In the mail a few times, I’ve recieved junk mail offering me a “Vacation Voucher” for $1600. I figured there was some kind of required high-pressure sales event attached to whatever “vacation” they would send me on–and that the “vacation” would be very low quality stuff.
But this morning I got a call from a very persistent sales lady, from the same people–turns out its Ramada–swearing on her Grandmother’s grave that there is no sales event attached to the vacation, and that all they want from me is the chance that I will recommend the services of their hotels and cruise ships and so on. She also explained that I would be paying $400 for a “$2000 value,” hence the phraseology of a “$1600 Vacation Voucher.”
$400 for a five day vacation or cruise for up to four people sounds pretty good, huh?
But… what’s the gag?
Do people just straight up lie on calls like this? Could it be there’s a sales event attached to this thing after all?
Or what?
I’m not a big fan of resorts/cruises and that kind of thing but hey, for a mere $400, I might be willing to risk it. Assuming I’m risking merely an interesting kind of boredom rather than actually being scammed.
Anyone with any familiarity or better yet ecperience with this kind of thing?
It’s certainly deceptive. Don’t think of it as you getting a huge discount; think of it as you paying them $400 (and is that just you, or per person?) that you otherwise wouldn’t have. If you’re spending money on something you wouldn’t spend otherwise, you are not saving money, you’re spending it.
Also, although they may say they won’t try to sell you something, as it is legally defined, there could be sales pitches, informative seminars you’re required to attend, and probably a dozen other things that any rational person would call “trying to sell you something,” but unless what they’re doing fits into the specific definition, they don’t have to call it that.
I think I’ve decided what my line will be when she calls back:
If they’re not willing to send me something in writing explaining exactly what I am paying for when I allow them to charge me $400, then I have a reason to be suspicious of them.
Then I’ll see what happens.
You’re right of course that it’s tricky to call it a “discount” if I’m spending money I wouldn’t otherwise spend. But I plan on having a vaction of some kind over the next year or so, and I’d be spending at least $400 on that. If I could get a trip to Hawaii out of that money, I’d be happy. Even if it turned out to be a relatively crappy trip, I can still imagine not having been unhappy to have spent the money.
Also, to answer your question, she said it was $400 for two people.
Double check what is included. Does the money get you a 5day/4night stay at one of their hotels? If so, then you are getting 4nights for $400. If they want to call that a $2000 value, I guess they can.
One a cruise, is the food included? How about housekeeping?
What kind of other fees do you have to pay? Taxes? Housekeeping? “shipping and handling”?
Are there limits on when you can use the voucher?
I’d suggest you totally ignore the $2000 value claims, take a look at what is being offered, and decide if it’s worth $400 to you.
That’s how I got the call. The same one you got. Signed up to win a trip and I won a trip, the Ramada Plaza and Resorts scam trip. I never went on one though, I wanted them to send some info and give me a call back number and they hesitated and then started piling on MORE pressure to lock in the trip with a credit card to cover the plane fair, and other miscellaneous expenses.
Some of the expenses I found from searching on the net were, you had to pay for your own food and drinks, port fees, airfare, tips, and every other imagineable thing you could think of that isn’t covered by them.
That’s Ramada Plaza Resorts. Look them up on the web and you will find lots of bad stuff about how people got shafted, got on low-end cruise boats, had to pay enormous other fees and things that were promised never came to fruition.
Stay the hell away from them. Only a few people got what they though was anything of value from the cruise and that was probably because RPR screwed up. I believe there was a class action suit against them or at least talk of such.