Complaint Review: Global United Travel - Crystal Lake Illinois

Alright, first you get this marketing call telling you, YOU WON! To claim your prize you must sit through a 90 minute presentation about travel discounts. Well, the gifts are crap. Naturally you should expect to pay taxes for the free gift, if you didn't then you should have been swallowed at birth! You have to pay a tax to DIE in this country, why would you expect a free gift with no taxes involved! Anyways, on top of the taxes, you have "deposit fees", lots of black out dates, and the marketing companies GUT employ will do anything in their power to NOT fulfill your gift misspell anything on the gifting form and you are done, no gift for you. One gift is an opportunity to win one of four prizes that are always the vacation. I have never seen anyone win anything else other than the vacations, which leads me to believe that there are no 32" sony flat screens, or a Lincoln Navigator, or even the 2500 cash prize. Another gift you are promised a 50 dollar Amex card that is already active, but most people never get the card. They are told it is part of another gift they receive or are told to call the marketing company to receive their gift. When they call the marketing company, they tell you that you have been disqualified from the gift. There is nothing that states that you must qualify financially to receive any of the gifts, but you are given the runaround and scammed out of your gift so Global United Travel doesn't have to pay for your gift!! Go to Silverstone, Bluegreen, RCI, etc. etc. their gifts work just fine from what I've heard!!

Next, you drive out to a nice office and complete a buch of paperwork. 1 sheet with all your personal info is used against you buy the sales force. They know how you vacation, how much money you make and if you own a timeshare, and use that info to sell you, while trying to make sure your income is correct on the sheet. Another sheet states that the gifts that are bought for and paid by Global United Travel, are separate from their product and has nothing to do with anything there. Except the fact that Global United Travel is solely responsible for working with these bad marketing companies and distributing said gifts that must be purchased from the marketing companies. Now, the gifts do NOT have anything to do with the program itself, but the gifts represent the company itself, so how is Global United Travel not accountable for it's own poor decision making? Then you are led into a room and shown a 90 minute presentation, all the while you are being pumped up with fancy pictures and ridiculous price drops! Fisrt the program is 14900, then 11900, finally, for today only, it's 7900. Vlad even has enough nerve to tell you that airfare out of the country will be about 33% cheaper through the program than anyone else outh there, even though airfare is NOT part of the vacationing package! And the only resorts that they deal with are 5 star resorts.... But you can't use this program to stay at the ritz carlton because all the resorts are NOT all 5 star. After the presentation is over, a sales rep comes in and brings you to a large room with loud music. This is where the bullsh*t starts!

Now, if you own a timeshare, I feel for you! You will be told that GUT has a personal broker that will list and sell your timeshare for a flat fee of 299 dollars! The broker will sell your property in 3 to 8 months. All you need to do is wait until you are verified with the home office. Once you are verified, you can call the GUT office and they will give you the broker info! Now, GUT does have it's own broker, and the fee is only 299 dollars. What you don't know is that it will take a year or longer to sell your timeshare, if it sells at all. Now you are locked into a contract, stuck with your timeshare, and have increased your bills with little or no recourse! Why do you think you are told to wait until after you are verified and no one will put anything they said in writing, and if you ask someone to write down that someone said they guarantee that your timeshare would sell in a ridiculously short time, everyone starts to disassemble (try to distract you with other things) We'll call this the double scammy!!

After you have been sitting and talking to your sales rep for a few minutes, Vlad, the "VP" makes an announcement. First, as a former employee, Vlad is no "VP" of anything, that's his stage name! Anyways, Vlad will say welcome in, bla, bla, bla, and our last hour was very good, as you can see here on the board that last hour we had 11 sales. They run 2 shows a day and 4 on Saturday. If you are at the 6 o'clock show, you notice the barren parking lot, so how did you get 11 sales from the first show that never happened? Lucky for the sales force, you are too excited to notice this! Then Vlad will drop the price again to 6900. This too is a load of crap. 1 star credit is roughly 1100 dollars, so now they are offering you 4 stars for 6900 hoping you bite. The pricing breaks down like this, 6 stars for 6900, 5 for 5900, 4 for 4900, so on and so forth. They hide the additional and frequently unwanted star credits to buy your gift back from you, but you don't know that! Or if you don't jump on the 6900, you will start to see other packages, all of which are missing a star.

If you ask to see a resort guide and Vlad or Kenny happen to be the guys you are talking to, they will go get a thick fancy book and show you tons of fancy properties! The only problem with that is you are seeing an RCI or Interval Internation resort guide with a homemade Global United Travel cover all nice and laminated! This folks, is called fraud, illegal in all 50 states. Most of the resorts you are shown you will never EVER see. Yes, the actual product itself does have LIMITED access to SPECIFIC RCI and Interval International resorts, but not all the resorts you are being shown. Now, this sales center called Global United Travel, or United Travel Network, sells a product for Global Connections Inc. GCI has already threatened to revoke GUT's sales license if this practice does not stop.... That was about 3 months ago, and it still continues, especially by Vlad, the supposed "VP". What kind of "VP" would endanger his company in such a manner?  So, if you are not taken to the web site for Global Connections Inc. then you have NOT seen the actual inventory that is offered through the program! Anyways, once you agree to purchase, you are taken into an office for paperwork.

While you are in there, the sales rep will offer you a chance to exchange your gift for the remaining star credits! Now, the star credits are yours regardless of the fact, you are paying for them, but you think you are getting a better deal than before because now you get that extra star credit for life, but you passed on a one time use gift for that star credit. So now you just got your gift scammed away from you!! Fun Huh!! If you still have not bought, you will be presented with one of 2 remaining options. First you might see a "buyback" program, that the company bought back when someone upgraded their program. This is a huge crock of crap, think about it! You aren't buying anything tangible. It's not a car, house, or a used t.v., you are buying a privilege to use resort properties, there is no deed, so what exactly would there be to buy back from anyone? GUT buys back people's old paperwork? I don't think so! Or you might get the 3 year trial program! More bullshit! For 1475, with all your fees included you can take 1 nice trip a year for the next three years, if you like it come back and upgrade before the three years are up and 100% of your money goes toward the new program.... If one star credit lifetime has the same cost as the trial, why offer the trail at all? Oh yeah, cuz if you take the trail and like it, there's more money to be squeezed from your wallet later!! And if you do not buy into the program and your "manager" is Lynn or your sales rep is Kenny, or Shalom, expect a shitty comment about you to fly out of their mouth. I don't know about you, but every place I have ever worked at, if you talk like that to potential customers, you are FIRED!!

It's too bad Global United Travel is ruining Global Connections Inc.'s good name! GCI is a member in good standings with the BBB with an A- rating. GUT in NOT a member of the BBB and has a D- rating, yet when you walk into the front door, you see a BBB accredited business sticker on the window, isn't that considered false advertising?

About Global Connection Inc.'s product! This is a vacation club membership that actually works very well! GCI offers an opportunity to stay at nice resorts in the more popular travel destinations throughout the US, Mexico, and Caribbean! You also have access to a FEW resorts overseas! There following list of destinations carry only 1 or 2 resorts overseas according to the GCI inventory, Italy, France, Ireland, France, England, and occasionally Germany. GCI also encompasses all areas of travel. They can help you acquire airfare, but offer no additional savings for being a member, they offer tours for just about anything, unbeatable cruise rates, and discounts on tickets for various things, such as Disney Land park tickets! You have an optional 389 activity fee you pay only the years you use the program which in turn gives you access to your vacationing program, access to a buying club, and access to a discount club that can get you discounts on recreational activities like golfing, bowling, etc. discounts on car rentals, dinning, and sometimes shopping! The resort discounted price is 159 dollars for 8 days 7 nights, and all the resorts are 3 star and above, so they are nice locations, and if you have any problems, GCI will be happy to take care of them in a timely manner. The hook here is that the program operates by destination, not specific resort. For example, you can call GCI as a member and request to go to Sedona Arizona, and GCI will respond back with a list of availible resorts in the area during your vacation week. But if you request an area where they have no resorts, you won't be able to use the program. So you must have access to the internet in order to gain access to GCI's inventory, there is no such think as a GCI resort guide, there can't be, the stable of inventory GCI has to play with changes on a yearly basis to keep up with new travel trends and dying hot spots!

Past, Present, and Future! I want to expose this company in order to try and help other people out there who either have already been scammed by this company or are thinkind about going! If this product interests you look up Global Connections Inc and contact them directly or go to the presentation and use this information to avoid the rip off, get what you are interested in and leave! If you do go to the presentation, if your sales rep in NOT named Charlie, Ron, or Scott, or you "manager" is not named DereK, just get out, you will not hear anything remotely close to the truth about the program. Now, in the past, this company was called United Travel Network located in Northbrook, IL. Once FOX news showed up to expose Daniel Gold and his company, he shut down for a bit and opened a second shop to Crystal Lake, IL. where the company was selling more ethically (not too much bullshit) and doing well. Once the whole FOX news thing blew over, he combined offices and the serious scamming began!! Be on the lookout for a new travel club opening up in one of these areas soon, Gurnee, Naperville, Aroura, Oakbrook, Plainfeild and possibly Rockford area. These offices move, change names, and change phone numbers about once a year. Daniel Gold claims it's beacsue the old areas are tapped out, but now I am positive it is to avoid all the self created problems and avoid any legal problems as well, besides, people talk, and once you have been branded as a shady charatcer, others stop coming out to see what you have to offer!

And if you are looking for a job, don't work there! Not only does the entire management swear at you, make fun of you, and play favorites. There is no such thing as company structure here. Vlad is the dummie in charge, but no matter what he says, you can call Daniel and cry until you get your way. Although if you make Vlad or Lynn upset, or they feel threatened that you are a better at what you do then they are, they will do whatever they can to get you to quit. There are no paid sick days, holidays, benifits or profit sharing or 401 like all the rest of the timeshare industry. There is no training program for new employees. This is strictly a commision pay job with no future growth possible. This company tried to open up new locations in Myrtle Beach, and in California. Both closed soon after opening due to mismangement. Employee's at the Crystal Lake office took on more responsibilities, but recieved payment of these services months later with no back pay.

If I can help anyone out in any way, please feel free to let me know!