Reservation Services International Technically Legal, but really a scam Winter Park,, Florida

Reservation Services International of Winter Park, Florida is technically a legal service. If your plan on renting 1 bedroom condos more than 8 weeks per year, you might even make your membership price back over the next 5 years- everyone else is being screwed. The contract is written specifically so that they are not actually guaranteeing the customer anything. 

They do not directly market themselves simply for plausible deniability in a legal dispute.  The companies that do the marketing are not allowed to call themselves "Marketers" (for legal avoidance reasons). The marketing companies hire salesmen - who work off commission alone- to promise the customer 2 bedroom condos in Myrtle Beach for $300 a week.  The owner and administrative staff do not attend the sales meetings (plausible deniability). 

The condo in Myrtle Beach will actually be closer to $1500 and only available while school is still in for the grandchildren. 

Reservations are on a first come, first serve basis- you might get a summer condo in Ocean City, MD if you call to book it in the first week of January. Less than 900 condo weeks go fast when you have over $300,000 customers. That same issue applies to all popular locations They have many weeks available though if your would like to go in February. You will NOT be guaranteed a ocean-view- do not believe the salesman.

Most of the properties are not very nice. They usually range from crappy to mediocre. There are nice ones, but they are rare to come upon and usually very expensive. 

They do not rent out 4 bedroom houses normally. Their stock of condos is 99% 2 bedroom or less. 

Prices are not that great- on multiple occasions I looked on the website and saw a price for a condo and saw it listed as $1,300, normally $2,000- customer saves $700. If you call that resort and ask them their normal price- they would say $1,500- not $2, 000. So RSI deducts $700 from your points pool (about 1,500 per vacation week you buy at the membership sales presentation), but you only really saved $200.  When I brought it to management's attention they just kept saying they would get back to me on it.

Price match plus guarantee- you have to fax an image of a dated webpage showing the price of EXACTLY  the same accommodation (Cruise-line A, Ship 2, class C room, aft side of ship, deck 4, going to Mexico May 12-17) to get them to match the lower price and give you a 10% discount. If the room you find online is deck 3 instead of deck 4- they will not price match. They often forget to mention it in training to employees-so you have to force them to give you the discount. 

You will usually get the best price on a cruise by calling the cruise line directly. 

You will NEVER get discounted airfare- the price match does not apply to airfare.

The price match does NOT apply to people getting any other discount such as senior, group, military or AARP discounts. 

The screen shots of the deals available on the website are not dated at the presentation because the salesmen use old images on purpose. Of course it was really cheap to go to Jamaica 10 years ago- anyone ever heard of inflation. 

They have terrible customer service. You do NOT have a personal concierge that is assigned to you when buy a membership. If you call in they usually try and tell you to book things yourself through the website-because that is exactly the same website and information available to the travel agents in the Florida office. If you ask them to customize a trip for you,  expect them to take 2 weeks to get back to you-if they bothered to write it down that they were supposed to do that for you. 

They have their prices linked to the usual sources like Expedia and Priceline. So you get the same room for the same exact price, so that they don't have to give you the price match plus guarantee. 

It is all legal because everyone has deniability. You can't even sue the lying salesman because you did not bring a tape recorder to the presentation and no one will give you the contact information for the other attendees who could verify the salesman said $300 condos in Myrtle Beach.