Complaint Review: Coral Beach Travel And Tours

I received an e-mail from Coral Beach advertising their services in the spring of 2006 and since my mother just lost her job and was going through a nasty divorce, I wanted to take her on a vacation. Especially since our budget was tight, I thought this opportunity was a wonderful one--almost too good to be true. Turns out it was. I called them and spoke to John (JD) Quilter, the owner' son and he seemed very nice and we trusted them. Because the divorce was not yet finalized, we decided to wait awhile before going, John said that this was okay, so we paid the down payment (we sent it to Coral Beach and they were suppose to pay the cruise line and hotels) on the cruise (Royal Caribbean). We decided to add my brother in as well, so we paid for his port charges and peak season surcharge on top of ours. Because of schedule conflicts we decided to go during the summer of 2008, also, I was about to graduate and we thought it would be a nice celebration. We asked John if this was okay, and numerous times he assured us that it would be fine and our trip would still be good. The beginning of this year (2008), John kept urging us to pay the rest of the payments, he says he already paid the cruise line and set up everything for us, they just needed to receive the last payment to finalize the deal. He then told us that once everything was set he would call us to confirm. So we did. And he never called us back. We tried calling multiple times but their voice mail was full. We called the cruise line and it turns out the only thing that was paid for was the $350 deposit (which is nonrefundable), the $800 that we payed Coral Beach was not sent to Royal Caribbean. We already booked the tickets to Florida awhile ago, so we can't cancel. Thank goodness they sent the payment to the hotel awhile ago, so we don't have to search for somewhere to stay at. We are now out $2500 and we are going to Florida and we have no idea what to do, we've never been there and we have five to six days of something to do.

Coral Beach is the worst, I can't believe something like this happened to us. We trusted them and they scammed us. All we want now is our money back.

I just don't want any of this to happen to anyone else. Just please beware of this so called travel agent. They are contracted by Florida Travel Bureau.

The director and owner's name is Christopher Berow Quilter, this is his addresses:
3955 NW 105TH AVE
CORAL SPRINGS, FL 33065-2372
COUNTY: BROWARD

Here are their numbers, we tried calling all of them. I urge you to do the same!
(800) 769-7220
(800) 860-9793
(945) 345-7504
(954) 345-1775
(954) 345-7504
(954) 345-7848

Good luck to you and please let me know if you hear of anything!

Thank you for listening to me.

Ann
Los Alamitos, California
U.S.A.