Ramada Plaza Resorts Orlando - Fort Lauderdale Vacations pressured to buy a free vacation, did not allow a refund ripoff Fort Lauderdale Florida
I entered to win a free vacation, and when I was called about my winning ticket, I was told I had to make a decision on the spot, and had to pay an adminstrative fee if I chose to take the vacation.
After I had agreed to pay the small fee, I was later contacted and told that my "free" vacation would actually cost a starting fee of $400-$500 (they did not tell me about the extra fees that are incorporated into the package if I were to go on the vacation).
I paid the $400.00, and then was told by a friend that this was a time share deal, which I was not interested in.
I tried to cancel the vacation, as I thought I was in the cancelation bracket window. Instead of receiving a full refund, the company took off several features of the vacation, and lowered the fee to $250.00. However, upon reading these complaints, I see that I could have still gotten my money back, as I had attempted to get a refund within a week of receiving the initial phone call.
Jason
Listowel, Ontario
Canada
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Christina
Brampton,Ontario,
Canada
Ramada plaza resorts OFV and telemarketers not knowing the truth
#2UPDATE Employee
Mon, February 27, 2006
I too worked for a this ramada plaza resorts orlando ft. lauderdale vacations call centre, I was first scammed myself, I responded to an ad in the newspaper, BOOK VACATIONS, $630 weekly + bonuses, great location days and evenings, well I applied and got the job, and like the GARY from Toronto who did a rebuttal on this, I wanted to walk out in the training session, yes they do tell us to Tell not Sell, and this trainer or director of marketing told us we had to believe the script to make reservations, needless to say I wasn't very good at it, having plenty of years in customer service I have a problem with interupting customers and giving rebuttals as to why they should do this, the director had the nerve to tell after I explained to him my problem of listening to customers, he told me my previous training in customer service was wrong, this guy is a dramatic idiot, I then asked him if he looked at my resume his face went red and he changed the subject, I guess this call centre will hire anybody, he even told us in training that at another location someone copied down one of the consumers credit card #'s and did shopping on the home shopping network, this scam call centre should be shut down and oh how I wish I could give this guys name. He is the guy telling us what to do and after reading the script to keep asking for the peoples credit card #'s, we have to give them our full names I was only there for a week and I have never heard tell of Ramada Plaza Resorts before this, and yes to me the vacation deal sounded great, I started questioning why we couldn't mail something to these consumers, why couldn't we give them time to think about, I know why now, because they would come across sites like this.
I called a gentleman he was very nice he told me our company had called him 4 times a day within the last week, and our name showed on his call display he checked it out and told me about the scam and the sites, at first I didn't beleive him, well I checked it out and sure enough he was right.
I am writing this to say I sucked at this job I couldn't stop listening to people and agreeing with them when they didn't want to give their credit card over the phone, I gave them all the details what is not included and what they had to pay and then I noticed the people in this call centre who were very good at it and getting 3-4 reservations a day were telling people the trip was all inclusive, not true only the cruise, others were saying that this could be cancelled at anytime, and bull about a recording for their protection, the recording is not for the consumers protecion is for ramada to say the consumer agreed to all of the bull over the phone , so it comes down basically to a play on words with the script and also with the idiot director not telling the people he hires the entire truth and not even correcting them when he listens to calls and hears all the bull coming out and I can't even blame the people working on the phones because some new people like myself don't know the truth, well some do I have told the majority working there.
Also in the same call centre there was the marketing dept. which got phone numbers from a directory and called and asked people questions about last vacations and what credit card they used, their addresses, this is where the leads came from to call people for the reservation and the demograpic requirements, if you have a credit card.
I wish a news report could be done on this call centre to find out if this is legal.