Vacation Discounters

I just returned from an amazing Hawaiian vacation planned by Lu Maggiora of Vacation Discounters. She planned each detail perfectly. The flight timings allowed me to enjoy each day to the fullest. The hotels were comfortable, affordable, and centrally located so daytime adventures could be enjoyed with ease. Pre-​paying the vacation allowed me to enjoy my time on the Big Island without worrying about huge bills upon my return. Lu is attentive yet not intrusive as you decide the specifics of your trip. Give her an idea and let her work her magic to loosely structure a trip that gives you freedom to enjoy your destination! I will most definitely be working with her again!

I recently used Vacation Discounters to book a trip to Europe. There were problems and mistakes almost every step of the way by this company. The president of the company told me over the phone that my file had been ignored and pushed aside on more than one occasion. She apologized for the delay, yet the service did not improve. I am still working on getting issues resolved, without much luck. They are refusing to discuss any issues further with me now. In my opinion and from my experience, working with Vacation Discounters is beyond stressful and I cannot recommend their services to anyone.
I have a medical condition requiring me to get up and move around as much as possible on long plane trips. My friends and I made this very clear to Vacation Discounters on multiple occasions and through several emails. Hotels and flights were booked, yet I didn’t receive any confirmations or itineraries from Vacation Discounters. It took weeks to get confirmation on the seats and I was told by an agent in an email that I had aisle seats for all segments of my flights. Weeks later, and as other problems were unfolding, I had a funny feeling that was not true and I decided to investigate this myself. Having very little information, I started calling airlines to find out where my seats were on each flight. This was difficult to do as I didn’t have any confirmation or reservation numbers. I soon learned that Vacation Discounters had booked me a middle seat on my long flight from the Bay Area to Paris. I immediately called Vacation Discounters to resolve this issue. I was told it would be looked into and I would receive a phone call the following day with my options. I never received a phone call. Instead, I received an email that my credit card was charged $ 98 to upgrade my seat. I never authorized this charge to my credit card and felt I should not be held responsible for paying a fee to fix a mistake they made. I called and emailed back to dispute this, and was given, in my opinion, less than polite answers when I asked Vacation Discounters to take responsibility for this mistake and to refund my money. This went back and forth for several days. Finally, another agent had to step in to rectify the situation.
Other problems include not having complete information until only a few short weeks before the trip, being charged two nights for a hotel I wasn’t in (I was still in the United States and they knew this because they had booked my plane flights. Vacation Discounters refuses to discuss this with me or offer any kind of refund, so I am out over $ 200), name spelled incorrectly on my friends airline tickets (did get resolved only days before leaving), having to book my own transportation between cities and having to book my own tours. These last two items were supposed to be included in the booking fee, but where not handled. Then, when we arrived in our final city, we were surprised at the check in desk to learn that Vacation Discounters had booked a single twin bed for me and my friend. Thank goodness the hotel understood our frustration and had availability to accommodate us. If not, we would have had to search the city for vacancy somewhere else or take turns sleeping on the floor.
I am so unhappy with my experience that I will never use Vacation Discounters again to plan any other trips.

Vacation Discounters was fantastic! Very professional and organized! We used them to help plan our honeymoon. Since we weren’t sure where to go on our honeymoon or what to do while we were there, they really helped us with the decision. After much discussion with some agents who had actually been to some of the places we were considering, we knew that Tahiti was the place for our honeymoon.
The agents we talked with at Vacation Discounters were friendly, very knowledgeable, easy to work with and patient. They gave us plenty of options and worked within our budget. They planned some amazing activities for us while we were there. My favorite was swimming with the dolphins! We had everything we needed before leaving for our honeymoon. Our honeymoon included 2 islands, Tahiti and Bora Bora. It was so romantic and everything was perfect; truly a dream come true!
HUGE BONUS… the whole trip was perfectly planned from top to bottom and it was a flawless experience! I will be using Vacation Discounters for all my future travel needs!
Thank you, Vacation Discounters for a fabulous honeymoon!”

Our initial conversations with Vacation Discounters sounded very promising. The agent I talked with over the phone was very enthusiastic about all the different places we could stop on the trip, and I left with a good feeling.
Then came time for this company to actually do the work of booking the trip, and I had a totally different experience. They started off by staying in contact a few times over email but never really booking anything. After a few weeks, I finally I asked them to stop delaying things and actually book the flights and hotels and excursions. They booked some of the flights, but not all. We had waited so long that my wife and I didn’t even get to sit next to each other on the 10 hour plane flight, which they didn’t even mention. I had to find out about this on my own when looking at our plane tickets.
We ended up realizing with only a few days left before our trip that not only had they not booked ANY excursions, but they had even missed a plane flight and a train ticket between cities. We had to book these things ourselves last minute. When we tried to talk to them about these issues, they would get very defensive and yell at us like we were being too demanding by expecting them to do all this work.
We were able to save our trip by putting in over 8 hours of booking transportation and excursions last minute before the trip, and I’m certain we paid top prices for those things since we didn’t book in advance. Especially the plane flight.
I would not recommend you use this company if you’re expecting to be able to trust them to take care of everything without you having to constantly hound them to make sure they remembered to actually book everything.
One other thing, the agents at this place go on so many vacations themselves it’s no wonder they don’t get any work done. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to contact our agent only to hear she was once again out of town for a week. For our one trip, we ended up dealing with 3 different agents if that tells you anything.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED — STAY AWAY :(