The staff at this hotel sold me a vacation package for $2000. When I returned home and contacted the second-party agency offering the travel services, ICE Platinum Rewards, I discovered the rates and particulars given to me by the salesperson in Cancun were in conflict with what the agent working for ICE described. She told me many of the rates and claims he made were simply not true.

I called and emailed Krystal to complain, and even filed a dispute with my credit card company, a total of 8 attempts to contact. The only reply I received was an automated email reply saying a high volume of emails meant it would take a week to respond...and a response 2 months later to my credit card dispute rejecting the claim.

The rejection indicated I had 5 business days to cancel. But I did not try to use the program until 30 days later, so how would I know I needed to cancel? Apparently the Mexican government has a law that protects buyer's remorse but not consumer fraud.

The staff people will ambush you at the airport and offer you reduced travel services in exchange for a tour of the hotel. I am no neophyte, and suspected this was going to be a time share pitch. But I stood firm in resisting said pitch. What I was not prepared for was to be worn down with a one-on-one extended pitch that lasted upwards of 2 hours, with not one, but a total of 4 salespeople, operating one in succession of the other, each offering an increasingly inexpensive "deal."

I rejected all of the successive time-share type packages, but felt like the vacation rewards package could actually be beneficial for some trips we were planning, if offered apart from the other items and for the right price.

*What I did not count on was the specifics promised being a lie.*

*What I did not count on was the staff's routine of wearing me down and exhausting me to the point of diminishing my skepticism.*

*What I did not count on was a government that promotes such deceptive behavior by allowing these businesses a forum in the airport, where one of them actually masqueraded as my pre-paid taxi service...while forcing the legitimate taxi companies with good customer service records to wait outside the airport.*

I hand wrote the specifics on the contract, but my salesman told me Mexico does not allow handwritten provisions on contracts, printed out another and told me all I had to do if I had any problem was to contact him and he would work out the details. But of course, I cannot get anyone with authority to call me back. Go ahead and call me naive, then put yourself in the same situation and see what happens. Or better yet, don't test yourself.

I am getting to the point where I am close to spending an additional $100 on long-distance calls to try to resolve a conflict that is beyond resolution due to a tourism philosophy that prefers bilking and burning to establishing loyal return visitors.

As a result I now have 7 years worth of vouchers to a hotel I have no interest in visiting due to my experience.