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Original Message:

I also had a bad experience with Vacation Homes Only (by Russ M.):

We had an experience like the others on the page. We booked three timeshares at Hilton Hawaiian Village for a week beginning on a Sunday. We couldn't get the confirmation number number in advance, as is Preston's m.o. When I checked in I was told when we checked in that 2 of our 3 units actually started on the previous day (and ended a day early). I called Preston, he acted like this was no big deal. I, of course, was stressing out about it throughout the whole trip. All week I called and texted them and got no response or was told "we're working on it, don't worry about it."

Finally on Friday night I was getting nervous. We were planning an all day excursion the following day and I needed to know if we were able to go on it or not because I didn't know if I was going to be packing up and moving rooms the next morning instead. He told us one of the units was reserved for the next day, but he was still working on the other one. As of midnight, I still hadn't heard from him. I woke up at 9 am to a message telling me to enjoy my morning and call him once I had had my coffee. I assumed all was okay... which was the wrong assumption! I called him and got no response, then got a text saying we needed to pack up, we were not going to be able to stay in that unit that night. I texted him back and asked what was going on and asked him to call me because I didn't want to try to work this all out via text. He wouldn't call me, but told me that they were moving us out of our two bedroom unit in the Rainbow Tower to a one bedroom unit in the Kalia Tower. I told him we needed two bedrooms and he said that he could only get us the one. I said okay, and then he said that the Kalia Tower unit was now gone. Now he told us he was moving us into a regular hotel room. I told him we needed at least two bedrooms since we had a two bedroom unit and he said no, this was all he could get for me. I agreed since I had no choice... I was afraid my next option was going to be a cardboard box in the alley.

Needless to say, that day's excursion was shot, we had to hurry and pack everything we had into our suitcases (and only had an hour to do it since he took so long getting back to us). I had to go down, stand in line, check into the new hotel room, our entire family that had previously been in a 2 bedroom timeshare now crammed into a single hotel room. By the time this was all done it was after noon. Not the way I wanted to spend my final day in Hawaii!

We did request a refund of $542 (1/7 of what we had paid since they didn't deliver on the 7th day). They approved it in July, but still hadn't been paid as of September so I sent another could of emails and they responded that my check wasn't mailed due to an admin oversight, and they sent me the check in late September.

Bottom line... if you choose to use VHO, understand that you will not have any confirmation of your unit ahead of time, your "week" could be cobbled together from multiple units, you might have to move units partway through your week and the whole week might not be in the same type of unit (i.e. getting moved from a 2 bedroom timeshare into a standard hotel room).