Horizon Travel And VIP Incentives Dishonest and unpromised advertisement to join travel club ripoff Tempe Arizona

My boyfriend and I entered a drawing at a Home Expo Show in Boston, MA back in the fall of 2005 to "win a free 3 day/2 night getaway for two to your choice of over 600 hundred hotels plus a $30 gift certificate (for several chain restaurants), or a 4 day/3 night Bahamas Cruise with round trip airfare for 2 adults".

We received a call a few weeks after the show claiming we had won one of the aforementioned prizes, but we had to attend a 90-minute presentation, with no obligation to buy, in New Hampshire. We ended up paying $4,095 to join the club; in our contract, we were also promised 2 free airline tickets to use within the continental US from Horizon Travel (we have documentation of this agreement).

The company we joined is called Horizon Travel and they were a part of the Travel Club International, Inc. Horizon Travel hired an advertisement company by the name of VIP Incentives out of Arizona to handle their advertisements claiming it was cheaper for them to send people on weekend getaways than it was to advertise in the papers, TV and internet, etc.

To get our prize, we had to submit a few dates, with the following stipulations: dates could not be within 30 days of another chosen date, had to be within the months of September and January, and could not be on a holiday weekend, as well as a $100 refundable deposit. We submitted the maximum number of dates and the check (which we have a copy of), only to receive notice each time that a travel date we had chosen was not available and we were asked if we would like to chose another date or continue with the remaining dates. We continually continued with the dates remaining.

In January 2007 we received our last notice that our travel date was unavailable. We contacted Horizon Travel and were informed we needed to contact VIP Incentives as they were the ones who would get us our cruise/and or refund. We tried to contact VIP Incentives several times only to hear the message on the answering machine that their voice mailbox was full. After this, we realized that we were not going to get our weekend getaway or our $100 deposit back.

With the 2 free airline tickets we were promised via the contract with Horizon Travel, we booked a trip to Orlando, Florida in October 2006. When we called the company to see about using the airline tickets, we were informed that we needed to purchase the tickets and that we would receive a refund check in the mail subsequent to our trip. In November 2006, we contacted the company and were informed they were backed up and there was a delay and we would receive the refund in February/March 2007.

During the months of February and March 2007, we called the company dozens of times and the operator sent us to the complaints voicemail. We continually requested to speak with someone but was repeatedly told we could not and had to leave a message and someone would call us back.

April 16, 2007, we called Horizon Travel again to find out why we have not received our refund and were informed that Horizon Travel went out of business and a new company called Advantage Travel out of Florida now had ownership over the travel club so we basically lost our $550 we were expecting from the airlines and the $100 deposit we were expecting from VIP incentives.

I don't understand how no rooms on a cruise ship would be unavailable during the months we had to chose, September through November are hurricane seasons and not as busy as in the spring/summer months. Also, how can a company take $100 from people and get away with it? How many others fell for the same gimmick that we have?

Jennifer
New Bedford, Massachusetts
U.S.A.