My wife received a telephone call from a sales representative at their company asking her if she wished to confirm the request for the cruise in Quebec City I initiated on their web site. Unfortunately for me, she was unaware of my desire to surprise her for her birthday holiday in QC. I am quite disappointed in their aggressive follow up method. The request was initiated online and, as such, their follow up should have been to my e mail rather than calling my home on Saturday evening. This ruined my attempt at giving my wife the excitement of a birthday trip and an itinerary including a 90 minute cruise in Quebec City on the St. Lawrence.

Here is their lame answer:

Answer:
Hi there

We are sorry to hear that your wife's surprise was ruined and we do apologize for doing so.

Despite their easy-to-use website, nothing about these guys is "easy."

My wife and I booked a sailing snorkeling tour from their website for our trip to Cabo. To my surprise, the receipt contained no information whatsoever about where the tour would take place, the name of the local tour company, or even the name of the boat. Only a cryptic "11:00 AM." The phone number they provided was for a company in Mexico City where no one spoke any English.

Once we arrived in Cabo, it took our bilingual concierge several days and multiple attempts to reach anybody at that number who knew what was going on, and we found out the location just in time: the local marina, at the boat named Pez Gato.

We arrived at the gate for the boat dock just before 11 AM, but marina security informed us that our boat had already sailed an hour earlier at 10 AM and wouldn't let us through. We were forced to buy another, separate boat trip from another company for a fraction of VME's price, and I'm glad we did because it was the best part of our vacation.

When we returned stateside, we contacted Matt Cook, Operations Manager for Vacations Made Easy, for a refund, but he flat our refused. At that point we turned it over to our credit card company to dispute the charges, along with all our receipts from the other trip we took, thinking we would surely get our money back.

But apparently, all they have to do is claim they provided the service to us without providing any proof. Because of their strict no refund policy, we were screwed from the get-go.

We will never, never, ever use Vacations Made Easy again. I recommend always purchasing vacation activities directly from the hotel concierge at your destination, or from the venue itself.

I booked a vacation activity of a `Sealife Safari Tour' for 4 through http://www.vacationsmadeeasy.com/OrlandoFL/activity/SealifeSafariTour.cfm. When you read the information it sounds great and likely worth the expense for a memorable holiday event.

When you go to book it brings up info only for the tour at Clearwater. The event calendar is also very restrictive for 8.45am only throughout every future period. Clearly they then can't offer the buffet lunch beforehand but we still decided to go for it based on the interest factor. When we arrived, we found that the exact same tour is available directly off the pier at $19.95 per head with plenty of availability at each and every sheduled sale time. There is no marine biologist aboard and there are no times when they offer food. It was the exact same trip/company as purchased through this agent.

They charge $92.45 per head. This gives around an 80% mark up for their booking fee for a trip which very clearly appears to be falsely advertised.

I have tried to get my money back but their terms do not allow that.

I have left a review on their website but no reviews at all are showing. That would suggest they block them to avoid adverse publicity.

Do not book through them for any event. In making your vacation a little easier, they are simply lining their own pockets through conning people out of their hard earned cash!