tags: Scams
Ameri-who?
March 7th, 2005, by Rich.
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I just got a wonderful telemarketing call …
| Me: | Hello. |
| Me: | Hello?. |
| Me: | Helllllo? |
| Me: | [pauses] |
| Me: | Hello?. |
| Me: | Sorry I’m not receiving any audio from your end, so if you can hear me, hang up, or if you’re an automated dialler I’m just going to keep on so you pay for the call. |
| After just enough time for a generic answer phone message to have completed, a recording began to playback at me: | |
| Recording: | Congratulations! You have just won the jackpot! Hi my name is Michael Smith from the Corporate Reward Centre in Las Vegas. You have just won the jackpot! Please call ring free 0800 091 0084 to claim your prize and matching your claim code: Jackpot. Again that number is ring free 0800 091 0084. Congratulations, and we look forward to speaking to you. |
So, noting that my star sign is Inquisitive (with Curious rising) and knowing that 0800 numbers are freephone; I called them:
| Kitty: | Amerisuites Vacations this is Kitty, how may I help? |
| Me: | Who? |
| Kitty: | Amerisuites Vacations this is Kitty. |
| Me: | Sorry, What Vacations? |
| Kitty: | Amerisuites, like America but without the ca and add Suites. |
| Me: | Oh, OK, I’d like to collect my jackp… |
| Kitty: | *click* *beeeeeeeeep* [Kitty ends the call] |
My telephone number is registered with the Telephone Preference Service a UK body that regulates commercial phone spam, so legally they’re not allowed to call me, but they’re trying to force a loophole where commercial calls are banned but, they theorize, by calling it a competition, they can avoid prosecution.
So, not only has this company cold-called my TPS registered number, but they’ve also hung up on me, that’s just plain rude, I wanted to know who and what they are:
So, I called them, again:
| Carla: | Welcome to Amerivacations this is Carla. |
Carla proceeded to take my first name and asked for the number from which I’d called to check what prize I’d won. I gave her a false number. Surprisingly this had no ill effect because Carla came back and told me that I’d won £1301 towards a holiday in Florida, and that it was part of a prize fund allocated to 100 people and there were only 10 claims left on the fund - [irony alert] what luck!
Being a happy soul about this I mentioned that I’m in the UK, and that Carla didn’t sound local; she told me she was in Orlando Florida, and reiterated that this was a free call for me (just to make me really feel like I was special).
She then went on to explain that to claim my prize I’d need to pay the balance on a holiday in Florida at a Ramada resort near near Disneyworld - the package balance £598 for 16 days holiday for 4 - effectively an 80% discount.
The is is not a competition or a lottery, this company is selling holidays; there is no way to claim a “prize” without actually purchasing something, at which point they’ll discount the value of that prize from the purchase cost.
From the TPS website: “Under Government legislation introduced on 1st May 1999 and replaced on 11th December 2003 by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls.”
Carla also explained that they are trying to rekindle interest in America as a vacation venue. She also explained that they are able to make these amazing offers because they keep their costs low, which they do in two ways:
- Direct Dialing.
- Word of Mouth.
Well, by direct-dialling me, unlawfully, they’ve certainly got a little word-of-mouth advertising.
The comments below add a lot of detail and you might also be interested in this followup article.
July 1st, 2005 at 6:01 pm
If you intend to cancel and therefore don’t accept delivery of “the package”, the courier is obliged to return it to it’s source; this saves you money. The company cannot make you jump through any hoops to cancel the contract (i.e. they can’t make you fill out a specific form), you just have to send them a letter.
July 2nd, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Thanks for that. We will be refusing the package when it comes I dont see why they should even send it in the first place as we emailled our intent to cancel within an hour of the call. I have sent copies of everything to my creditcard company and the Florida dept of Agriculture and Commerce (5 copies of letters, emails etc) Just hope we are successful in getting our money back. Many Thanks for the info I wouldn’t have known where to start!
July 2nd, 2005 at 9:37 pm
Hello, what I would also be interested in is if anyone has even ever done this trip.
July 5th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Interesting reading, I am sorry to know that I am not the only one who has been scammed or what ever I have been? It also makes me feel a little better about my self that I am not the only one who felt for this. Man you feel so stupid afterwards. In Denmark we call it directly translated “farmer catch”. After I hung up the phone I closed my visa but to late Im afraid. I have followed the instructions on this web. They are the same I was told today in my bank, writing an e-mail etc.etc. My bank “lady” told me that somebody had actually gone on this trips. I was a bit suprised and confused when she said that. Have not read any mails yet that says anything about people actually been on these trips. Not matter what I hope I get back my money, and hopefully stop feeling like I have been robbed and helped them doing it.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:12 pm
By the way. A great website. Good luck to you all, either its getting your money back or what you have payed for. I will return as soon as I know how my case turns out.
July 10th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
My wife got scammed of £601.19 by a company yesterday called Celebration Promotions. Are they part of the AmeriVacation? Anyone got an address for Celebrate Promotions? The payment went to a company called Auburn Travel.
July 12th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
Seems that this scams has as many names as the beloved child. Here’s a new one - Sunkissed Travel. I went for the scam, I’m SO angry.
I couldn’t even understand everything they said, has such bad accents of spanish etc.
Seems also that these women called CARLA and CARMEN are real superwomen for working for two companies at the same time - Sunkissed Travel and Amerivacations?
I feel sorry for myself, and everyone here. There are SO many of us. Couldn’t we get a lawyer and get this organization to court?
PEOPLE, LET’S MAKE THEM PAY !
Any good ideas?
July 12th, 2005 at 9:23 pm
Just a quick note to let you all know that this is still going on. I received an automated call to my ex-directory TPS registered number a couple of hours ago. Since then I’ve been reading up on this. I didn’t hear the company name but just typed the first line into Google (”Congratulations, you’ve just won the jackpot!”).
Thankfully I didn’t call them or give any details, but I was interested to find out more about this. I work for a credit card fraud insurance company (don’t hate me, it’s just for fraud resulting from loss/theft) and in my job I get many calls from people who are scared because they’ve just given their details. Many are convinced it’s legitimate by the fact that they have an 0800 number.
If people HAVE given out their card details my advice would be to cancel and reorder cards *immediately*. Even if a charge has already been taking, cancelling the original number should stop any further debits.
Also, check with your card issuers about what you’re covered for. Some issuers (for example Barclaycard) have a service called Purchase Protection. I know a lot of these services can be applied for when you take out a new credit card, so it’s certainly worth looking into.
Anyway, good luck to all of you still struggling with this company. Something that may apply to this, although I’m not sure, that most people aren’t aware about… if you make a written complaint to a company and are not satisfied with the outcome, you can then go to the Financial Ombudsman. Again, with this being a foreign company I don’t know if this would help, but for UK companies if ANY complaints are forwarded to the Ombudsman, the company gets billed something like £200-£300 for it, whether the complaint is justified or not.
July 14th, 2005 at 3:40 am
I was surfing the internet when i received this pop-up saying that i was the lucky winner of a trip to Florida. I had exactly 2 minutes to call the 1-800 number given so as to claim my prize. There was even a countdown timer !1:59… 1:58….1:40………1:12……and so on and so forth. My heart pounded as i raced for the phone. I immediately reached the number given and talked to a pleasant guy who offered a trip for 2 at $299 each,tickets to Disneyworld and even a 3 day trip to the Bahamas! Then he asked me for my credit card number which i immediately refused. He literally became desperate and even lowered the initial price to $299 for 3 people!! I smelt a rat and immediately gave him a fake credit card number. I was transferred to some lady who told me she was recording the call. She asked me to re- confirm my name ,credit number and mailing address. While we were recording , she interrupted the procedure to inform me that my credit card number had been returned as invalid All this in the space of 2 minutes! She even had the nerve to ask me if i had another credit card with sufficient money. By now , i was really enjoying this tete a tete. I then proceeded to give her another fake credit card number. As u can guess , she only took another 2 minutes to confirm it had no funds! By now i was exasperated and told her there was no way i was ever going to give out my credit card number to a stranger. I then went online to check out this company, and i noticed the page containing its board of directors, has posted artificially generated composite pictures of certain individuals. Take a close look at the backgrounds and see how fake they are. This whole thing is a sham. The first operator i talked to had told me they are affiliated to Holiday Inn ,which is a manifestly untrue assertion. This people need to be investigated and apprehended before they bankrupt people and break-up families.
July 14th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
Yet another “victim” on TPS and ex-directory. Yesterday I got the “call” for a second tiem and decided to take some action. The guy who answered wouldnt even give the company name and threatened to keep calling until i bought the package. So after about an hour of converstation, he was quite chatty as he said he was paid by the hour, I found this site. I phoned them back and was offered my number put on a “do not call ” list but refused to give number as I don’t trust them….
I also phoned syntec who basically said they had had several complaints and amerisuites had told them they WOULD use TPS from last week. I was also told that no information on numbers etc was passed to Amerisuites i.e. caller id etc The guy was very helpful and it seems they are considering “pulling the plug” on the freephone numbers.