Beware the Travel Scam

A few days before my birthday, I received a flyer in the mail from a company called Global Travel. I honor of my special day, I was invited to a travel seminar on saving money. In exchange for attending, I would receive, completely free, two round trip tickets to anywhere in the US. I knew there’ be a catch and that it was most likely a scam, but in the spirit of research, and on the off-chance it was legit, I decided to go.

We borrowed a friend’s car, drove 30 minutes out of town, and arrived at a non-descript office park. We found the building, noticed the only sign designating it as the Global Travel office was a little plastic sign of the “for sale by owner” variety stuck in the lawn, and went inside. A trashy bleach-blond woman started the presentation by talking about how rock-solid the company was. In business for 30 years with a single owner, they started as an Amway-type discount retailer. So many members wanted travel deals that they branched out and now Global Travel is their largest division. 10 years ago as a travel agent she listed to this very presentation and was so impressed she joined the company.

Then she goes around the room and asks each of the 12 or so couples where their last vacation was. Most answers are Florida, Vegas, cruises. We say Spain and she says “ooh, exotic”. Then she says, if money was no object and you could choose anywhere in the world, where would you go and for how long? One couple says “Aruba” (whoa, dream big!) and others say Ireland, Hawaii, Greece. We say the Maldives and “travel agent” woman has no clue what we are talking about. The she goes back around the room and asks each person how much they think that dream trip would cost. Aruba people say $6,000 for 6 days? Dan and I look at each other with alarm and try to contain our laughter. Europe woman say $20k for 4 weeks (I know people who have done around-the-world trips for that price), Ireland woman says $10,000 for 2 weeks.

Then she starts talking about what you get in your average hotel room – just a bed, bath, balcony and a tiny table that you can barely fit McDonald’s take-out for a family or four on. (Let’s pause here: WHY are you getting McDonald’s take out on your Hawaiian vacation? And maybe YOU can’t fit all your McD’s on the table because you are ordering too much?) But with Global Travel, you get a one bedroom condo with a full-kitchen! I start to feel like I am in one of those infomercials that makes the easiest of tasks look incredibly difficult. Cut to woman struggling to stir soup. “I used to have such a hard time stirring soup!” She pushes the spoon, tips over a vat of boiling liquid, falls over and cracks her head open. “But thanks to the electric soup-stirrer, just 2 easy payments of $19.99, it’s a breeze!”

So we learn all about how great these rooms are at the 5-star only resorts and condos. We see pictures of these places in Florida, Cancun and Jamaica that Global Travel offers. We learn that these rooms cost just $119 per week in the US and $189 per week internationally. Amazing right? How can this be? Well Global Travel works with timeshares and resorts and condos to help them fill extra inventory. They won’t make a ton of money on the weekly rate but they at least fill the room and make money on you spending for food and activities on the resort. Once people start asking for specifics, it becomes a little tricky. Because Global Travel has such a huge inventory that changes based on availability, they can’t tell you right now what will be available when you go to book. But they do have the most resorts in Florida of any travel provider. Someone asks about Oregon and sales lady says they might only have one in Oregon, BUT don’t worry because if they can’t get you a room at the weekly rate, Global Travel can still get you a discount. When you join you become a member of the Access Alliance (shows us magical card) that gets you discounts of 50% at hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world (doesn’t say which ones). Plus they get discounts on cruises, flights and car rentals at 30-50% off.

For about an hour she tells us all the perks of the Global Travel program. How when you are only paying $119 a week for your hotel, you’ll travel more. You’ll take longer weekend trips, you’ll have more money to spend on entertainment and you can go farther away because if you aren’t spending $300-$400 a night for your hotel room (umm, WHO is spending $400 a night on a hotel? Not me) then having a more expensive flight isn’t an issue. I see people eating this up, nodding agreement. Then she gets down to details.

It’s a $189 one-time processing fee, $14,900 membership fee (but that gets you membership for life, and you can pass it on to your kids!) plus a $389 yearly “activity fee”. If you don’t book a trip that year, you don’t pay the $389. Of course, if you do book only one trip, that $389 is added on and could cancel out any savings. In exchange for that, you get 2 peak weeks or 4 off-peak weeks at the weekly rate. These must be booked 2-4 months in advance. You also get 2 weeks booked last minute (less than 60 days advance) that cost the weekly rate plus a $200 booking fee. You also get unlimited use of their travel agents to help with discounts on flights and booking the 50% rooms with the Alliance Access card. Global Travel will never charge a fee for this service. . . oh, except for the $389 yearly activity fee.

Yes, the $14,900 is a big investment. How many trips do you think you can get for that much money, she asks the room. We say 4-5. Most people say 1-2. One person says 1 (seriously people?). So, she says, if you just took that money and put it into the Global Travel program, it would pay for itself after 2 trips. If you used the money just for trips, you are coming home with NOTHING. If you invest it in the program, you are saving on every trip you take for the rest of your life and you own something. (I beg to differ. You don’t own anything. You have a membership.)

Then the regional sales director comes in, pitches some more about how great the Global Travel program is. He tells us that it’s the 20th anniversary of this location (really, then why don’t you even have a permanent sign?) and therefore they are rolling the price back to $11,900 for the membership. He also says that their renewal rate is so high, 93%, that if they never sign up another client they’ll still take in $65 million a year. Then we’re each paired up with a sales person and taken back to a large room with multiple small tables with three chairs each, a “tiki-bar” (wow, it’s like we’re on vacation already!) and blaring music (so the other tables can’t hear your deal). Our sales guy “Shalom” tells us we have to have something to drink or he’ll get fired. I accept water and Dan takes a coffee and then we get down to business. Shalom looks over our questionnaire with our salary info, occupations, and info on how often we travel and our budget on it. I wanted to provide a challenge so for our next trips I picked places I highly doubted they could help us with – Russia, Laos, Iceland.

Shalom tells us all about himself and asks about us. We say that while we think the Global travel idea is good, it’s not right for us. We never stay in one place for a whole week and we hate large resorts and megahotels. The places where you get the weekly rate have like 1000 rooms and the places that will accept that Alliance Access card are not going to be the small B&Bs that we love. Shalom keeps trying. Do we agree it’s a good deal? Yes. Do we agree that we’d never get a room for $189 a week in another country? Yes, mostly. So then why don’t we want to sign up? We say again that it doesn’t fit our travel style because we don’t stay in one place for a week. So Shalom says well, we can use it to just stay a few days and it’ll still be cheaper. So we compares how much it would cost to use 4 weeks to stay 2 nights each 4 times with how much we usually spend per night ($50-$100 – which he cannot believe) and our way is actually cheaper. We say no thanks, he shows us pictures of some of the Global Travel properties. We say nice, but no thanks.

Shalom says he needs to get his manager for our official decline. Manager asks why we’re not interested. We explain our reasons again and make the fatal mistake of also saying that $11,900 is more than we are willing to invest right now. Manager pulls out a second option. The investment is only $4,500 for one peak and one off-peak week. We put down $450 and then it’s only $120 a month. We still say no, he says just put down $100 now and we can pay the other $350 later. We still say no. He says he’ll waive the first year’s activity fee. He’s starting to get desperate. Regional manager stands up and says that the first two couples to sign up will get an additional $1000 off. All the sales people “wow” and clap. What a lucky day we’ve chosen to come! We still say no. Manager and Shalom leave for a minute. Shalom comes back with a folded piece of paper and says manager told him not to open it. We open it and it says $2500, $250 down, no 1st year activity fee. Shalom lets out a low whistle. Manager comes back and says that no one else has even been a given such a deal from Global Travel. He would just hate for us to walk out and regret not joining. For a split second, I actually think about it. Manager sees my pause and says if we bring in 10 referrals, he’ll cut the price in half. 20 and it’ll be free. Now, I’m slightly sickened by the smarmy desperation. I say a firm no.

Suddenly, Shalom can’t wait to get us out. He tells us we really should have taken the deal, pulls out our “free gift” and tells us we basically got screwed because this voucher is so hard to use. We stand up and I notice there are only 5 or so couples left. Either they got suckered and said yes, or they were better at saying no. He leads us out the back door wordlessly. We get in the car and Dan reads the conditions for getting the free tickets. We need to send in $50 per person deposits, pick 3 possible dates (which can not be within 7 days of any major holiday and not within 45 days of each other), we must depart on a Monday or Tuesday (no mention is made of maximum layovers) and if we do not use the tickets, we forfeit the deposit. Basically there is no way we can use these tickets.

Today I googled the company. The first result that came up was a link to the website The Rip Off Report. I should have known it would be a waste of time. I feel bad for anyone who does get suckered in, but I think you’ve got to be pretty naïve to ignore all the warning signs. Of course, those people who thought it costs $6000 for 7 days in Aruba may have been just naïve enough.