We attended a travel sales promo for West Gate Resorts, David Segal CEO at Bayside Miami. We did not buy but we were given a voucher for our choice of gifts. We sent $225 money order to Certs for a 3 day cruise and one night in a hotel in Miami and never heard from them. Meanwhile, I checked to find that they had hundreds of complaints about not fulfilling the travel promises, and calling them outright crooks.
I called an exec at West Gate who hired Certs to give their prized and finally got a call. Certs told me they never received our choice and money order. I had sent it registered and had the receipt from the post office that they did receive it.
Then Certs told me that they have no record of the money order being received or cashed. We have been looking for that receipt ever since. We have the charge on our credit card for the money order that we purchased from the post office but the actual receipt of the MO is somewhere in our home, put away with other papers.
I am so certain that this happens to many other people also. I am furious with myself not to have put the money order in side my passport or some other vital place but truthfully, I didn't suspect that this was standard proceedure for Certs until after I had already sent the money order and been told that they never received it.
This was back in April 2009, we left for May out of state, and this saga began when we returned in June 2009. I had planned to take my credit card statement to the post office along with the card from the letter we registered to have it traced but we haven't done that yet either and don't know if we can.
I did contact the exec at WEstGate and plan to write to David Segal about this also. They have my $225 there is no doubt about that are are lying that they never received it. I am just out the money and we have no cruise or one night in a Miami hotel either.
I am equally certain that many many people are not able to come up with the actual money order receipt to verify it and Certs is keeping all that money and not provideing the promised travel. West Gate exec said she hadn't heard any complaints at all and I directed her to the web and sent her a copy of a long list of them.
This is a travel scam of the first order . I am certain also that most people don't even send the travel request and money via registered mail like we did. It is totallly furstrated to be scammed and not be able to do anything about it on account of a little piece of paper and a couple of numbers. I hope the post office can trace our money order with what we have.
I have been out of Miami for most of the summer and couldn't attend to this , making it all the more frustrating, also, looking everywhere trying to remember where we put the folder from West Gate/ Certs promotions that we got. Certs is Bad News.