‘I was scammed into buying a $30,000 vacation’: Couple signs up for ‘platinum’ vacation. Then she Googles the company
Couple goes on vacation. Couple gets coupon for couples massage. Couple attends seminar. Couple gets stuck for 30 grand. If you think that escalated quickly, you're right but that's what one TikToker claimed happened to her when a dream vacay turned into a nightmare of debt.
Content creator Summer (@hellosummeredeen) and her boyfriend Josh had gone to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic to enjoy a little fun on the beach. But according to her latest TikTok, they both found themselves the victims of a vacation scam.
@hellosummeredeen 🤫#vacation ♬ original sound - summer
Summer has reloaded her original video, posted two days ago, which had gone viral. The current version now has 7,300 views. In it, she recounts how she and Josh were offered two $300 coupons toward a couples massage in exchange for sitting through a "seminar."
Summer and Josh attended the seminar and, perhaps unsurprisingly, were met by a sales rep who immediately started "buttering them up" with love bombs, calling them "awesome" and offering to "go out" with the pair later that evening.
"We fell for it," Summer says. They were then handed off to another rep who quickly began trying to upsell them on several different "vacation packages." Each package supposedly offered multiple weeks of resort time with each additional upgrade offering more perks.
"You're platinum people," they were told by the rep. For a price of $30,000, they would get "six free weeks, all-inclusive," and be able to "bring your friends."
At this point Josh was ready to sign up but "I don't have that kind of money. Josh doesn't have that kind of money," Summer says. But she was only slightly less credulous than him.
"So Josh and I signed up for the platinum package," Summer says after noting that she did manage to talk the price down to $17,000. But she soon discovered that she hadn't made a very good deal after all.
"I go on Google afterwards," she says, "so many complaints. Everybody is 'Don't do it, it's a scam' ... 'It's terrible, You're going to regret it.'"
She also reveals, tellingly, that the contract in question "was in Spanish." She promises to reveal more in a later video. The Daily Dot has reached out via comment on TikTok for more detail.
Despite her tale of woe, the video has not gained much sympathy with many users saying she should have known better.
"Girl, $30,000 is not free," Jenn (@jennrose54) wrote in the comments.
Another viewer wrote, "No I’m not that dumb. I’m so tight with money I wouldn’t even consider it a possibility of agreeing If it was 5k."
"People are still falling for time shares. It's crazy," another commented.
Although Summer did not reveal the name of the company that offered the seminar, one commenter, Kaleb (@ohitskalebb) claimed that the company was Unlimited Vacation Club or UVC. UVC does indeed have many complaints about it on Reddit, Complaintsboard.com, and at the Better Business Bureau's website.
UVC is not accredited by the BBb and currently has an "F" rating. According to it's website, "Complaints on file with BBB allege that consumers were pressured into signing contracts for Vacation Club Memberships for thousands of dollars." The Daily Dot has reached out via email for comment.
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