The next time you receive an invitation offering a free cruise or airline tickets if you attend a sales seminar with your spouse and your credit card, please do The Watchdog a favor: Remember the Harbin family.
The Harbins, along with thousands of other North Texans, received invites with a return address showing the logo of Royal Caribbean International cruise line. The letters included fake boarding passes with the recipients’ names on them.
The letters were actually from Oasis Getaway, a travel club that opened temporary quarters in a business campus off Southlake Boulevard. Oasis Getaway used the logo until Royal Caribbean lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter.
The letters promised a cruise in return for a sales pitch. Kenneth and Jeanne Harbin of Justin like cruises, so they went to Southlake to hear the presentation.
The salesman, Kenneth Harbin recalls, “was slick but believable.”
One salesman was a fast talker from New Jersey who told his personal story. His father left his family. His mother had cancer. He never got to take a vacation. But when he joined the travel program he was now selling, he got to see the world. He’s happily married. Oh, and he’s found Jesus.
And guess what? He sells the same happiness to you for $8,995.
For that one-time payment on a credit card, Oasis Getaway promised to help book vacations around the world at lower prices than generally available.
Oasis Getaway claimed 31 years of travel experience on its website. Actually, the company was only a few months old.
The company sold its services to North Texans by explaining that its partner company purchased vacation packages in bulk and could offer low rates and excellent service for resorts, hotels, cruises, airline tickets and many other travel packages. For families that traveled a lot, the cost would pay for itself in savings, the sales staff promised.
The Harbins have six children, so they bought seven weeks of condo time, plus the lifetime membership, for a negotiated price of $7,294.
The partner, Reservation Services International of Florida, did provide the Harbins prices that were several hundred dollars lower than what they found on their own and with an actual travel agent.
Oasis offered contracts for lifetime memberships with only a few hundred dollars a year more required for annual dues. Hundreds of Texans paid for memberships, some as low as $3,000, others as high as $10,000.
The Harbins were given five days to cancel. But they didn’t test the service to book vacation trips until a few months later. They said Reservations Services International was slow getting back with price quotes. Sometimes they waited more than a week.
The delays made the Harbins impatient. They booked trips without RSI’s help.
In a protest letter to Oasis Getaway’s owner, the Harbins wrote that they found the membership they bought to be “completely useless so far.”
The Harbins asked for a refund, but they were told the company did not like to give refunds.
So the Harbins researched the company’s owners through state records. Then they filed a small claims lawsuit in an Irving Justice of the Peace court. Oasis Getaway no longer runs sales seminars in Texas, but it lists a residential address in Irving as its current mailing address.
Last week, the Harbins and the Oasis Getaway owners stood in a busy hallway outside the Justice of the Peace court haggling over the amount of a refund.
The owners, Thanh “Tony” Q. Nguyen of Irving and Linh C. Dinh of Duluth, Ga., made the case in the hallway that customers such as the Harbins have the “wrong expectations” about their services.
The Harbins countered that they were only asking for what was promised in the sales seminar.
Dinh has been in the travel business for years. A club he owned in Georgia settled charges of trade and commerce violations for $160,000 in penalties and $35,000 in costs, Georgia records show.
The Georgia Office of Consumer Affairs accused Dinh’s company of misleading customers about the location of travel destinations, not allowing refunds and cancellations, asking customers to pay $249 for free tickets, lying to customers about how the business worked, and using others’ logos to indicate partnerships that did not exist.
The company denied the charges but paid the penalty. As part of that, 43 Georgia customers received refunds of $700 to $7,200.
This time it wasn’t a powerful state agency but Kenneth and Jeanne Harbin. In the hallway, the couple and the owners batted refund numbers back and forth like a tennis rally.
The clincher came when Jeanne Harbin said she didn’t care whether the case went to trial because that would leave a scar on the company’s permanent record that other customers would see.
Hearing that, the owners agreed to refund the Harbins $5,500 in exchange for them dropping the lawsuit. The couple agreed.
Dinh and Nguyen declined to talk to me. “Reporters are never fair,” Dinh said in the parking lot.
Kenneth Harbin’s advice for anyone receiving a come-on with free cruise or airline tickets: “Throw it away.”
Oh, and the Harbins never took the promised free cruise because of paperwork complications.
Read more stories on Watchdog Nation about Oasis Getaway here and here.
In the Know: Tips
Travel clubs are risky. Some who sign a contract after a high-pitched sales seminar later regret it.
Be skeptical of offers of free cruises or airplane tickets in exchange for attending a sales presentation.
Never sign a contract for a travel club immediately after a hard sell. Take the contract home; show it to a lawyer and family members.
If a salesman warns that a deal is no good if you don’t sign immediately, steer clear.
Always check out a club’s reviews on the Internet to find out whether promised services are delivered.
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