Summer comes to an end, and emails start coming in from consumers who signed up for all kinds of holiday products during their summer break.
And not surprisingly we have gone back to the stories of scratch-cards offered in the streets of Tenerife, popping into a meeting to pick up the prize and coming out of there after hours and hours, drained and with a signed agreement in their hands.
The latest one we have heard of is the scratch card prize that takes you to a meeting where the company ABTG Advantage British Travel Group is offering their product.
The product they offer seems to be a trial membership, which gives you access to a “travel system” that, provides discounted travel such as accommodation and flights.
This membership is offered for different amount of years, with the shortest being the 2 year one.
They also add 2 weeks of prepaid vouchers.
The paperwork indicates you become a member of Top Travel Europe and they handle all reservation requests.
Top Travel Europe has a website www.toptraveleurope.net where you can only access their reservation system with a client code.
The company Top Travel Europe is registered in Holland.
On their website there is no contact address for their offices.
In the paperwork it is pointed out that the Dutch law governs the agreement and it clarifies the consumer is not buying any property or timeshare.
That might be correct, but the consumer is buying into a membership with duration over 12 months, and purely related to holiday products, and this does fall under the European Law, which stipulates clearly that the consumer should be offered a 14-day cooling off period with no exchange of money.
The agreement also mentions a yearly fee of 75 euros, which has been scrapped by hand with a pen and noted as N/A. It is not scrapped though from the list of obligations of the members, so which one is the valid one?
The consumer is actually buying from ABTG Advantage British Travel Group a Spanish registered and based company and acting on behalf of Top Travel Europe.
The email address for ABTG is advantage_sl@mail.com and they do not seem to have a domain name or website.
Telephone number (34) 922 456 773
The purchase of the membership and 2 weeks of prepaid vouchers requires a payment on the day.
It is worrying that consumers have mentioned that on the day they attended this meeting, the credit card machine was not working and they were kindly accompanied to the nearest ATM machine to get the money and pay to ABTG.
Obviously in this way you are paying in CASH and the payment is not covered by any protection such as the consumer act for credit card payments.
Consumers should be careful when running into these so called “OPC” workers in the streets whilst on holidays, who offer scratch cards and promise great prizes that just need to be picked up.
Do not let your guard down, and always allow yourself a decent cooling off period before signing any paperwork or paying any money.
There is no such thing as offers only valid on the same day!
Have you experienced something similar on your holidays and would like to have more information? Please contact us through the CONTACT FORM or place a comment on this blog.
Mindtimeshare 
“LUCKY ESCAPE” The sc** artists at Club Flamingo are called Reserva Directa they operate a sales floor underneath the hotel. We were took downstairs by a street tout after my wife was convinced we had won over €1000 in cash!! after the obvious hellish experience we got out of there and i did a google search of Reserva Directa SL It is the same owners as other companies linked to club class sc*****s in Tenerife, when trying to sell us a package the financial guy at the end insisted we came to Club Flamingo for the first holiday which seemed strange but i have since learned after speaking to a lady at the hotel that they try to sell you a timeshare with grand holidays at the club flamingo on the first holiday and if you don’t buy you are treated terribly by them. How is this even possible in this day and age with the EU (etc)??
This sounds very much like Realistix Solutions back in 2013 😡
Indeed it does!
The system to book cheap holidays…the extra weeks…very similar
Regards
Customer Care
Far too many using the same MO, Grand Holidays are my Nemesis
Let me guess, the lucky winners had to claim their “prize” from the Flamingo Club??
Sounds like the people who ri**** me and others off in 2003 and later full circle holidays, portway leisure, level 9 resolutions, half moon holdings,resort properties need I go on!!
Oh dear, these people never give up, do they! If this is the same company, many years ago we got caught out by them but they called themselves Holiday Direkt. Realising we had been taken in and made a terrible mistake, we spent many months arguing and refusing to pay their “maintenance” fees. Eventually they told us that “due to non payment and refusal to adhere by their rules they could not longer let us be members of this exclusive club”. We were very happy with the outcome, naturally! Some time later, we received a letter stating that our membership had been cancelled as we weren’the the right kind of members to promote the club.We’ve never heard from them since! Hooray!!!
This sounds like another Club Class type of scam, whatever you do don’t sign for anything like this it will be a c** and you could end up losing thousands of pounds.
Sounds more or less exactly the same c** as Club Class (etc) were using in 2006.