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Re: Vida Vacations & Grand Mayan lies (by Michelle M.):

We are in exactly the same boat. We were told Vida Dollars are equivalent to US dollars and you can use them for cost of cruises or to buy merchandise. However, the sales woman never told us the amount of redemption is case by case, not like a straight redemption. The way she had described to us many times during the presentation is that you simply just redeem the dollars to go on cruises or buy wine or whatever and that there is no restrictions.

For example, if the cruise costs $1000 and you have $1500 Vida Dollars, you cannot just use the Vida Dollars towards your $1000 cruise. You will only be allowed to "buy down" a certain amount with your Vida Dollars, and this "certain amount" that you can buy down is different depending on the season, the cruise line, the cabin type. You might only be able to redeem $50 for one cruise or $400 with another.

We find out how it actually worked several weeks after we signed the contract because it took them 2 weeks to send us the login information so that I can access the website to see what I want to redeem my Vida Dollars for and another week of browsing their site to see what they have to offer. I also found out that with merchandise that you can redeem with Vida Dollars, it's just a discount, like 3% off this and that, etc., which I can actually buy cheaper somewhere else without any discount. The whole thing is a scam. By the time I found out how the whole thing actually works it was way past the 5 days rescission period. In fact, the rescission period was over before we left the resort to go home.

I filed a dispute with my credit card company but they are saying that I didn't follow the cancellation policy to cancel the contract within the 5 days. However, we didn't even know what they sold us is not what we got until after the 5 days. It's like buying something with a 5 days return policy (from the day of purchase) and you don't actually receive the merchandise until 10 days later (which is already after the return period). Upon which time you found out the item you purchased is "not as described", but there isn't anything you can do about it because it was already past the returning window. How is that legal?

Anyways, this is giving me a lot of stress... Any help or advise is appreciated. Thank you.