tabarrett

I'm wondering if anyone has ever purchased a vacation package from Great Value Vacations. They are offering, what sounds like, a fabulous Italy vacation through Groupon for $1500 to Italy's Amalfi Coast and Rome. The trip includes 7 nights hotel and car and airfare from 3 different cities in the US - NY, Chicago and LAX. I'd love to purchase but cannot find any reviews on the company and wonder if I should try it or not. Please advise!

Rastaguytoday

You might try and do a search on Google yourself.

There seems to be many reviews of this company.

Improviser

What you want is something for nothing (or at half price) basically. There is no 'free lunch' in real life and often people find that out the hard way.

Reviews are meaningless however many you find. Often the reviews are writtin by someone from the company being reviewed. Review sites really have little chance of stopping that. Often bad reviews are written by people working for competitors.

Some 'cheap deals' from companies such as Groupon et al end up leaving the supplier with no room for a profit. What do you suppose those suppliers then deliver to the customer?

You get what you pay for and as always caveat emptor applies. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...214-2bf7b.html

tabarrett

Well interestingly enough, I just went to Fodor's Deals section for Europe and next to all the Septre offers was all kinds of Great Value Vacation deals. So if Fodors is listing them, I'm guessing they are reputable. So maybe they are just trying to build their customer base a little more by offering a good deal on groupon? I tried googling this company and could not find any reviews. Thanks for your comments. I will try googling again!

janisj

"Some 'cheap deals' from companies such as Groupon et al end up leaving the supplier with no room for a profit. What do you suppose those suppliers then deliver to the customer?"

Groupon doesn't have anything to do w/ it. The vendor/tour company/merchant decides to post the 'deal' and decides the price/terms/whatever. The VAST majority of groupons are marketing efforts by the vendor - hoping to get return business/loyalty customers.

(The business model isn't working out exactly as planned - but that is for another discussion)

jcjanec

Check out their Facebook page to read testimonials of those who traveled.

Improviser

Which of the reviews are by actual travellers vs. employees of the company janisj? Do you have a way of knowing? I can set up 10 Facebook accounts and post 10 favourable reviews in an hour. As I wrote before, reviews are meaningless unless you know the reviewer or s/he is a well known reviewer.

janisj

"Which of the reviews are by actual travellers vs. employees of the company janisj?"

Huh - I said absolutely NOTHING about Facebook . . . Never have . . . ever - don't participate. Do you just like to argue for argument sake?

Improviser

Sorry janisj, obviously I misread jcjanc's handle as being yours.

tabarrett

Well I'm sorry to start an argument here. I am just an innocent traveler looking for something special is all. Good bye.

Rkoen

We just got back from a tour they arranged through Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice). It was ok. HOWEVER, the hotels/places of accommodation in every case were very far out from the site--a half an hour to nearly an hour. And in these places, few Italians spoke English, so we were always scrambling to discover the way into the City, even with gps (which couldn't locate some of the remote areas). Aer Lingus rules however--they were very good and always on time.

thursdaysd

Hmmm, you joined Fodors just to post this? Sure the company didn't ask you to?

janisj

The moderators assumed your first post was a solicited review and nuked it. Your new one sounds similar. (Great Value Vacations is known for asking their customers to post on travel sites)

Since you've never been on Fodors before "Better than joining just to be negative and discourage others from traveling." probably comes from ignorance of the site - folks on these forums encourage travel - we don't discourage them. But we also don't advertise.

thursdaysd

The original question was asked in July. It is now the end of November. Why, unless you have been asked to do so, would you join a (non-review) site to post a review that is no longer even relevant? And persist in doing so after your posts were removed? Now, if you wanted to post an actual trip report that would be different.

If you had spent some time here reading what others have written, you would have discovered that very few posters take tours, and even fewer with outfits like GVV.

thursdaysd

Sooner you than me. I wouldn't go with GVV if the trip was free. (If you click on my name you'll see I don't spend that much time at home...)

weeziegirl30

My review of Great Value Vacations" Worst travel company I ever dealt with in all my travel experience. Very bad customer service. Terrible value for the monies spent. Once they get your monies they could care less about assisting you with any problems you may have. You are completely on your own. Their instructions are unclear. I would never use this company again or commend them to anyone. Sent us to out of the way hotels....no assistance with the train ride from Madrid to Barcelona except to book it for us. Could have done that myself. You get NO added value from this company. You can do much better just booking your own hotel and air since they did no more than that for us a. Plus we would have had better hotels and more information on our own. Their customer service is very unobliging and not very helpful nor knowledgeable. Buyer beware. You will be in for a lot of aggravation if you use this company. There are much better companies out there who give much more value, expertise and assistance than this one.

freddahlke

Dittos on Great Value Vacations. Once they have your money, you're basically on your own. Customer support is sketchy to no help. I would suggest not using them in order to avoid a lot of frustration!

caramin

Just now coming to this forum for Great Value reviews, which I should've done before. We booked the trip tabarrett asked about above, for March 2015. Now need to change the outbound flight and are getting nothing but static from Great Value. Airline says we have to deal with Great Value. Great Value says the only way we can change the flight is to pay them $1700 (so basically buy a completely new trip). Having been forced to change the homebound leg of another trip 6 months ago, on the same airline, I know they're lying about the price. Will never, ever, book with them again.

thursdaysd

Great Value is probably not lying. You almost certainly have consolidator tickets, which have massive restrictions. Airlines sell consolidator tickets to agencies at a discount, which is how come the agency can create a "value" package. If you buy a package you buy the restrictions. Just because you were able to change a specific ticket on the same airline, it doesn't mean that EVERY ticket on that airline can be changed without penalties, or at all.

caramin

Thanks for the reply thursdaysd! Totally realize that not "EVERY ticket on that airline can be changed without penalties, or at all." Just felt the situations were comparable because both were nonrefundable "value" packages to major European destinations, and in the case 6 months ago, the penalty was total $500 ($300 change fee, $200 fare difference). With Great Value I didn't expect to get away penalty-free, and thought the cost might be similar, but instead they say I'd have to pay the full cost of the trip all over again. Extremely hard for me to believe that's the true cost of a flight change.

My bad for booking with them. I won't do it again. They've been so rude about the whole thing, I hate to think what it would be like if something went wrong while on the trip. At this point I'm agreeing with freddalke's post that says we're on our own now that GV has our $$.