Complaint Review: Sundance Vacations Travel Advantage Network

Just like any other SunDance Vacations report starts... my boyfriend & I were called up telling us we had won a cruise if we agreed to sit through one of their seminars for 1 hour. We had to be able to come in the evening within the next two days. I had already declined a call from them the week before and told them it was impossible for me to get there that week and would have to skip the offer. Nonetheless, when they called once again, we chose to go in the very next evening and sit through what turned out to be a 1 1/2 hour seminar...backed by another hour of explaining why we didn't feel we could manage more payments for vacations that just seemed too good to be true. The girl we were paired with accepted our decision shortly into the conversation and went back to get our free cruise paperwork but not before telling us that one of the managers/con-artists would probably be stopping by just to make sure she had treated us nicely. BS! Yes, he did ask ask how she had treated us, but he also turned out to be the most persistent pains in the a*s we've ever dealt! When he was finally done with his sales pitch and clearly frustrated with us, he went on his way and the sweet young lady got some paperwork and came back again to tell us that she thinks he was just trying to work something out into our budget that would suit us best. The initial downpayment is really the only thing that was holding us back. Anyone that has ever sat through one of those episodes knows exactly how wonderful they make it sound! So of course you get yourself to the point where you're wishing there was some easier way to get into the program. That's when she told us that we would be able to just put as little as $100 down and walk out of their with a package for 10 vacations to the beautiful places they kept talking about. We were hooked! Another 30-45mins later, we walked out of their with more paperwork than we even knew what to do with. Needless to say, on the way home, reality started to set it. We realized that we had made a mistake, simply from the standpoint that we knew we shouldn't have taken on another monthly payment when we've been trying so hard to buy a house. The girl told me they work really late since they need to work when other people are off so I called SunDance Vacations as soon as I got home. I explained to the receptionist that we had felt pressured into going with the offer and needed to cancel everything. She transferred me to what she said was a corporate line and gave me the number in case I would get disconnected. That girl spent several minutes explaining to me that it was a contract so I couldn't break it but she could bring the package down to $3500 thus lowering my monthly payments. She said I could either take that offer or just keep my $5000 offer that we had left with. I asked her why they wouldn't have given me the $3500 offer in the first place, and she told me it was because she was with corporate and they were able to do special things like that but there was no way she could cancel my contract. So we ended the conversation with her saying she would print up the new contracts and send them to me. That was not even a full 48 hours ago and since then I have checked out their website which is sparse much to my disappointment. Some of the places where they claimed to own property aren't even listed on there. Aside from that, for such a great company that's supposedly growing so rapidly, you'd think they'd have a high-end website that's more pleasing to the eyes and everything. It looked like it had been thrown together by an amateur! That led me into researching like crazy, and sure enough, I've found so many negative things against SunDance & TAN that it makes me cringe to think we came so close to walking out of there safely! Obviously I've never gone on one of their vacations, but take some time to look at all of the feedback. By the sounds of it, all their properties are low quality, outdated, some infested. You have to give them several dates you want to try to go on vacation and they will choose what date you get to go and which property you get to stay in based on the area that you choose! What the heck is that?! I don't want someone telling me where I'm staying and when I can go based on what they have available at that time! They did not specify those stipulations at all! Plus, how long is the contract binding for anyway? I saw it referred to as a 30-year contract and thought I'd faint! I grabbed my contract and looked over absolutely everything...fine print & all! It states nothing about how long the contract is supposed to last. I just hope that anyone else that gets roped into going to one of their seminars takes the time to do something as simple as google "SunDance Vacations" before they walk in there! It will save them so much! I'm not giving up on getting out of this though. I just read another report in which someone had called telling them he was going to report them to the attorny general and then ended up faxing a letter with his conversation to one of the receptionists and telling them once again he was going to the attorney general about everything and ended up receiving a call saying they would cancel his contract. I did find something listed as the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Hotline. I'm going to call in there. If it's legit and can help, I'll be posting that as well. Good luck! Plan your own vacations!