Vacations Made Not-So-Easy

Despite their easy-to-use website, nothing about these guys is "easy."

My wife and I booked a sailing snorkeling tour from their website for our trip to Cabo. To my surprise, the receipt contained no information whatsoever about where the tour would take place, the name of the local tour company, or even the name of the boat. Only a cryptic "11:00 AM." The phone number they provided was for a company in Mexico City where no one spoke any English.

Once we arrived in Cabo, it took our bilingual concierge several days and multiple attempts to reach anybody at that number who knew what was going on, and we found out the location just in time: the local marina, at the boat named Pez Gato.

We arrived at the gate for the boat dock just before 11 AM, but marina security informed us that our boat had already sailed an hour earlier at 10 AM and wouldn't let us through. We were forced to buy another, separate boat trip from another company for a fraction of VME's price, and I'm glad we did because it was the best part of our vacation.

When we returned stateside, we contacted Matt Cook, Operations Manager for Vacations Made Easy, for a refund, but he flat our refused. At that point we turned it over to our credit card company to dispute the charges, along with all our receipts from the other trip we took, thinking we would surely get our money back.

But apparently, all they have to do is claim they provided the service to us without providing any proof. Because of their strict no refund policy, we were screwed from the get-go.

We will never, never, ever use Vacations Made Easy again. I recommend always purchasing vacation activities directly from the hotel concierge at your destination, or from the venue itself.