I must be a target for unsolicited telemarketers. On my residential phone, I received a phone call from a representative of Affordable Holidays (www.affordableholidays.com.au).
This company claims to be based in Maroochydore Queensland Australia.
The offer is to purchase accommodation vouchers that can give the recipient 20 discounted nights of accommodation for up to 6 people in 3 - 5 star motels and hotels in Australia and New Zealand. The vouchers have no expiry date. All this for a one off price of $269.00.
What is a discounted night? Well that was very difficult to ascertain, however depending on the property and time of year this "could be" between 50 - 75%.
Haven't we heard this MO before??
Well yes! This appears to follow a well worn path of dodgy Ozzie scam artists that also sell accommodation vouchers. These would appear to have a dubious worth and be very difficult to redeem. This is covered in our previous posts HERE and HERE.
The highlight of the frenetic, high sales pitch was when the telemarketer directed me to their website www.affordableholidays.com.au to demonstrate the fantastic properties available to me. I requested a motel in my region and you would never guess what motel magically appeared in front of me - my own! I can assure you that my motel does not accept these vouchers...
It would appear that Affordable Holidays are using the same technique as www.holidayfever.com.au and have embedded a search engine of an unsuspecting 3rd party accommodation reseller on their website. This gives the impression that they have more properties in their "voucher scheme" than they really have.
If an accommodation operator comes across a potential guest with these vouchers, then they need to become part of the solution and assist in shutting these shonky Ozzie operators down. We suggest getting as much information from the guest as possible in order to make a written complaint to the Commerce Commission. We suggest that the guest is advised to do the the same.
If enough complaints are received, the Commerce Commission will issue further warnings to the New Zealand public and pass information over to their counterpart in Australia that will be able to take action.
The Commerce Commission can be contacted by:
PO Box 2351
Wellington 6140
Email contact@comcom.govt.nz
Phone 0800 943 600
25 *** Post a Comment ! ***:
Thanks for warning others. We were scammed by these people in Oz about a year ago. We got sucked in because they said they were associated with Virgin Blue! The stuff they sent us did not match what they told us over the phone, and when we tried to get a refund (as our consumer rights) all contact went unanswered. We've put it down to an expensive lesson, and I will never buy anything from anyone over the phone again.
These people cold called my elderly Mother and did her for NZD1300! I have called them but they are unwilling to be of any assistance in obtaining a refund.Please do not use them and pass the mesage.
I have just had these guys on the phone to me and they sounded very suspect!!! They were trying to get my credit card details and I hung up on them. Watch out, smells very fishy.
Hi Anonymous
Thanks for checking-in.
Google searches seem to be very kind to these types of posts on our blog.
We think you were very wise not to pursue with this suspect company.
We get a lot of visitors landing on our posts written about dubious directory and accommodation businesses and we hope we have saved some anguish.
THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP!!!!
Took a call from these guys about 6 weeks ago on the private line at the accomm place I work at it one town and just the other day a second at my daughter's place in another. I actually google mapped the address they gave and it doesn't go to the street number they have given in their website. Try it, use the little orange guy who walks the street for you
My elderly mother was also taken advantage of by these guys a few weeks ago. I spoke to a very rude guy in QLD who has put a number of obstacles in the way of getting her money back. I have raised it with the Commerce Commission I support everyone else to do the same if they are contacted by them.
PS the directory they sent was out of date so of no use at all to see what discounts were available.
My elderly mother in NZ was recovering from a stay in hospital when rung by these low lifes. We are in the process of trying to get a charge back on the credit card. I've been in contact with the Australian Commerce commission and will be ringing the Queensland fair trading commission as well.
Thanks heaps, i just got a phone call from them, they are going to ring me back. I know where i'll be telling them to stick their dirty scam!
Thanks for the warning. I have just had a call from these guys on a Saturday night at 7 pm on our unlisted telephone number. He was a very insistant guy and quite pushy. Having recently been scammed by an American company recently I am very wary of anything like this so I appreciate all the warnings. But how do they get our telephone numbers???
Hi there Anonymous (14 Nov) et al
Appreciate all of your comments.
I would imagine that a team of telemarketers sitting offshore could very quickly work out blocks of Kiwi telephone numbers and methodically work through them in numerical order.
So I guess they wouldn't necessarily have to qualify numbers before they rang.
A company running a scam like this can operate from anywhere in the world using a website as a front and outsource a telemarketing firm in another country to make sales calls on their behalf. India appears to be a popular country for telemarketing services.
This is very cost effective as the calls are made over the internet using VoIP and payment for services is usually commission only.
I would imagine that the hit rate of cold-calling could be as high as 5% and probably only a small portion of sales would ever be refunded as the vouchers would be used many months later leaving the option of disputing and reversing the credit card transaction beyond an allowable time-frame.
Many other consumers that find out early on that the vouchers have little value, but will do nothing due to pride or ignorance.
Just got off the phone with Affordable Holidays/Vacation Club. This offer sounded too good to be true because we don't win anything(!), so when they got down to checking details on my credit card, I declined to give out any information and they gave up. I then went looking on Google .....
Thanks for the confirmation that this really was a scam. (Kiwi, SI).
Thank goodness I found this website, I was on the phone to a 'very hard to understand' guy and Google searched his company before he got any credit card details. Scary stuff ringing a slightly gullible 25 year old!! Pleased I DID NOT give them any further details.
Hey.
I just had a call from these guys. I listened to their story with suspicion and then it finally came, the request for credit card information. NO THANKS!
However this time they were only trying to sting me for $2.99. Becoming very crafty they are.
Guess what? I have just had a phone call from Vacation Club Australia. Gave their names as Margaret Williams and Ricky Dawson (Senior Manager) Strange that they had english names for asian sounding people, very hard to understand, they repeat everything they say. I got all their details too as I have heard about these phonecall scams. They wanted AUD$299 for the discount vouchers. I didn't give them any credit card details so the call was cut short pretty quick. To cap it off, they had the cheek to ask for the expiry date on my visa...
Thanks for the information on this site - confirms what I first thought when I got the phonecall.
I had a call tonight - same deal For just $299 (I think Aus) I would receive a life time of discounts for accommodation and shopping for up to 6 people. All I had to do to qualify was be a NZ citizen, be over 18 (I way past sadly!) and have a visa card. only 50 people in the north island and 50 people in the south island were selected to receive this offer and I was one of them! And once I had this amazing deal i could send the caller a box of chocolate as thanks (his little joke ha ha) When I said I have no money at the moment sorry - could you email me the details the indian voice said he would transfer me to his supervisor. The transfer was a drop of the phone and someone picking it up off the floor or table stating he was a managing director and did I like the sound of the deal? I said yes but I have no money at the moment but could they email me the details. He said oh ok well we can't give you information unless you pay so Goodbye! then more phone clunking - I hung on to listen and could hear other voices obviously a call centre type place and waited - in the end I hung up.
they are on the move again... in NZ, got a call from Vacation Club last night and Affordable Holidays tonight... I had to hang up as they were hard selling...
has anyone noticed that the marketeers sound like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfprIxNfCjk
come on the voice is so similar... they must get there english training from a Mac or computer simulator?
I just got a call from 'affordable vacations' and as she was telling me about the companys promotion and how my ph number was one of the few lucky numbers selected to be apart of their latest promotion I was busy googling it! and came across this page, so while she was bleating on in what i guess she THOUGHT was english I was reading your posts. While I was reading these complaints she was on the other end of the phone trying to do the exact same thing to me! I think the only part of the conversation i could clearly make out was when she asked "Mastercard or Visa?" to which i replied "Neither!" and hung up.
Thank Goodness for Google!
Apparntly i pretty much won a trip for me and 8 other people to "ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD".. being that ive never won anything before in my life, i hung in there, just on the off chance that perhaps i am just one of those people that gets randomly selected to win a great prize, unfortunately im way to paranoid to ever give someone my credit card details over the phone, or else id be waiting for my "vouchers" right now. and picking which of my freinds i was going to pick, lol, but i had a really good laugh when i came across this blog and knew for sure it was a scam, i kept the guy talking for about 1 hour asking him integral qeustions about his job, company etc. And man-o-man hes good did'nt slip once. and really realy persuasive hahaha hes defintly gona get someone with this scam,, just not me. haha and hopefully not you if you read this. " Affordableholidays.com.au SCAM"
I just had this call, figured it was a scam so managed to get rid of the guy on the phone, asked them to remove my phone number from their database, then the phone goes 1 minute later and it's the same guy 'Louis Mac' with heavily accented English, he sounded Indian, when he discovered that he'd already spoken to me he dropped the phone then put me on hold.....very pleased to check on here and discover they are a scam and I was right to get rid of them - phew. Thanks everyone for posting your comments.
I have been scammed by these Indians too. I was cold-called by Shaun Benedict on 30 March. I was one of only 15 from the South Island that was lucky enough to be offered these vouchers. His "supervisor", Mathew Davidson pressurised me to give my credit card no: at the same time I was reading it out, I kept repeating, "I am not going to pay for this" - how stupid is that! I was told all the contact details and the website, which I looked up after the call. It looked legitimate. The vouchers and cashvantage card were delivered and AUD$299 taken. It wasn't until I searched it on Google that I realised it is a scam. Then I became worried. I acted on their refunds and cancellation policy, returned the vouchers and card, demanding a refund. "an administrative cancellation fee of AUD $50 applies." My account has been credited AUD$249. A lesson learnt.
Thank God for Google! I was approached to work for this company yesterday. They say they got my resume from a employment agency I have never even heard of. They were quoting from an old Resume that must be floating around. They are in Queensland, in Maroochydore and have been around for a years. The women on the phone sounded so nice and genuine.Being a bit desperate for work, I almost went for an interview today and would have given them a free work trial, but decided to Google it instead. I am keen to work, so I must have a sucker sticker on my forehead.
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Yup! A SCAM! My grandparents just got a call from them saying that they have won $30'000 in travel vouchers, and all they have to pay is $500 in admin fees. They gave them their credit card details and just got two large amounts withdrawn from these jerks. Who could be okay with robbing people like this? Makes me so angry!!
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