Round 1

Thanks for your quick reply.  If you had carefully read my note, you would have realized that my major concern was a lack of responsiveness from your travel agent.  It’s too bad that it required going over her head to receive any attention.

I said if you carefully read my note, because another concern was a lack of detail, and on this you immediately fell short: our name is LUDWICK, not LUDWIG.  As well, you might have checked your previous communication involving us, Attachment 1, and realized that we indeed have accessed your website, and viewed your video regarding the benefits you can provide non-profits.  We agree that they can use any help they can get, since we already contribute more than generously to local charities as well as arts, cultural, and educational institutions.

However, you seem to find it surprising that one who has made a nearly $10,000 purchase would be a little nervous if they cannot find any mention of that organization on the Internet, requiring the intervention of someone who has knowledge of how to access that website.  Most businesses do everything they can to be able to be found on the Internet, even if incorrect names are entered.

It might have been different if the information on the various materials provided us gave the actual name of your organization, American Fundraising Foundation, rather than Fundraising Travel Foundation.  However, even when we do access your website via the URL provided in your recent note, www.amfund.org, we find that the video referred to in Attachment 1 curiously isn’t accessible from your homepage.  As well as providing that link, why haven’t you included “Fundraising Travel Foundation” among your Meta Tags?

You state that from the outset we were unlike any others, that we used words such as “disastrous,” “debacle,” “disturbed.”  In spite of your misreading of our actual usage of “disturbing facts,” these words appear nowhere “from the outset;” only in our recent note sent after more than a month of increasing frustration with your travel agent. Even so, absent a few words for which you might find a different synonym (see the modified Subject line above), you'll have to agree that the text provides an even-handed presentation of facts and our concerns, as does this note, and hardly warrants your accusation that we think a "scam" or "plot" is in existence.

Your comment that my “singular presumption” of how travel agents operate is “so different from other travelers” is hard to swallow.  I indeed do “admit” that others we have dealt with in the past have always been accessible and eager to work out with us from the beginning an itinerary that meets our specific interests.  For example, we’ve never had one ask us to choose from a list of dates from which they’ll get back to us some time in the future telling us which, if any, are acceptable to them.  However, those travel agents don’t get paid until we’re completely satisfied with the results – perhaps if they got paid first, they’d also have a different attitude.

Of course the comment that you have "contributed millions of dollars to worthy organizations” has no bearing on our travel expectations.  Perhaps “you” really have made such generous contributions, but American Fundraising Foundation funds provided to those organizations are actually coming from those who participate in your auctions.  And as the old saying goes, when someone has to say they’re not offended, that means they are.

Again, if you’d carefully read my chronology, you’d have seen that over a period of more than a month only twice have I been able to talk to a person, and to receive one email reply.  Although I guess I can’t argue with your claim that that constitutes “a number of occasions.”  However, my other calls have gone unanswered and unreturned, and emails ignored or not read.  As for there being two agents, there is no way I could have known that, since Sam was the contact both times.  Perhaps they will share with you records that show when they talked to and emailed me and what was discussed that are greatly different from my chronology.

I don't know how you calculated that it took “seven days to get back to” us with travel information.  It took eleven days after they received the Award Certificate before it was mailed back – of course we didn’t receive it until several days later.  And we still have received no response from the emailed Travel Dates sent May 14.

We are mystified by the claim that they called us the afternoon of May 22 and left a message on our answering machine.  Since we have a caller ID unit that records the number and name of at least the last fifty callers, as well as an active answering machine, we know that there was no sign of an attempt by them to reach us – and oh yes, we were also home during the period mentioned.

Perhaps your company toll records will reveal whose answering machine they may have actually contacted.

As for our seeming to be concerned about a date four months away, it comes down to some really strange coincidences, beginning with the fact that the dates provided by you, Attachment 2, [For Internet display purposes I've omitted our personal information.] are identical to those we later found at Virgin Vacations, Attachment 3 – including the fact that your missing dates, October 11 and September 13, in order of attractiveness based on our friend’s information, were sold out on their website at the time, and that as time went by, other less and less attractive dates also were sold out.

However, the even more surprising coincidence is that the itinerary provided by Sam, Attachment 4, agreed in all details, at least to the level she provided, with Virgin Vacations’ – Attachment 5.   Note particularly that the ungrammatical phrase “This morning, enjoy an optional to visit the Small Three Gorges …” that begins Day 7 is identical in both cases.

Perhaps you have a reasonable explanation for this amazing set of coincidences.  If so, I’d like to hear it.

In any case, since any planning you would do for us is several months in the future, you should have no difficulty in refunding the entire amount it would have cost.  Of course, it would be at least the amount charged by Virgin Vacations, who have to do no planning at all, with the addition of round-trip flights from Washington to Los Angeles.

As a statistician, I am aware that having many happy customers doesn’t mean there aren’t also those who have not been adequately served.  Perhaps if your travel agent(s?) had actually been responsive over the period of a month we would not have been so concerned, but a bad beginning doesn’t bode well for a satisfactory conclusion.

Regards,