I booked rooms at the Westin Imagine Orlando, FL for a trade show called IACP with IEA on 1/29/2010. I was told that I had to prepay the rooms, which I did on my company AMEX. I have the email confirmation and hotel information. I am unable to get a hold of IEA by phone 8665680410 or by email at reservations@iea.biz. I contacted the hotel and they don't have any record of my reservation. Today, I booked at a different hotel through a company called Travel Planners. I need to get a refund from IEA for the prepaid rooms that were never reserved with the Westin Imagine Orlando.
Consumer Complaints & Reviews
IEA contacted my colleague. He received a good offer from IEA for group hotel booking for the Chicago trade show, IMTS, which will be held in Sept. 2010. Then we asked the reservation for this. The hotel was Fairmont Chicago and they asked us advance payment for 25% of full payment. They accepted only credit card, therefore, I have paid with my VISA. The payment date was Feb.8th, 2010. Then we received a confirmation by e-mail and it seemed okay. When we wanted to confirm the reservation status in the end of June, we could not get hold of IEA by telephone nor e-mail. Fairmount hotel also denied our reservation and they do not know the company name IEA. So we suspected they are a fraud organization or something. Then we cancelled with IEA this booking by e-mail but there was no refund made. Around that time, we found that various websites showed this company has a lot of bad record.
I paid $1840.75 by VISA. This amount is not recovered. I put in a claim with my bank (Bank of America) but they investigated and said this amount cannot be compensated to me.
IEA Event Planning contacted my office in November 2009 indicating that they were booking reservations for the Seatrade Cruise Shipping Miami, a trade show that I attend for a client each year in Florida. My office assistant Ruby spoke to Donniece from IEA Event Planning and began the planning of room reservations for March 13-19, 2010.
The original dates had to be modified in late January. After several attempts to contact IEA Event Planning via phone, Ruby emailed them with the changes. IEA emailed back the changes and sent a new booking agreement with the new dates March 13-17, 2010, also indicating a credit of $458.00 from the original booking agreement.
Yesterday, Ruby called the Sagamore Hotel directly to make a confirmation that I was slated for a late arrival on March 13th. Upon speaking to Yansi at the Sagamore Hotel, he was not able to confirm a room block for IEA Event Planning or a reservation in my name for those dates. Leaving me with no room reservations, a little over a week before my departure. I have been charged on my Visa on November 12, 2009 from IEA Event Planning the original amount of the booking agreement $1476.14 (1374.00 USD).
To date, there has not been any credit on my Visa for the changes made in February of $458.00. Ruby has attempted to contact IEA Event Planning, March 4, 2010 via telephone to call us back immediately but has not received anything at this time.I have researched on IEA Event Planning to discover other complaints of similar nature about the way IEA Event Planning does business. I believe that IEA Event Planning has committed a fraud.
We travel to Indianapolis every President's day weekend for a convention. We are exhibitors at the show and we have spent much time, effort and money to get to this year's show. The housing has always been difficult since it is a well-attended show. We were contacted shortly before the official show-housing process started by IEA Event Planning and offered help getting reservations outside of the regular procedure. We decided to give it a try and secured what we thought were fairly good reservations at a fairly good rate. We paid $1664.00 to IEA on September 28, 2009 for rooms at the Staybridge Suites in Indianapolis.
Our dates of stay ranged from 2/11/10 to 2/15/10. We called this week to modify our reservations, drop some rooms and confirm others. The person whom we spoke with in September was no longer there. The person whom we spoke with in January was no longer there. The person whom we spoke with later in January was no longer there. Each employee has given us a direct phone line and messages are left in private mailboxes. Not surprisingly, messages left for the stream of former employees go unreturned. When we did get a person this week, we were told that our reservations had been canceled.
The story varies but there were some claims that the hotel had decided to opt out of group reservations for the convention. IEA claims that they thought they had called everyone and explained that. IEA did not call us. So far we have spoken to three more people but no one can help us. No one is in a position of authority. We were advised to go to Hotels.com to look for rooms or they would book a new set of rooms at full charge at a different hotel for us. They have not offered our money back and do not recognize that what they owe is $1664.00. They say that they will fix the situation at some point after we write a letter requesting for a refund. We are supposed to travel tomorrow. We do not expect to ever see our money again if we let the travel dates pass and have not been made whole. We have contacted our credit card company to see if they can offer a remedy. They have given us an option to dispute it by sending a letter.
