The “Free Vacation”
One of our activities in Miami was the Celebrity Mansions and Millionaire Homes Cruise. Now the boat ride and tour was pretty good, and you can read about it here if you’d like, but if you go on this your beware of the scam run by Holiday Network Group and in conjunction with Bayride Boat Tours. In fact, you better be aware of this scam floating around Miami and similar scams in other expensive tropical tourist hotspots.
Anyways, when we departed from the Biscayne Bay, there was a Latina lady named Gloria giving out raffle tickets for a free trip. Immediately I was excited and filled out the ticket with urgency. A few beers later, and after observing the home of the rich and famous…they did the draw for the vacation and my ears perked up. When they called my name a few minutes later I was ecstatic and shouted “WOOOO!” Gloria told me to meet her on the main floor of the boat and I began shouting for my wife to hurry up and come join.
I sat down at the table and was given the choice of a 3-5 night cruise or a 7 night hotel stay at participating hotels worldwide. I usually stay in budget hotels or use my points for deals, so I knew immediately we’d opt for the cruise. When I was told one of the options of the cruises offered was a 5 day cruise from Miami to Jamaica and back I knew that would be the cruise we’d take. We filled out some paperwork and were told we had to attend a “fun presentation” where they would tell us about activities and vacation offers… I thought it was for extra activities to sign up for on the cruise. We had to give a $40 deposit which we would get back upon completion of the presentation. I started to become hesitant, but the excitement was still floating through my veins. We were told that we’d be given an Uber to the presentation and we would be Uberd back to our hotel. Never mind that we paid for our shuttle to and from the bay, we had a free cruise coming our way!
I forgot all about the cruise we were on and began planning for my upcoming free cruise! But as the tour began to conclude my adrenaline began to fade and skepticism kicked in. I texted my friend and he warned me about “free vacation” scams where they try and sell you a timeshare in Miami. I began to google this and learned that Miami is notorious for this. I told the wife and she said that’s okay, we will go there, listen to them, buy nothing and claim our prize. I didn’t want to ruin my last afternoon in Miami, but luckily it was raining anyways. I also wanted my $40 deposit back.
The dreadful and awfully long Uber ride
We got in the Uber and I began to feel a mixture of rage and regret. The ride was taking forever, we had to go to a resort in North Miami called Newport Beachside Hotel and Resort in North Beach and the ride was about 45 minutes. As we drove, I continued to google the situation we found ourselves in. I found tons of answers talking about how it was a rip off and most people counted their losses and left the presentation early or and didn’t even bother to take Uber, giving up their $40 deposit. I came across one post where a guy said he has sat through three presentations and said a firm no at the end of each coming away with free vacations each time. It seemed like a shameful thing to do, but we were already in the Uber. The wife and I contemplated our strategy the entirety of the ride to the resort. She wanted to be nice and say no at the end, I wanted to show zero interest, be rude and hope the presentation would end early when the salesman knew it wasn’t going anywhere.
We finally arrived at the luxury hotel in Northern Miami. It was actually a nice area of Miami we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The hotel was nice, but I couldn’t help my paranoia and began thinking everyone I saw was a crook or scam artist… even the house keeping staff. I figured we’d better rip the band aid off and get this over with. We looked around a bit and finally found the conference room. On our way in we saw a number of other suckers like ourselves being shown around by desperate salesman.
The sales pitch
After checking in, the salesman came to get us. He took us up the elevator and the sales pitch began. He tried to build connections with us but it didn’t work. He talked about his past, his family and later in the presentation he showed us pictures of his happy clients. My wife was nice to him, but I kept a stone-cold face with the hopes he’d hurry up and get it over with. While she offered him hope of a sale, I was the puzzle he’d have to try and crack. We were seated in one of the high floors with an amazing view of the beach, probably on purpose, hoping the magnificent view would open our minds to their pitch. We were offered a drink but I declined. So it turns out they weren’t trying to offer us a timeshare, and to help their cause, they even discussed how much a waste of timeshares were. They were trying to sell a vacation membership.
He tried to pull out math calculations and talk about rising hotel prices but for everything he said, I had a counterpoint. He kept telling me to keep an open mind before he’d pull out another statistic or tell me another story. And his go to line was “today we are going to pop champagne”. When one of the conmen made a sale, that’s when they’d pop champagne. And surprisingly in the time spent there, we heard one bottle pop. After a brutal hour or so he tried his final push. We were taken to a luxury room with a balcony overlooking the beach. He told us, this hotel is actually lousy compared to our partner hotels worldwide, but that we could stay in a similar, albeit upgraded, hotel anywhere around the room with their partners.
We were brought back up and he tried to close the deal. At this point both myself and the wife said no, I was firm, she but was nice about it. He said keep an open mind and asked us for two dream vacations. I knew some empty promise would follow so I offered a mediocre holiday, he continued “trust me, dream big”, so we gave one modest vacation and one big one. Then he got the manager to discuss the pricing.
The final sales pitch and their offer
Now before I finish, I’ll stop you here. The membership offers between 15-40% off cruise prices on Carnival Cruises. Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines. They also offer half off at their partner resorts in Mexico and a few other popular vacation destinations. But their big offer is the hotel for $600 a week, at their partner hotels which can be found around the world. Despite the cost of these hotels, if you are a member, it will always be $600. They have hotels all over and they showed us some of them in Maldives, Turks and Caicos, etc. But here’s the catch, the cruise discount and Mexico resort discounts are unlimited, but the $600 hotels are limited depending on your membership pricing. The more weeks you get per year, the more the membership costs.
Now the manager showed up, offered us the “one time offer” of free hotel stays in our two “dream vacations” if we purchased a membership and began talking about pricing. He recommended 3 weeks of $600 hotel stays with the membership. Now, I am not going to say it is a complete rip off, but I don’t need luxury hotels, so I can usually find good budget hotels, luxury hostels or small Air BNBs for reasonable prices. My biggest expense for travelling is the flights, food and alcohol. The price he offered was something like $4000 USD plus $250 USD of maintenance fees per year. This only allowed you to use the $600 a week hotels for 3 weeks. Now for me this would NEVER make sense, but I can see some validity in the membership if you are rich and like staying in luxury hotels. You will safe money on luxury hotels and get some cruise discounts but that’s about it.
So, we told him we couldn’t afford it and he realized the sale wasn’t going through and finished up quickly. We only had to go through one more salesperson! The guy who wanted a review of our original salesperson. We still had to complete this step to get our vacation voucher. After a quick sales pitch, he realized he wasn’t going to be successful and sent us back downstairs, with our original salesman! This is where we got the $40 visa in return for our original deposit paid and the voucher for the cruise. Yes we actually got the voucher! All it took was about 2.5 hours of brutal statistics, facts and corny sales pitches! Luckily it was raining all afternoon and the day wouldn’t have amounted to much. One of the most cringe parts of the day was the final elevator ride down to close out our deal, the first salesman took us down an excruciating long elevator ride after wasting two hours with us, expecting a sale, only to end up staying overtime to make no money. It was like the elevator ride of shame. He didn’t say a word and had a deep look of depression in his eyes. When I tried to crack a joke the laugh he forced came out like an awkward gag. This was in part due to the false hope my wife gave him, and he thought he could crack me, but to no avail. Despite wasting our afternoon, we got the last laugh.
The End Result
And when reading online, most people left early or never went at all saying it was a scam… it kind of was but the voucher actually is legit. There's only one catch, they make it very difficult to use. The entire summer is blacked out and you can’t use it during the Christmas season either. Being a teacher, those are my prime times to go. It isn’t blacked out for Spring Break, but we booked Dominican Republic for this year, as we just want to sit back and relax on a beach this Spring Break. You also only have 6 months to activate the voucher and then one year following activation to use it. The cruise cabin is also an interior room; I’m sure you can upgrade but of course at a cost. I wouldn’t want to be in an interior cabin, and if we can’t upgrade, we won’t use it. We will also have to pay the taxes, which is $150 per person. All in all, 5-night cruises in the interior cabin are relatively cheap. We got the cruise voucher, but when all is said and done, with upgrades, we’d probably only save about $300-$400 a person. But times are tough and savings are savings. Hopefully we get a chance to use the voucher, if not we’ll likely give it away if anyone wants it last minute.
The whole experience was pretty much a scam and a waste of time, but luckily it was raining. And hey, we got a cruise and hopefully we’ll use it in the next 15 months.
But apparently Miami is notorious for this, and when we were in The Bahamas we ran into people offering other perks and benefits to listen to a presentation. But now we knew better and told them to beat it. So, I guess expensive tropical travel destinations attract these types of scammers. But anyways here are a few tips to deal with or beat these scammers:
Tips not to get scammed or to beat the scammers:
- Even though the tour was good, don’t book with Bayride Boat Tours, they work in partnership with the Holiday Network Group and allow them on their boat.
- Don’t sign your name on the ballot for a “free vacation” or if you do, don’t make an ass of yourself and cheer like I did when you “win”.
Or…
- If you have time to kill and are flexible with your dates for travel, then go to the presentation! Just make sure you are firm and at the end give a hard no. If you do this, don’t show interest, because then they’ll talk longer. Blast through the questions and banter as quick as possible. But stick it out and wait until the end, you’ll get your vacation voucher.
- As good as it sounds and despite the tempting perks they add on, make sure you say no! It may sound like a decent deal, but don’t forget the maintenance fee they charge every year! And flying is the biggest cost of travel these days, flights deals aren’t included.
- Also, make sure if you do go and are regretting it, if you don’t want to stick it out for the voucher remember the $40 deposit you gave.
Conclusion
The Holiday Network Group banks on a couple sales here and there, and for many of those who aren’t going to buy, they bank on them leaving early and not getting their $40 deposit back. If you’ve paid the deposit, stick it out get it back and get your voucher! The voucher has strings attached but save a couple of hundred bucks and use it! Let’s beat the scammers at their own game. They bank on sales and those who aren’t going to buy, not cashing in at the end, but cash out at the end and get your time back!
Add comment
Comments
Ha ha, didn't I tell you it would be a scam, too much waste of time.