Always on Vacation!

[Bellywobble]

I've had a free listing with this company. It has brought in very few enquiries however one has come in today.

Unfortunately I am unable to access it unless I pay for a listing!This has never happened before.

I have no intention of paying. Even if I weren't already fully booked I wouldn't wish to pay for a site that only brings the odd enquiry.

I'm really appalled though that I am now unable to rspond to this enquirer.

I have asked them to remove my listing and do the decent thing iin letting the enquirer know that the dates are unavailable.

So, if you have a free listing with this site, beware!

[Tizfata]

Dear Bellywobble,
I only thank God that Always on Vacation has these beautiful buttons:
Clear all
and
Delete
Then, SAVE! !!!
PS: It is a very common pattern: useless sites start all at once to deliver enquiries BUT you have to pay.
Happened with IHA and Pure... No thanks, but no!

[Tyler_Jensen]

Bellywobble,

We will make sure your free listing is removed from distribution. At the time of your last free inquiry, we sent you an email informing you that it would be your final free inquiry and informed you that any additional inquiries would be placed on hold. There were instructions on how to contact our support department to remove your listing if you did not want to continue, or how to continue distributing with our network. Its too bad you did not take action at that time.

You can pm me your listing id number, or send an email to trialsupport@alwaysonvacation.com or sales@alwaysonvacation.com, and your listing will be removed.

In the future, our support is completed much more timely if you contact us directly.

[greenbarn]

Is there any way to stop the incessant cold calling? I sent an email saying we were not interested, but still the nuisance calls continue.

There's an inverse square law in operation here; the likelihood of signing up to any listing site decreases as the square of the number of nuisance calls. AOV currently have a likelihood factor of something less than "Snowball in Hell" - ie off the bottom of the scale.

Conversely, the irritation factor increases as the square of the number of nuisance calls. With the recently announced death of a certain terrorist, AOV are now in with a very good chance of making it to the top of the hate list.

Perhaps Tyler, you could tell Jason Adwani to a) read his emails and b) stop being a bloody nuisance.

That would be very much appreciated.

[Tyler_Jensen]

Greenbarn

I have discussed this with Jason and sent a pm to you requesting your phone number so that I can run a report and remove it from our lists.

[Bellywobble]

I never received that email. If I had I would have removed my listing at that time.

I did contact you directly yesterday asking that the listing is removed.

I will email you the details for removal, thank you.

[greenbarn]

Greenbarn

I have discussed this with Jason and sent a pm to you requesting your phone number so that I can run a report and remove it from our lists.

Thanks. PM with number sent.

[Lovely Lucca]

Bellywobble,

We will make sure your free listing is removed from distribution. At the time of your last free inquiry, we sent you an email informing you that it would be your final free inquiry and informed you that any additional inquiries would be placed on hold. There were instructions on how to contact our support department to remove your listing if you did not want to continue, or how to continue distributing with our network. Its too bad you did not take action at that time.

You can pm me your listing id number, or send an email to trialsupport@alwaysonvacation.com or sales@alwaysonvacation.com, and your listing will be removed.

In the future, our support is completed much more timely if you contact us directly.

Well what do you know I've been trying to get hold of someone from AOV for months!

I stupidly bought a year's advertising because it was cheap & seemed to have some good properties in my area. Unfortunately I did so just before I discovered this forum & learnt of the appalling experiences from advertisers on your site. I also learnt that a number of these people had experienced unauthorized transactions on their credit cards & had had their membership automatically renewed despite having checked the box stating they did not want this.

Deeply concerned, I tried to cancel my listing as I had not placed the advert live so had used no advertising time. I was told it would be cancelled & my money refunded. But nothing happened. I rang & emailed & was promised over & over & over again that my refund was being processed. But 6 months later it was never refunded.

AOV went from cold-calling relentlessly to being impossible to get hold of. Funny that...

I spoke to someone at your California telephone number who works for another vacation rental service who used to work for you (she's pissed off with you btw because you haven't changed your number & she keeps getting AOV calls). She said she left due to your "terrible business practices" & advised the only way I'd get my money back would be to do a charge-back on my credit card. That was not possible as I only had verbal assurances from AOV not written ones.

Despite the fact you probably won't read this it's nice to tell you personally what a disgrace I think your company, is & how annoyed I am to have lost money to cowboys.

The only thing that makes me feel better is that as a journalist I'm writing a piece on rental listing sites & AOV will be getting as bad coverage as possible on the right side of libel law.

[Chianti]

Lovely Lucca

I'm sorry to hear of your experience but applaud your stance. This company has a smell about it worse than rotten eggs, I too have never received a response to emails and hope our property has been removed.

May I suggest that you ensure that a copy of whatever you write goes to the executives at Ryanair, they won't of course help you get a refund, but your evidence will show them their partners are lacking in integrity and honesty (best not to use the words I would like to use).

[Tyler_Jensen]

Lovely Lucca,

Please let me know what phone numbers you were calling. I am curious who you spoke with that used to be an employee of ours. We have had some employees that were fired for many reasons, including poor customer service. They now work for competing services and A lot of people have confused them for our sales team because the will sometimes mention that they worked for us.

PM me the number and I will look into it. I can assure you that everytime I call in to our support line I do not experience this tye of an issue.

Also PM me your information about your refund and if you were due one, I will personally process it.

[Marks]

Why do AOV sales people allways say they are calling from Ryanair? As in "Hello, I'm calling from Ryanair concerning your apartment in Spain."

[Chianti]

Why do AoV fail to respond to emails?

[Lovely Lucca]

Lovely Lucca,

Please let me know what phone numbers you were calling. I am curious who you spoke with that used to be an employee of ours. We have had some employees that were fired for many reasons, including poor customer service. They now work for competing services and A lot of people have confused them for our sales team because the will sometimes mention that they worked for us.

PM me the number and I will look into it. I can assure you that everytime I call in to our support line I do not experience this tye of an issue.

Also PM me your information about your refund and if you were due one, I will personally process it.

The telephone number I called was featured on your website. A lady answered the phone with another company name & I said "Oh I'm terribly sorry I thought this was AOV" and she said that AOV used to be located there but they'd moved & hadn't forwarded the calls so she received many calls for AOV.

I asked her if she knew whether AOV was a genuine company or simply a scam, (at that point I suspected the latter) and she replied that it was indeed a real company it just had "terrible business practices". I was clearly not after her business so there was nothing in it for her. She was more help that than anyone in your Customer Service which is so dire that I can't imagine how bad someone would have to be to get fired.

What information can I give you about the refund? I had nothing in writing from AOV just countless verbal reassurances that it had been proccessed. I will PM you my AOV account number & the names of the people I spoke to. I would be grateful if you could proccess the refund, but in view of my experiences, I won't hold my breath...

[Tyler_Jensen]

I have responded to your private messages.

I appologize, but you are not correct on a couple of your points. I will provide some clarification.

We have a frame of time where all refund requests are immediately processed. Just like the property owners have cancelation policies where they provide refunds, we have cancelation policies as well. You did not request the cancelation in that time, and requested cancelation after your listing had gone live throughout our network. Your traffic reports will confirm this, and can be viewed when logged in to your profile.

I have searched the numbers, and called every one of the numbers on the websites and have not found a number that reaches an old employee. I have requested this number from you in the PM, but you refuse to provide it or show where it is posted. I'm not sure how you want me to correct a potentialy wrong number when you refuse to show me where it is posted. I am thankful of you informing me of the issue, but please provide me the location of the wrong number so that we can resolve the issue.

[Lovely Lucca]

In your PM you say the cancellation period was 7 days & I requested the refund in 9 days. I have never seen any information about a cancellation policy on your site. Anyway it's one thing to change your mind, but quite another to discover serious problems with the company & request a refund.

Here, you say I made the request after the listing had gone live. But I never posted my advert live: I never completed the advert. I expressly told AOV that I was not posting the advert, that I did not want my property on your website. If it is indeed live then that was done by someone from AOV, unauthorised by me, in contradiction to my express wishes.

I was assured by Vik Bhar & others many times that my refund had *already* been proccessed. That I had to wait 2 weeks for the money to appear on my card. I'm not sure how you explain that.

I simply do not trust your motives for wanting to find out more information about the woman I spoke to. If another company is not answering your telephone line, then the problem is solved. Though to be honest, from my experience, I'd be surprised if anyone answered at all.