We attended a boat show last year and signed up for what we thought was a drawing for a free vacation. Several months later, we got a telephone call from someone who very excitedly told us that we had been "selected to receive" multiple vacations to Ft. Lauderdale w/ a cruise to the Bahamas, Orlando, Mexico and Las Vegas. After listening to a half-hour long speech/sales pitch, they told us in the end that they would be charging somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 to our credit card and that this money was non-refundable.
We were a little leary of this, but they made it sound like such a wonderful deal that we went ahead and took the bait. After getting very limited information in the mail and trying to get some questions answered over the phone, we have realized that the accommodations they would be putting us in would be less than desirable, and we've never actually scheduled any of the trips.
We had a feeling this was a big scam, and after reading many articles on the Internet about lawsuits against this company, our fears have been confirmed. And after hearing that we'll probably be required to listen to sales-pitches for timesharing, we definitely don't want to take any of these trips. What can we do, if anything, to get our money refunded to us?
First, I feel humiliated for being gullible enough to give them my credit card information, etc... And I have been enduring a lot of heckling from my husband for the last 10 months for having done so. He and I listened to the whole telephone pitch together and he agreed that it was something he wanted to do, but he had to get off the phone before the conversation ended and did not hear the part about the money being non-refundable. So, he has placed the blame on me for getting us into this mess. Secondly, we are out about $600 and now we don't want to take any of the trips.
