Complaint Review: Fine Food and Wine Cruise.com

Fine Food and Wine Cruise collected deposit money and cancelled the trip without repaying customers.  We signed up for a cruise through finefoodandwinecruise.com since we were interested in the winery that they featured.  We paid deposits totaling over $7000 and were about to pay the rest when we learned from a email written by Jonathan Baltuch of the Fine Food and Wine Cruise company that he had cancelled the cruise.  We later learned that Windstar Cruises had actually cancelled the cruise over a month before because John Baltuch had not paid them.  It appears that he collected about $700,000 from nearly 100 people and did not pay Windstar or the winery that attracted us to the cruise in the first place.  Mr Baltuch had collected all this money and refers us to credit card companies and Trip Guard Travel Insurance (if you paid for the insurance) for restitution.  Jonathan Baltuch takes no responsibility.  He is a scam artist and has bilked us out of our deposit money.

It appears he owns another cruise company called ShoesOnlyTravel.net.  I would be very wary of giving this man who has cheated nearly 100 people out of their deposit money.  Shoesonlytravel.net operates out of the same office as Finefoodandwinecruise.com does. 

Finefoodandwinecruise.com will not answer our phone calls and in fact seemed to shutdown their offices from Dec. 19 to 26, 2012 but the office for Shoesonlytrave.net at the same office are operating. 

Trip Guard Travel Insurance is looking into the problem but they tell me that they do not cover contract disputes.  This may be another complaint to ripoffreport.com later.  Why does one buy travel insurance if it does not cover cancellation of a trip especially by others? 

Tony, Sonoma, CA