four tickets to include the two parks as the other two....again more money!!!

My question is how is this company still in business and why are people not taking legal action to bankrupt these guys???  They are uncaring just out for the almighty buck and to make the Kosmas family even richer!!!  They are playing on our dreams to have the much needed vacation and promising things that do not exist!!! I will NEVER answer a call from this company again and will persist until they are brought to court for all of the money they have stolen from innocent people!!!!

Please do not have anything to do with this company!!!  Your mental health is worth it!!!