SCAM

Time share sales: hard sell or scam?

Jake Azman/Shutterstock
Jake Azman/Shutterstock
Even though Igor Pavlovic and his wife consider themselves experienced consumers, they say that nothing could have prepared them for the sophisticated and aggressive sales pitch for a Wyndham time share that they recently endured in San Antonio.

The couple had been lured into a formal presentation with promises of “free” dinner and show tickets. “Once we got there, two salesmen gave us a high-pressure sales pitch,” says Pavlovic, a retired information systems consultant from Palm Beach, Fla. “Of course we liked the offerings and savings, but there was no way for us to verify their claims.”

You can probably guess what happened next. The Pavlovics bought a time share and then tried to cancel it. Even though the salesmen had promised that they could get a full refund “at any time” before using the benefits, the contract said otherwise. Now they were on the hook for $18,000, which didn’t include $650 in annual maintenance fees.

“It was all a lie,” says Pavlovic. “A scam.”
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61 comments

Hey, where’s that Bahamas cruise you promised me?

Aleksey Stemmer/Shutterstock
Aleksey Stemmer/Shutterstock
Maybe you think you’ve heard this story before. It involves presentations with aggressive salesmen, lofty promises made and allegedly not kept, and fingerpointing — lots of fingerpointing.

But you haven’t heard this story. Not the way Troy Bryan tells it, at least.

He recently received a phone call from someone representing a company called Premiere Discounts.

“A representative indicated that I had won a prize from a contest that I had earlier entered,” he says. “I don’t recall entering this contest.”
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139 comments

Help, I’ve been scammed by my moving company

snowroadQuestion: Last fall I made a temporary international move from the USA to Santiago, Chile, using Allied Van Lines. When I was in the US, they gave me a quote for door-to-door service, which I paid in full.

Then, when I arrived in Chile, they told me that I had to pay an extra $1,195. At the time I complained because I had already payed for door-to-door service and all charges should have been included in the initial quote. But they gave me no satisfactory explanation and told me that if I did not pay I would not receive my belongings and, on top of that, they would begin charging me for storage of my belongings until I paid in full. So I felt I had no choice except to pay.

Afterwards, I filed BBB complaints against both Allied International and their local contractor in Maryland who handled the US side of the move, but neither complaint helped.
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90 comments

Is this a scam? A vacation package never received

the-oceanThe offer looked like an incredible bargain. For just $1,749, Judy Citko and her fiancé could fly from California to Florida and enjoy a three-day Caribbean “cruise and stay” package.

But that’s not all. The price covered three adults and six children – a total of nine travelers.

The catch: Citko had to pay for it with a wire transfer from her bank. No credit cards accepted.

No surprise that the tickets never came and that the vacation didn’t happen. (What gave it away? The wiring money or the too-good-to-be-true price?)
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216 comments

New law aims to short-circuit public phone overcharges

1-no phoneThe trouble started when Tom King’s cellphone died on his way to a job interview last year. He saw a public phone at Washington’s Bainbridge Island Ferry and was relieved when a sticker reassured him that he could make a four-minute call for $1, he says.

That didn’t turn out to be entirely accurate. King made four one-minute calls using his credit card, for which he expected to pay $4. But a few days later, he discovered that he’d been charged $14.98 for each connection, for a total of nearly $60. “I was shocked,” he says.
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70 comments

Is your credit card safe at cruising altitude?

Maybe it was the Bloody Mary that got Jean Shanley into trouble on a recent flight from Louisville to Las Vegas.

She paid for the $5 beverage with her American Express card and then slipped the card back into her pocketbook, where it stayed for the rest of her vacation. When she returned home, Shanley, a sales associate for a department store in Burlington, Ky., found $1,300 in fraudulent charges on the card — and she suspects that Southwest Airlines is responsible for the security breach.
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125 comments