Florida Bahamas Cruise Vacations Called to say many who entered sweepstakes "won" and sneakily changed credit card Orlando Florida

This company is absolutely ridiculous.

I was attending a concert called Rock on the Range in Columbus, Ohio on May 16-18 (About 14 days ago). I saw a legitimate looking stand in the lot advertising a raffle. I checked it out. I proceeded to fill out a card with my name, address, phone number, & credit card info.

Here I was on May 19th, sitting at Noodles & Company eating lunch between college finals, when I get a call from a restricted number. I answer, "Hello?"

The other end of the phone contained the voice of a jittery sounding man who was excited to inform me that I was one of the 3% of names drawn in the raffle I had entered. I had won a "75% Paid Vacation." I was very excited for the first few seconds but became skeptical soon.

He continued on to tell me ALL about the GLORIOUS and ROYAL vacation that was 8 days, or nights or something. He told me that I would be staying in Southern FL for a couple days, then a CRUISE to the Bahamas, and another two nights in Orlando. All I had to do was give him my credit card number... Wait, credit card number... Oh boy, do I smell a scam?

He said that in order to "secure my spot" I would need to authorize a $299.00 charge on my credit card. I asked if I could call back another day because I wanted to think over the heavy charge ($299.00 is A LOT of money for a college student!). I started to become skeptical when he said that I had to authorize the charge THAT day otherwise my spot would be taken and given to another person drawn from the raffle... He continued by assuring me that I "could call back at any time and receive a FULL reimbursement" if I had changed by mind.

I asked a number of questions about the details of the vacation. I was also assured that I could rent a car. Although, I'm only 18!

Anyways, after verbally confirming with the man 3 or more times that I could in fact receive this reimbursement at any time, I took out my credit card from my KoRn wallet & proceeded to give him my information. I figured I would do some more research about the trip, etc at another point & cancel if I found it to not be worth the $299... But, for the time being I wanted to save my spot & didn't want to loose the "great deal."

They rambled on giving me details about the trip at a thousand miles per hour. Meanwhile, I wanted to eat my d**n lunch and get back to studying. I was probably slightly distracted. But never had the company mentioned additional charges (taxes, etc). If they had, you can be sure my ears would have perked up.
I was given a site, FloridaBahamasCruiseVacations.com (weird name for a company, right?), for more information, testimonials, etc.

So I called about two days later to try to get a reimbursement because I read a number of claims online, like these, saying it was a rip-off. They said they couldn't do a thing for me at that point because it takes like three days for the information to go through to their main office and computer networks. They told me to call back in a few.

I call back, and they give me another site: www.book4florida.com
I was given my confirmation code and logged in. I was SHOCKED to see an additional balance due of $597.00!

"Well," they explained, "these are the port taxes [and such] of $149 a person. This was all outlined in your verbal contract."

The HELL IT WAS!

"Alright," I said, "I am no longer interested at this time. I would like to promptly receive a full refund, please. I was NEVER informed of these additional charges."

"I'm sorry ma'am. You agreed to a verbal contract stating that your refund could only be received within the first two days after authorizing the payment on your credit card. I apologize, but that's not our rule. It's an Illinois State law."

How convenient for them to not have my information in the system after two days!

I continued arguing until I was transferred three times and eventually was speaking to a very high person in the corporation.

He told me that the best they could do for me was to refund me $150 because the rest of the funds had already been sent out to their "distributors."

HELP! What to do now?... Broke college student who's now out 150 BUCKS because of some well worded "contract" that left me dumbfounded with essential and "contract breaking" information that was conveniently left out...

Best regards.