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Original review posted by user Feb 05, 2015

We booked a one week stay in Cancun at Sandos Plyacar. They started out lying to us about when the card would be charged. They said it wouldn't be charged for 7 days and charged it immediately. One week prior to our departure we had heard nothing from Book VIP. Not confirmation letter, nothing. After multiple phone calls messages and email, none of which were ever answered by them, we finally got ahold of a live person and were told they could not get us reservations there. We asked for a refund and were flatly denied. They only give a 7 day refund period. The trick is they do nothing for you during that period so they don't tip you off as to how much your being scammed. Once they safely have you money, then the bad news starts to come in. Our only option, less than a week before our vacation was to change resorts to Villa Del Palmar. This just happens to be one of their 'featured' resorts. In other words, the one that pays them the most for lining up suckers like us. We didn't like the resort, it had nothing we were looking for and didn't want to go there, but we had to agree, they gave us no choice. We were later to learn that they knew they couldn't get us into Sandos Plyacar from the beginning, but waited till the last minute to tell us, I assume to put pressure on us to do what they wanted.They referred us to their web site for information on Villa Del Palmar. It states the 4 a la carte restaurants, room service, in room mini-bar and top shelf liquors are all included in the package. It still says this. We spent the entire week before our vacation on the phone, mostly on hold with these people. We left numerous messages and emails, none of which were ever returned. Finally, 2 days before we were leaving they sent us a confirmation letter. It stated that none of the restaurants, the room service, the in room bar and the top shelf liquor were included in our package. We were expected to eat at the buffet 3 meals a day for a week. After hours more on hold and screaming at them to talk to a supervisor- they really didn't want to let us! They sent us another confirmation letter that simply erased the line about the restaurants not being included. No other changes, looks like someone just used white out on it. We called the resort and were told that no, nothing had changed in our package, we would treated as second class citizens for our entire stay, but of course we'd also have to endure their timeshare presentation anyway. At this point we had been told so many lies by the people at BookVIP and endured so much truly terrible customer service that we had simply lost all faith in them. I don't know if they are totally incompetent, or just crooks, but it really doesn't matter. We dared not risk our vacation, who knows what other lies they had told us we wouldn't find out about until we got there and had no where to go?

When we cancelled our reservations the resort told us that no monies had been paid to them and there was no penalty for cancellation because we were within the 48 period. BookVIP still refused to give us our money back. They claimed we had a verbal contract to change resorts. However a verbal contract based on false and misleading information, which their web site is full of, is not binding.

I have since found out that their claims to be members of IATAN, ASTA and have an A+ rating with the BBB are all lies as well. These people are shameless!

I was told I won a free vacation and then I was asked for a credit card to pay a resort fee.BookingVIP is a scam.

I dealt with this company in Dec 2013. They sounded fishy, billed me for the same vacation twice, more than $600, but then did remove one of the charges.

The vacation did not smoothly.

This year I decided to try them again. Reserved a room at the hotel in Dec 2014. The reservation, as previously, was meant to include an airport pick up service in Punta Cana. Since it is dangerous to travel to the Dominican Republic, such a service is of essence to my family.

I have now tried a grand total of four times to arrange the airport pick up. I know that I have a reservation at the hotel, but something really strange is happening with the pick up situation. When I requested to talk to a manager, I spoke with an individual called Keith. At the end of the conversation, Keith gave me his "direct" phone number, 1-888-845-0050, which turned out to be a number of a TRUCKING COMPANY in New Jersey!

After four phone calls and promises that the resort is going to call me, there is still no action and I do not have my taxi pick up arranged. I've traveled all over the Caribbean and this is the first time anything like this has happened to me.

I am not sure what sort of scam this is, but take my advice, do not ever deal with BookVIP. I certainly won't.

Glad I decided to research them before I dealt with them. I got an online price for a 4 day 3 night vacation to Myrtle Beach but the site would only allow me to schedule 3 days instead of 4 for the dates I requested for $59.

I still thought it was a bang of a deal and so I went to enter my CC information and noticed that the whole website was not secure (no https) And nothing to show that it was secure other than a few typed words under where you enter your CC info telling you it IS secure. So I entered four of my CC numbers and saw that my numbers were not changing into a coded format. So I stopped and called them and was told by some woman who did not speak English well that the trip for the days I wanted would be $299. I told her that I am confirming the reservation with my CC info because I did not feel comfortable doing it online and the price I was given was $59 (it was some end of the year deal).

Because I insisted on the $59 price she hung up on me.

SO I called back and got another non English speaking male who told me the online information was incorrect...even though it had the days I requested. I made up an excuse to get off the phone and that is when I did the research on the company...and read all you lovely folks comments...LMBO...#GLADIDID

Do you self a favor and book somewhere else. I booked a reservation for 12/30/14 thru 1/2/15 in Puerto Vallarta and I'm leaving tonight.

I changed my reservations 2 weeks ago and the guy who could not speak english, changed my reservation wrong and deleted my Itinerary number and now the can't find my reservation. This company is a GHOST. I received emails from travelnow.com, bookvip.com, info from Travelscape and all anyone can tell me is I need to talk to Expidia. When I called they said they didn't have a reservation in my name.

None of the above has any info about my trip. My credit card has been charged. On the site Bookvip.com it rings up my old reservation but thats it.

The hotel has a reservation that is not correct and told me I need to pay an additional 150 pesos per day per person.

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I booked with BookVip for the Westgate deal in Orlando they changed my room type...put me in a studio when I booked a 1 bedroom, after that they cancelled said that they over booked. They booked me in Daytona and canceled that deal as well!!!!!

Saw promotional video about Cancun .when I went to book it it is now where to be on the book VIP website so I called and got nowhere.they had no idea and could not tell me where to look.just as I figu red.they scam u into higher prices and by the way I called twice and got a no English speaking person who had a hard time.I just wanted to book my promotional package for Cancun but it really didn't exist.there was no to ask for help and the ads on the website tell u to book online but where? I checked the hotel in question and no deal like the promotional video was listed

I thought - Yeah! I'll listen to a 90 minute time share presentation and endure extremely high pressure sales to take my family to a beautiful all-inclusive in Cancun for $400 - no problem!!

I even thought I would book in a couple of extra nights full price.

When I went to make my reservation, I had already spent much time researching the resorts I was interested and narrowed it down to the perfect one for my family. I had talked to the book vip people 3 times to make sure that the dates my travel agent had given me for flights matched up with availability at the resort. .....Looking back now, I can see that the book vip people never told me any date was full, in fact they readily - without even looking it up it seems to me now, agreed to whatever dates I mentioned.

For the extra nights at the resort, booking them with vip would have cost me $300 extra per night. I thought that was high so I checked with the resort itself and it was $200/night. Book vip tried very hard to still get me to book the extra nights with them and took $ off but duhh!

At this point, I've booked my flights, booked 2 extra nights with the resort and went to book my 4 nights with book vip. First off they asked for my credit card # 3 times!! Which made me uncomfortable but I still went forward with the vacation for my 2 boys in mind. During the booking process, I was rushed through clicking "I agree" on a form of terms. Also was told at that time that there was an extra $20/night charge for processing ....still a great deal I thought.

About 2 or 3hrs later (and I am grateful it wasn't even longer than that as some people's experience has been closer to travel time,) I got a phone call from my booking agent with book vip, saying she was sorry but the dates I requested are not available and she had another resort that I could go to.

I was immediately refusing this "offer"; I had planned everything around this resort and had made triple sure that we would be able to stay there, - there was no way that I was willing to change it now. I insisted to speak with a manager and I was told that she would take it to the manager the following day and that I would be called back.

No call

So I called and no answer, I was put through to a customer satisfaction survey - twice.

....Then things started to make sense, I looked at my reservation confirmation and it does not mention the name of the resort, only that I agreed to have book vip book my vacation accommodations. They had my credit card info, a "signed" agreement from me and they could now make me stay in another cheaper place of their choosing, - one in which there is a bigger push to sell time shares at.

Now it made sense when I called, why the voice recording cautions you that resort you would like to stay at may be full.

In all the calls I made to book vip, I was put on hold once for 30 min (no one ever answered), told twice that a manager would call me back but NEVER did - until I finally cancelled my reservation completely.

You have 48 or 72hrs to cancel your reservation, and they are trying to stall until they bill your credit card.

I wrote them twice threatening legal action if my credit card was billed and in the end, I decided to just order a new card.

Once a manager called me back, she assured me that the dates I requested at the resort of my choosing were in fact available and she didn't understand what the agent I had spoken to was saying. I told her that I was cancelling because as I figured out, after allll of this time and energy spent dealing with book vip, I am better off paying the little bit of extra $$ (worked out to $400 at the resort I wanted to stay at) than deal with anything book vip could possibly have to offer me!

Oh and I want to also mention, that the resort themselves had never heard of book vip!

Also, I have been getting constant spam since they got my email address. I phoned today to ask to have my email taken off of their list and to tell them that they do not have my permission to sell my address. The rep replied - ok, we'll remove it.

We planned a vacation with BookVIP.com and they cancelled our vacation that was confirmed by the Villa Del Parmar resort in Cancun, Mexico. We paid for a package and were also charged more for the package than agreed upon.

We then were told our reservation was cancelled by error and that they could not give us our original reservation. They then offered a terrible resort and to pay a minimal adjustment that wasn't what the resort was even being shown to be selling at. They harassed us repeatedly, would not let us speak with supervisors or their legal department as we requested.

We are now out a vacation and the $1,200.00 for airfare to Cancun because we have no intention, after this nightmare, to spend what we wanted to go there for which is a relaxing holiday.

They intentionally also called us several times a day and kept saying we cancelled our reservation. This actually caused us duress and it's criminal what they do. They are committing fraud by scamming people into a better resort and cancelling their reservations and trying to put people in a much less of a quality resort. The difference was night and day and we had not intention of traveling all the way there since they were so shady and dishonest.

Don't use these folks. We will be filing a legal claim and also requesting compensation for the damages caused due to the duress.