Free holiday ‘prize’ with £5k price tag
Couple driven to desperation by hard sell vacation touts
IF ever you wanted a reason to ignore those pushy touts that collar you on holiday insisting that you’ve won a great prize, here it is.
Heather Pollard and her friend Ian O’Connor were enjoying a break in the Canary Islands when they went to a tour shop to buy tickets to visit a nearby market in Costa Teguise, Lanzarote.
While they were there some prize draw tickets were thrust into their hands. Ian checked his and he had apparently won a week’s holiday.
To collect the prizes they had to visit the offices of Xfinity Sands SL.
“That was a fatal mistake,” Heather, 64, now says.
Salesman Mark Holden “began to give us the hard sell”, Heather recalls, adding: “It was so intense that I began to wonder how I could get out of there.”
Xfinity Sands turned out to be flogging membership of Mtas.eu, which describes itself as “an internet-based discount club” offering “a very simple but unique holiday concept”.
“It just kept on and on. Ian was getting agitated,” said Heather.
“He’d being seeing a memory clinic over a number of months and had become more and more forgetful and stressed in difficult situations.”
There wasn’t even any respite when she asked to use the toilet, one of Holden’s colleagues escorting her there and back.
Eventually, she says, “I decided to sign just to get out”, paying a £900 deposit by credit card to join Mtas.
The prize of a free holiday never materialised, though they were given tickets for the market.
“We shot out of the room and breathed a sigh of relief,” said Heather.
“I tried to cancel after returning to the hotel but my bank said the transaction had gone through. I didn’t even use the tickets to the market as I was so sick at what had happened.”
When back home in Hornsea, East Yorkshire, Heather phoned Mr Holden, only to be told that there was no cooling off period.
She pointed out that Ian, 69, had been diagnosed with dementia.
Holden replied – and if this is true it is beyond disgusting – that he could still take the holidays but “just bring nappies for him”. He added that if she didn’t pay the balance of £4,190 for one year’s membership of Mtas then he’d put debt collectors on to her.
And he did. Last month, Heather received a letter from Daniels Silverman, who say they are “One of the top debt collection and credit management companies in the UK”.
It demanded payment within seven days “to avoid the possibility of further action”. I put Heather’s statement to Mark Holden at Xfinity and asked: “Will you be refunding the money paid by Miss Pollard following your sales tactics and ending action to recover any further money?”
My email to Mtas included the questions: “Where are you incorporated? What are the names of your directors and ultimate controlling party?” I also asked for evidence of the claims on the document given to Heather that it can get 30% discounts on package holidays and up to 70% off cruises. Finally, I contacted Daniels Silverman saying I hoped it would have nothing more to do with Xfinity Sands “unless you can confirm that Heather’s account is substantially inaccurate”. None of the companies replied, but Heather did get back to me to say that Mtas had told her that it would cancel the deal if she deleted the comments she’d posted online. Shortly afterwards she told me: “They have refunded me by bank transfer.
“Thanks very much for your help in closing an awful few months. “Amazing the power of the Press.”
‘‘ We paid a deposit of £900 just to escape from their offices