EBAY travel related bidding

[poohbear2]

Has anyone had any experience with bidding on the week vacations on ebay? There is a week for ORange Lake going for 54.00 or so and I am really surprised. It is for a one bedroom and it says you have to be flexible with dates. The feedback is excellent for the most part. But stilll I have reservations.

 

[floridagirrl2]

They have a lot of pretty negative feedback (including negative follow-ups to previously positive feedback). Some of the feedback says things such as that you have to pay before you can find out what dates are available, you have to book 3-6 months in advance, "Very important details left out of auction," "Was not what you expect for a vacation," "There are hidden charges," etc. I do not have experience with this partiuclar seller, but based on their feedback, I would not bid on their auctions.

 

[Amberle3]

Typically these things work one of two ways:

1) You have to call a certain number to actually make your booking, which turns out to be a booking service rather than the property you're staying at (I hesitate to call them "travel agents". Almost all of these services charge a hefty service fee to confirm the reservation, some of them charge a fee just for researching availability for you. If there's no availability the first time you call and ask them to try again for other dates, you get charged another research fee.

2) You don't have to pay any additional fees, but there's fine print on the vouchers that requires you to sit through a lengthy high-pressure time share sales pitch. And by lengthy I mean upwards of 4 hours.

There are also several different kinds of vouchers for sale out there. Some don't specify the hotel, just that you'll receive "deluxe" accommodations in the city if your choice. That means that instead of the Four Seasons or even Holiday Inn you could be at 1 or 2 star motel in very poor condition.

Be sure to check the descriptions to see exactly what the requirements are - for some of the auctions the bid price is the per night price.

Also feedback for most of these sellers doesn't say anything about actually booking the properties, mostly things like "great communication", "received quickly" and comments like that.

 

[maggiew]

Try http://www.skyauction.com They are reputable with no extra fees. You can get Orange Lake there for pretty reasonable.

Maggie