Complaint Review: Worldwide Travel

This company, under its previous name of Worldwide Travel, provided a Fly America program as our reward for listening to a travel club pitch in Austin, Texas. Its initial certificate stated that we would receive two free airline tickets anywhere within the continental U.S. but we had to send in a $100 US Postal money order to cover reservation costs and taxes. We also could only send the money order in (along with all subsequent contacts) by certified mail. The initial contact was in July 2009. Then, in August, we received another form for us to tell them our destination and we were required to send another $100 money order by certified mail to secure our airplane reservation. This second cost was not mentioned in the initial certificate or I would never have begun this process. The company then delayed making the reservation using a string of very trivial "non-compliance" reasons, such as not returning the form by certified mail and not listing a major international airport among others, until my final contact with them in October 2009. It was not possible to speak with anyone at the company because the lines were always busy and they never returned my calls.

On Nov. 4, 2009, I finally received a call-back from someone at the company, now called "Trips," but they said Worldwide Travel had gone out of business and I had no recourse for recovering either my money or the airline tickets I had paid for.  The original website was still active at that time and soliciting customers, however, so I faxed them a demand letter to request a refund of my $200.00 but received no response whatsoever.  That website is no longer active.  It was obvious that the company had merely changed its name and is now called "Trips Incentives Corporation" using the same voices on the voicemail, same phone numbers and extensions, and same options.

In my experience, Worldwide Travel/Trips Incentives appears to be a bogus operation and a scam.  Their "Most respected name in the Travel Incentive Industry" motto is a joke. I recommend that nobody do business with them.  They must have changed their name because too many people were on to them.