Although it has been some time now since we last posted an article about the holiday company Voyager Travel and Lifestyle Holidays, there certainly have been some changes.
After the Gran Canaria police raids in the offices from Voyager Travel in July 2013, a couple of months later they “re-appeared” with new companies and new names such as Compass or Go-Compass.
But they seem to have changed yet again to another name and the product they are selling lately is called Orbit Travel – http://orbittravel4u.com. Orbit Travel is a product from Orbit Management, and these companies are directly connected to Voyager Travel, Compass, Day International Marketing and ReclaimGc.
Their Modus Operandi to attract consumers has not really changed a lot, and we continue to hear testimonials from holiday makers who have been approached in the streets from Gran Canaria by the so called OPC’s with scratch-cards. These scratch cards by the way are totally forbidden by the municipal regulations. These OPC’s give the consumer the impression they are working on a promotion from the Canarian Tourist Board.
Once the consumer receives the “main prize” on the scratch card he is quickly taken to the offices from Orbit Travel.
This sales office continues to be based in the Club Puerto Atlántico hotel, on the roof terrace, which is a space that lacked any municipal license for such activity. The very same place where Voyager travel & Compass were sold.
Holidaymakers are told the meeting will take around 90 minutes, but as happens most of the times, the 90 minutes are not even near the hours and hours of sales talk the people have to go through.
Main part of this sales pitch is the Holiday Membership of Orbit Travel, which can be for 4 years or even 6 years. The difference being the price and amount of accommodation that can be booked.
The consumer is presented this package for 4 to 6 years as a complete holiday package, which includes accommodation, access to worldwide resorts, discounted flights and some people also have a “free cruise” thrown in.
The way this is presented, as a membership for several years, this product is to be considered a “long term” holiday product, and consequently have a cooling off period of 14 days, without any deposit payment on the day, as stipulated by the European Directive.
But this is not what is reflected in the paperwork which is presented to the consumers who buy into this, and are though requested a substantial deposit on the day.
How? Well the invoice does actually not show a “membership” for several years, but is broken down to a purchase of several individual holiday accommodation vouchers.
The consumer receives these vouchers for each year filled in individually and each voucher has duration of less than 12 months for the corresponding year. So clearly the paperwork is set up to fool the European Directive on long-term holiday products and tricks the consumer into paying a deposit without a decent cooling off.
Great is the surprise of those consumers who after signing up for this, and paying the deposit, have a second thought and try to cancel. Because the cancellation is refused and a refund is not an option as per Orbit Management.
It is of course questionable why companies like this keep on changing their names, and keeps on telling one thing in the presentation and shows something different in the paperwork.
Unfortunately for those who manage to get through the 4 or more hours lasting meeting, the paperwork looks all the same and is most of the times signed for the sake of finally getting “out of there”.
If you have been to a presentation of a Holiday club or maybe the one from Orbit Travel, then we would like to hear from you!
You can email us at customercare@mindtimeshare.com or place a comment on this blog
Mindtimeshare 
I have been done by these when they were voyager travel, I actually have lost £6000.00 and what they did was keep my girlfriend (now wife) there whilst I went to get my debit card, they plied her with booze whilst they transported me back to my hotel to get my card. I cant believe I fell for such a sc** and I am making moves to try and get my money back, I have to try but I don’t think I will be successful as its been 8 years. We weren’t even given a 14 day cool off, it was a hard pressured sale and there were a couple of them around me when I was making the payments. My bank even contacted me at the time to ask what was happening and if it was me doing it, which sadly, it was. Lesson learned I think but I am going to try to recover my money or at least some of it because I feel if I don’t try, I wont know the answer. I will put it down as a bad experience and a very expensive lesson learned.
Dave in Cornwall.
To anyone out there who have been ‘duped’ into buying into this ridiculous holiday club please do not be disheartened, there is light at the end of the tunnel! We know because our dispute with the bank from whom we have the credit card on which we paid the deposit to these heartless sc**, have just informed us that it has been settled in our favour. It has taken us since it happened at the end of March to receive this fantastic news and, to be honest it hasn’t been the easiest thing I have ever done, but with the help and guidance I have received from Alberto at mindtimeshare it is finally resolved. I am not sure if Orbit have given the money to the bank but I have a refund and if you actually read up on these situations, if you have paid by credit card the credit card provider is ‘jointly and severally liable’ for this payment. So the answer is, please don’t give up! Alberto has been willing to answer any questions I have had, give me advice on what to do next and basically given me the encouragement to carry on.
If all this fails, you can always go to the Ombudsman who will give you further advice and if necessary (if you are not getting any joy from the bank) take up your case (with the bank) to help you get your hard earned money back. It didn’t come to this for us and if anybody reading this would like to ask me anything with regards to the process, please feel free to ask.
I hope this helps other people, and once again, a great big shout out to mindtimeshare! Please don’t let these s***bags win! Warn as many people as you can about this dubious company and lets hope it wont be too much longer before justice can be done and they are stopped doing this to people once and for all!
We too were sold by by this marvellous opportunity they present to you. If everything they said was true it would have been perfect for us as we were looking to return to GC and make a couple of big trips over the next few years. Sadly very little turned out to be true and they refused to honour any 14 day cooling off period. Once you leave the island the Omic and police arent interested and Orbit just tucks itself up in its terms and conditions and plays dead.
Fortunately we did not sign up to a direct debit or debit card payment system so they could not take any more money from us but they had a £2000 deposit by credit card.
We claimed against our credit card company under section 75 and although they denied the claim initially we were persistent and when we appealled WE WON!!! Our deposit was returned and any interest accrued on that sum was cancelled.
It has truly put us off GC – such a shame this practice is allowed to continue.
Hiya Jackie
Good to hear you got your money back 🙂 we are just going through exactly the same thing. The bank have refunded us the money but when they tried to claim it back from Orbit they had the cheek to dispute it! I will not give up though, they are sc** and I wouldn’t mind but, if you look on one of their facebook pages they are championing people getting money back from timeshares and even saying if they message them they will help them do it!!!! They really are the most hard faced people we have ever come across! I have sent our appeal and answers to the ‘counter dispute’ Orbit presented, so lets see what happens, we wont give up though, especially now we have read your story. I must give a shout out to Alberto, don’t know what e would have done without his help and advice. Well done
My Dad got stung by them and they also told him he could get is money back from another timeshare he has got they took him and his partner to some solicitors and they wanted ten grand up front ,my father was going to give it them until I looked into it and found out what they are really like sc****** innocent honest people out of thousands of pounds he paid a deposit of £1100 pound and if he had not said anything he would be £11,100 out of pocket
Pointless as you will never get your money back. Got stung by the same bunch of tossers 3 years ago and lost 1,500 euro. I did speak via email with Alberto Garcia from mindtimeshare but nothing helped me get any refund. Wrote the money off to an extremely bad experience and probably wont ever return to GC. Feel sorry for all the other people who lost cash too. They cant be stopped because there is a loophole in the law and their contracts which allows them to keep doing this. No charges were ever brought upon Kaiser, Day or Beetson and walked free with 3.4 million of peoples money only for them to change their name again and do it all over again with more unsuspecting tourist’s to rape their cash from. Until Spain / GC law changes then this will continue to be an issue. They need to oust these vermin from the streets.