flexivations gocubaplus promised car rental and hotel services and reservations are bogus. They ask for your credit card and charge immediately before you get there. When you arrive, there are no such reservations under your Internet
This company promises to get you car rental, hotel, and entertainment services in the island of Cuba and other places at a 10-15% discounted rate. It's all a big lie. When you get to your hotel, car rental, or tour office location, its too late, they've already charged your credit card for the reservation and nobody at your destination knows who you are, who flexivacations is, or what the hell you are talking about.
Apparently, these are professional hackers since you can no longer chat with them as you once did. They have several phone numbers and email addresses. All bogus. They communicate with you via email or chat only. When you try to chat with them, they have your ip address and block you automatically. They do not answer emails, calls, or faxes.
Looks like they use several official web site addresses that direct you to their main page, flexivacations.com. THey use gocubaplus.com and Online Travel Management to charge your credit card for the reservation. You never get the services and you never get your money back.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
cubalover
Charlottetown,Prince Edward Island,
Canada
Additional Information on Steve Marshall's web of deceit
#2General Comment
Tue, October 26, 2010
The person behind this fraud scheme is Stephen Anthony Marshall, a British citizen residing now in Tenerife Spain, who was banned from Cuba for debts incurred there. In the '90's he founded an internet start-up company in Cuba and acquired/operated many Cuba-related domain names in hopes of one day cashing in on the domains. He got involved in real estate fraud while in Cuba: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y99/oct99/08e1.htm
He is not allowed into Cuban territory and has no contracts to operate or sell travel there but continues to lure unsuspecting travelers into his web of deceit by using recognized and legitimate travel company names and changing their website endings to .com or .net, etc.
This used to be his biggest site:
http://www.digitalpanorama.net/links/E-Cuba%20-%20Miami%20New%20Times.htm
"The most active site among Marshall's Internet menagerie is GoCuba.com, an online travel agency that is seeking to corral a chunk of the 1.6 million foreign tourists who visited Cuba last year, including more than 150,000 from the United States. He claims GoCuba.com grossed more than $120,000 in bookings for May 2000 alone, a figure he expects to explode once U.S. travel restrictions and the trade embargo are lifted, developments he sees as both inevitable and imminent. When that happens he envisions a flood of Cuba-bound American tourists. Traditional travel agencies will be still be scrambling while GoCuba.com cashes in."
But due to internet fraud, his credit card merchant account for www.gocuba.com was shut down a couple of years ago by service providers and he's on a matchlist/blacklist. He continues to operate under various other guises, however, and has been known to use the following alternative merchant accounts to process credit cards for unsuspecting travelers:
-OnlineTravelManagement + 349222751752
-ONLINE TRAVEL MANAGEM SAN EUGENIO
-ONLINE TRAVEL MANAGEM SAN EUGENIO - ESP
Here are a few links on the same topic:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Blacklisted+British+online+entrepreneur+gives+up+on+Cuba-a0171812530
http://havanajournal.com/travel/entry/americans_barred_from_using_cuba_linked_travel_agency_tour_and_marketing_in/#11566
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1899733
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1800498&tstart=0
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g147271-i387-k3644086-Anyone_have_problems_with_www_havanatur_com-Havana_Cuba.html
This last link even includes a picture of Steve Marshall.
He also now uses the name Travelucion to try and further convolute his corporate structure for anyone trying to figure it out. He's expanded his phishing scheme to Twitter even, trying to pass off his copycat website names (including one of the more recent ones based on the Ministry of Tourism's new marketing campaign, Autentica Cuba) as legitimate.
Don't touch his offers with a 10-foot pole.