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9/25/2008
My husband and I attended a “travel club seminar” at Roark. Mid-August. We were provided 3 night stay at Branson, Missouri for $99 if we attended this 90 minute “travel seminar”.
During our (I’ll call it our interrogation), they asked us what type of vacations that we like to go on. We specified that we go on All-Inclusive. We enjoy these vacations because its one price and we really don’t need to worry about additional money when we are on vacation. We don’t have to worry about where we are eating, I don’t have to cook, don’t have to worry about drinking and driving, worry about cab’s etc…….
The seminar oozzzed about wholesale travel discounts going to Hawaii and Alaska for approx. $800 ( I don’t have the exact price). The speaker had copies of Expedia costs from the Internet in his hands to show how their costs vs. Expedia. He was going on and on about the travel savings and that this was not time-share.
Sounded good…..I asked if this included All-Inclusive travel, and the response was “ we can handle all your vacation needs” . It’s sounded good. I even asked on the ROI. Based on what they discussing in the sales pitch, it’s usually 3 trips. They talked about the 50 years plus in business. We went for it. It cost us $4500…..with the exchange rate, it cost us $4900 CAD. In addition, there is $99 US year membership.
Towards the end of August, I received my member ship number in the mail. So, I started to call and inquire about some vacations. I requested vacations, NYC, St. Martens, Bahamas, and Cuba. I actually asked for ANY wholesale packages, ANYWHERE as we were promised. I didn’t see any wholesale discounts in the pricing that they were providing me. The most I seen was 15% or approximately $100 in savings. This just covers my yearly membership fee.
So my burning question is…………………...where is this wholesale travel discounts that we purchased for $4900? I asked CRI/Roark, where these vacations are? How do I effectively use this travel club to see these types of benefits? I was told by Lingell Johnson to give him a few days. So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt to prove to me that there are “wholesale vacations” available and do exist. I had one gentleman call me back on behalf of Lingell ( I think his name was Bob) and he hung up on me ! Nice customer service eh? As of September 25th (approx one month from signing up with them) Lingell was not able to provide me with a list of wholesale vacations. I even emailed the call center to provide me a list of these vacations. No response. I requested that my money be refunded. Of course my calls are now being ignored. I have begun to search the internet, and found that they have complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau. Also, there is an article in /link removed/
I have supporting emails of my requests along with the phone log and what transpired.
Roark Travel / CRI have misled us, misrepresented as to what was actually being sold and would like to have my HARD earned money refunded. This is a lot of money for us just throw away. How can these people sleep at night or have a conscious scamming people and referring themselves as a reputable company?
We took a trip to Branson the weekend of March 19th, on our way down, we stopped at a Welcome Center in Missouri that had a billboard stating, we can get discounted tickets for Branson shows. We stopped in and an older couple was working in the center, they said they could get us free tickets to shows and a 30 dollar dinner voucher at a restaurant of our choice for attending a 90 minute seminar in Branson, they stated that it was not a time share but never really did say what it was. We chose a 30 dollar gift card to Wheelhouse Restaurant and 2 free tickets to see Legends at Dick Clark Theater.
We attended the seminar on Sunday, March 20, the speaker, Stephanie, was very outgoing, she went around the room and asked each table of guests what their dream vacation location would be. We all responded and then she proceeded to tell us what we would pay for a vacation at these locations compared to Travelocity, Expedia, etc. She showed hot prices for spur of the moment vacations and stated we could stay in Presidential like suites for 149 week.
It finally came down to the pricing for this Rourk Vacation Club membership, the figure she wrote on the board was $9995.00 plus 300 something dollars for administrative costs and $199 a year membership. After this, she had everyone remain at their table with their company rep to go over the plan. Myself and my companion were assigned to Stephanie who took us into her office and proceeded to say something like isn't this a great deal, etc. We said no not really. She went over some details of the plan and we still said no we aren't interested, she lowered the cost of the plan to 3000 dollars with a 99 dollar a year membership fee. She asked if we would put this on a credit card or finance it if we bought. We said we didn't know she excused herself and came back with a finance plan at 12%. The final offer we received was a $1500 plan with 99 dollar a month membership fee which supposedly was for a plan someone stopped paying on and they needed to resell. We said we were not interested, she left kind of in a huff saying fine its your decision I will send so and so in to take you to the front desk. The woman from the Philippines who works for them came in, said you know we can't just give this plan away. We said sorry but we are not interested. She escorted us to the front desk where we received our restaurant voucher and a voucher for tickets to the Legends show. They asked if we would like to attend a different type of seminar the next day and they could give us $100. We said NO THANKS!
That evening we went to the Wheel House Restaurant and found out it is closed on Sundays, now they knew we were only in town until Monday morning. We drove back to Rourk property and told them the situation and they did give us $30 dollar voucher for Red Lobster as a replacement.
We went to The Legends box office Sunday evening to get the show tickets and was told that the Welcome Center had booked our tickets for Saturday night and not Sunday but the theater would honor our voucher and could actually give us front row seats for Sunday which were better seats than we would have had on Saturday.
I went online and researched Rourk Travel after all this and have read nothing but complaints about it being a ripoff/scam, etc.
This company has been doing this for quite some time it appears. My wife and I have also fallen for the promises and examples used in the presentations. I believe there are laws within the US against "deceptive" business practices which this company is obviously using. We were shown "examples" of deals we could obtain at "wholesale" saving 30-80 percent off the travel costs. The sweet talkers then emphasize the "Lowest Rate Guarantee" offered by the club, but fail to make clear the discount is only for "standard" rates and doesn't include any other "special" price offered by the providers. This literally means that you are being offered a Club which provides discounts which are freely available to everyone and, in actual fact, are, in most cases, higher than the price being offered by the hotel/cruise line/condo resort or any other provider. I would like to know if there are any Lawyers interested in backing a clas* action suit against the Roark Travel Club for Deceptive Business Practices and I would recommend to everyone reading this they contact the Federal Government to lodge a consumer complaint. The law says a company is guilty of unfair or deceptive business practices if they perform acts which "will l likely mislead or induce a reasonable consumer, to purchase a product to that consumer's detriment." Paying an exorbitant fee to belong to a club which will provide "discounts" which results in prices greater than any readily available discount falls into that category. If enough of us actually file complaints we can get this "business" shut down and put the leaches out of business. If you are interested in joining me in pursuing a clas* action suit please feel free to contact me @ james.runels at Hotmail.
Don't fall for this scam like we did. I wish I knew if there is any way I could sue them to get my money back. Anyone out there has any idea? I paid $4000 with my City mastercard, only to find out that there are no discounts to speak of. I threw away my hard earned money. Based on all the complaints I hear about this company, there should be a class-action suit.
Advise anyone?
Agree. The presenter was named Robert and a cute Filipino lady took our info in Branson. We paid $20 to attend the seminar with the promise of $120 in restaurant coupons even if we declined. The spiel stated out at $9995 with $150 annual dues unless you didn't use the service in a particular year. Then they got us alone and the DISCOUNTS began. Discount because my husband was a veteran. Further discount because he was a Vietnam veteran. Discount for me as a retired teacher. Discount because we were paying with a credit card. I asked for time alone to discuss, which they gave us. We realized it must be a scam and declined. They didn't pressure us too much...just kept expressing surprise and disappointment that we would not take advantage of such a great deal. We did get the $120 in restaurant coupons (Olive Garden and a local Branson restaurant called MacFarlans...these were the ones I chose). As we were getting our coupons they tried to bribe us to take a tour of lake property. If we did it we would get $120 in Walmart credit. We declined. So I guess we made out OK. I googled them the minute we got back to the motel and breathed a sigh of relief!
I attended a Roark Seminar in April of 2011. I would like to know who their representative was at the Branson Wal Mart. That is where I got "shang highed". She seemed like a nice lady but turned out to be very deceptive. Who was the guy doing the presentation ? Does anyone remember. My wife bought the package after the presentation. Once we returned to Maine she called and cancelled it immediately and it was done without issue.
I'm going through the same thing right now. We purchased in May 2012. As soon we got home I tried to book a vacation for the $149.00 for the week and of course the best they could offer me was 560.00 for the week. I'm in the process of trying to get out of the contract and of course they will not email or call me back. I hope that I can save someone else of making the same mistake that we did.
We bought a timeshare in Florida, same thing it's a ripoff! They won't take it back they don't do that but that's a lie also because that's how we bought ours; someone returned it and we rebought it. Do you think they're making a pile of money from all us suckers? Now we've been scammed from more supposedly reputable companies saying they can help us sell or rent our timeshare; you can only sell if it's paid in full! want to rent they will list for you on craigs list, guess what you get from that? NOTHING! Now we have Roark and paid $3000.00 for that. Oh yeah the interest is a whopping 12% for 3 years!
Yes, I agree 100%. We, too, were mislead except our totals were different. We were charged $3000.00 for 3 years for our vacations. They also told us we would not have to pay a yearly fee unless we used our vacations. If we wanted to let friends use it then they could pay the yearly fee. I have a separate checking account since we put this on a monthy auto payment until 1 month we got an overdraft notice. After contacting the bank we found they were charging us 150.00 a year for our fee for using this except we never found any discounts or anywhere we wanted to go. While we listened to their sales pitch they produced pages of whosale trips which we could purchase, after returning home I got on the same sight (or so I thought) and there was nothing listed like they had. I feel we have been scammed but that can we do? Our deal will be paid for in 3 months. D and D Ellis