Hawaii Discount review: Rip off 2

Warning: the owner of this company is very shady. If anything goes wrong at all with your booking, he will dodge your phone calls and refuse to be of any help to you and generally lie to you and your credit card company in order to keep whatever money you paid.

I had paid for a Haleakala sunrise tour via Polynesian Adventure through HawaiiDiscount.com, and the driver from PA failed to turn up the morning of the tour. I called PA directly (since they were the ones I had to confirm the tour with) and PA offered me a free tour the following day and said I would be refunded any cost of the tour I had missed out on.

Lots of talking to PA, in which I found out that they could not refund me directly because I had booked through a 3rd party. Which was fine, until I e-mailed HawaiiDiscount.com to ask them about their refund policy and to detail what happened. They not only got my credit card info wrong, but flat out kept insisting me that I never received a comped tour, and then changed their claim that I went on the tour I had paid for, so I didn't deserve a refund. Called both the phone numbers listed on their website once a day for three days trying to get someone on the phone. When I did finally talk to someone named John, he made it clear he wasn't listening to a word I said because I could hear his cell phone (speakerphone turned ON) the entire time. He "promised" to call me back, didn't, and my subsequent phone calls and voicemails were never returned.

Had to go through a huge ordeal with my credit card company, but it was a good thing that I had exact times and dates of events, names of people I spoke with at PA, and just generally a very detailed account of what happened, while the only reason HawaiiDiscount.com could tell my credit card company was "Customer went on the tour." Both Polynesian Adventure and my credit card company were great though, and both PA and credit card company told me right off the bat that I didn't go for the tour that I paid for on the day I paid for it, so I should get my refund.

Lesson learned: Book directly with whatever hotel or tour company you decide to go with. It's worth the extra $10 or whatever dollars if something comes up. Have also had bad experiences with big 3rd party sites like Expedia where the rates ended up being cheaper if I had booked directly with the hotel, so best to call the hotel directly/check on the hotel website and find out any specials going on.