Friday, February 3, 2012

STORYLINE Paul Dale Roberts: Chronicles of a Ghostwriter/Ghosthunter

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When Holiday Travel of America comes calling...hang up and run as fast as you can. They may try and entice you to go to the Holiday Inn in Sacramento. They will entice you with a vacation to Hawaii, in which they make claim that they will pay for the plane tickets and hotel accommodations. They will also have a Las Vegas packet with free shows, free buffets, etc.

All filthy lies.

They want you to participate in a 90-minute presentation on Timeshares. They will have 3 thugs talking to you with vacation type of music playing in the background. The song that was playing was Madonna's 'Holiday'. Holiday Travel of America will send over a salesman to your table. Remember, if you say no, you will be meeting 2 more salesmen and they will keep you over the 90 minutes. Their salesmen look like 'thugs'. I kid you not. The first thug will be very personable and ask all kinds of questions about you and your significant other. My significant other at this 90 minute outing was my BFF Chantal Apodaca. Chantal and I sat through the BS and basically asked the first thug to cut to the chase and start trying to sell us the timeshare, so we can get our gift packets and get the heck out of here. When our final answer was 'no' repeated 100 times over, the 2nd thug comes in and he is a bit nastier. By the time you reach the 3rd thug, it's downright negative and you are hoping the 3rd thug will not break your knuckles. The 3rd thug usually is the size of a NFL wide receiver and has strong burly overtones. As I look around, I only wonder how many of these sales people thugs are on parole?

When you finally get through the 90-minute presentation with your teeth, you are thrilled to hold in your hands all kinds of paperwork that indicates you and your significant other are truly headed for Hawaii and when you have time, you may enjoy the freebies that you can get in Las Vegas.

I mailed in my $100.00 check for my Hawaii vacation and $25.00 check for my Las Vegas packet. When I received everything in the mail, I set my possible dates to go to Hawaii with Chantal. Before I knew it, Holiday Travel of America contacted me many times over and asked me to upgrade. Yes! They wanted more money! When I told them I would not upgrade (for more money), they became irritated with my answers. In retaliation, they would set my vacation date further ahead in the year. Finally with all the bickering that went on between me and Holiday Travel of America, they finally refunded my $125.00.

They promised me a hotel package for San Diego to cover my troubles. They never sent that, only my refund check.
If they say something is free, it's most likely not free. Believe me, I'm learning.

Holiday Travel of America is located at: 6405 El Camino Real, Carlsbad, CA 92009.

Paul Dale Roberts, GM
www.hpiparanormal.net
pauld5606@comcast.net
916 203 7503

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SacGal

edited on February 4, 2010 | 3:18 PM

Holiday Travel of America is an incentives/marketing company. They provide travel certificates, etc. to other companies/organizations. There is a lot of complaints online about how they don't fulfill those certificates, but they do not sell timeshare or give timeshare presentations and they do not sell to the general public. That being the case, I'm confused by your report since it doesn't seem likely that they were the real culprits in your experience unless there's more than one Holiday Travel of America in Carlsbad, CA. So my question to you is what was the name of the actual timeshare company whose "thugs" tried to get you to buy a timeshare?

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Jim9876

March 15, 2010 | 7:44 PM

Hey SacGal,

Did you read the entire article? He very clearly stated the poor treatment he received from HTOA. So, that would make them the CULPRITS.

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open4biz

July 26, 2010 | 2:18 PM

I am a freelance designer for HToA and acutely familiar with their business model. As SacGal pointed out, Holiday Travel sells their packages to *other businesses*. That means that whomever gave you the rough treatment might have said they were with HToA, but they weren't. This is akin to being ticked at GM because one of their dealerships gave you a bad experience.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with someone who lied about who they are, but unless you were at their San Diego corporate offices, it wasn't Holiday Travel of America.

Ansel Taft

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tiemermom

August 28, 2010 | 8:36 PM

How about everyone getting a class action lawsuit filed against HOTOA? Is everyone in agreement?

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elvis2b

September 10, 2010 | 5:17 PM

I was a scmoe of the street and got a HTOA vacation to Hawaii for little more than a sales pitch from Welk Resorts. They offered me all I could eat snacks and beverages during the presentatrion. The property was beautiful and I had no intention of purchasing anything. My wife and I were only there for the free Hawaii trip. We never bought anything and left with our voucher. We have had an easy time booking and enjoyed a beautiful free trip. HTOA did a wonderful job making our trip fun. We did not upgrade and our only regret was that it was only 2 days. 1 and a 1/2 really when you look at the flights, but hey it was a fun whirlwind beach trip

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1singlemom

January 19, 2012 | 4:43 PM

The trips are offered from Welk Timeshare if you opt out from purchasing one. You get to chose from multiple packages, albeit your stay is only 3 days, I considered they were giving you an opportunity to check out their property on the island to reconsider a possible investment. If you check through the BBB, there multiple complaints...too many to count, where you send in your deposit for taxes on the tickets to HTOA as requested from HTOA and the paperwork they have mailed to you, and provide 2 alternate dates of travel for them to accommodate you over the course of 12 months. They never seem to accommodate, and pretty much ALMOST never have returned anyone's deposits either. I was a bit disappointed to find out it was a scam and that they are not getting into trouble for it. So much for honest practices. Although I am reminded if it sounds too good to be true...it probably is.

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