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Regarding my dealing with Lucas Lanigan when he was at SMTN, I think that he was probably legit. I think where the breakdown came from was the company policy of not securing confirmations verifiable by the resort early enough to ensure actual availability. I had initially booked all of my rooms with a reservation clerk named Renae (at SMTN). My past experience had always been with a different company, who's policy was to obtain and issue confirmation statements upon payment. Well, I paid for the rooms at the time of booking and pretty much removed the subject from my mind. A couple of months later, it dawned on me that I had never received any confirmation notices from SMTN, so I called them. I was told that their company policy was that they didn't issue confirmation notices until 30 days from travel. To me that was unacceptable, I didn't want to wait that long and take the risk of something unexpected happening to my reservation. I expressed my lack of satisfaction with SMTN, who was always understanding when I spoke to them. They told me that they would try to get me the confirmations earlier, but that I would have them no later than the end of December (our travel dates were late March). December came and went and still no confirmation notices. By then my concern was that I was also getting close to being too late to decline the charges on my credit card. By this time my case had been given to the department manager (Lucas). All along, everybody (including Lucas) assured me that my vacation weeks were secure. By January I was practically bouncing off the walls in disgust over the situation and had called every agency I could think of to insure performance on behalf of SMTN, I mean I had already spent 10s of 1,000s of dollars and made plans for 40+ family members that had no idea what was happening. I was maintaining contact practically on a daily weekly basis with Lucas, that developed into daily contact towards the end. At the end of the day, the supplier (that was supposidly Lucas' contact) ended up not having the inventory (or accidentally double booked it with another reservation) and failed to admit it until just a few weeks before our travel dates. Lucas scrambled trying to find alternative accomodations to no avail. He then ended up falling again to promises made by either another supplier, if not the same supplier that dropped the ball originally (I'm not sure). They were going to remedy the situation by putting my family up in a private estate large enough to accomodate our group, and it was to be at their expense. But when Lucas pressured them for confirmation, all contact ceased the the house didn't pan out either. Fortunately, I found alternative accomodations at our desired resort, but they were more than twice what I had already spent. In the end, SMTN honored their promise and covered all of the additional costs associated with the new reservation. It was truely a hair raising experience, and I know that Lucas (along with a couple of other SMTN employees) were held accountable for the episode, and lost his job over the matter. Not knowing the internal affairs or structure of SMTN, I wouldn't be qualified to say if he was truely the responsible party for the failure. I've been told that due to that situation, they have revised their company policy regarding confirmations. And time is going to tell if that is the truth. This week I used SMTN (James Buonarosa), to book my family at the Grand Mayan in Cabo. I booked 8 seperate rooms/weeks. I've been told that I can expect confirmations (verifiable by the resort) no later than January. I wasn't affraid to use SMTN again because as a business owner, I know there will be deals that fall apart. How a company resolves them is where they prove their worthiness. And in my mind, there are probably few companies that would have resolved the matter to the level of completion that SMTN did. Ask me in a couple of weeks if I still stand by them. Stay tuned, I guess.