I received a phone call at home - mid-April - from a young lady who said she was from Meridian Marketing, and that I had been awarded one of the prizes listed above (This may not be the entire list but you get the picture). When asked where my name had been obtained she told me .. "it was probably from when I applied for my Nectar Card or Tesco Clubcard"

Of course I was sceptical but since I was writing these pages, and I DID have an interest in booking holidays over the internet etc., I decided to accept a place on the presentation held on Saturday, 26th April 2003.

To qualify I had to say yes to these questions:

• "Do you have a wife or partner for at last two years?"
• "Is my joint income at least £20,000 per annum?"
• "Will I be willing, with my wife/partner, to listen to a 2-hour presentation?"

I was assured that I would not have to sign anything or join anything on the day, and that it was NOT Timeshare.

Some days later, I received an invitation to the presentation in the post which repeated the list of prizes, gave me the date, time and directions to the presentation which was at the offices of Cybertravel UK in Henley-In-Arden. It asked me to email or telephone confirmation that I would attend so that I would also qualify for £600 in holiday vouchers. When I rang the number on three occasions, I only got a voice message saying all the lines were busy. I did send a confirmation email although I was never offered any holiday vouchers on the day! (I also forgot to mention them!)

My "prize" was contained in a sealed envelope that would be opened on the day (NOT BEFORE!!) and would be one of those listed above.

My wife and I attended the presentation as agreed and filled in a short questionnaire before being led upstairs to a cafe-style room with round tables, and was offered tea or coffee.

A number of sales persons were there - each assigned to a couple or number of couples and we chatted generally while she made notes about our holiday preferences and styles of holidays taken in the past.

There were several sentences like "So if we showed you a way to get 5-star accommodation but cheaper than you pay now you would be interested?"

In other words, lots of opportunity to say the word "yes".

The presentation was given enthusiastically by a woman who told us of the reason they marketed the service this way and not via television adverts etc (it was cheaper to give us all a prize than to advertise on TV etc. etc.)

They showed us a web site which detailed the sorts of properties they offered - all very nice 5* luxury accommodation in Florida, Italy etc and explained that they would also book flights either at the time or nearer the date of travel if preferred, and that insurance cover, car hire and "meal deals" were also available.

The properties shown looked really nice. We were not offered the opportunity to suggest destinations, or did not see flights or other services being demonstrated.

We were told that City Breaks and flights only were also available.

After the presentation, we met again with our individual representative who answered questions and asked if we were interested to know the costs.

The woman who did the presentation was called over and opened a sheet of paper with the cost shown - £5643!

Of course we went "PHEW"

She sat down and immediately offered to reduce this by:

Etc. - which brought the cost IF I SIGNED TODAY to £3000.

If I took it away and signed-up later with head office, it was explained that my representative would not get her commission, and that it would cost the full amount of £5643.

In addition we would receive THREE "gift certificates" - in other words THREE opportunities for people NOT in our list of members to use this service.

(If WE travelled with the party (any number in a party) then others could come with us on that booking, as many times a year as we wanted)

The idea of this is that WE could book a holiday for our friends, neighbours or work colleagues and "sell it to them" for whatever we though they would agree to.

We would therefore receive some money back to offset the cost of joining, or the annual renewal of £49. We would get THREE of these per year.

When we said "no", we were offered the opportunity to spread the cost by three payments of £1000 in June, August and October - although we would not be able to USE the service until we had paid the full £3000.

Well, we said a final "no" the woman left us. The representative was asked about our "prize" and it was explained that they had run-out of claim forms for the PC (They KNEW it was the Pentium PC just by who did the marketing - Meridian Marketing!) but that if we contacted head office in Cromer, Norfolk, we could claim this. We were given a photocopy of the PC details and this can be seen <here>

The sheet explained that we had "been awarded" an Intel Pentium 166Mhz PC, 32mb RAM, 1GB Hard Disk and "standard features". This is a CDROM drive and NO OPERATING SYSTEM - Windows etc! ( A P133 Pentium/32mb/1gb is to PC's what a Black and White TV would be for a Prize TV!)

IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT COMPUTERS YOU WILL KNOW THAT THIS ISN'T EVEN THE LOWEST SPEC. PC THAT YOU CAN BUY THESE DAYS! THE SPEC. IS AT LEAST 5 YEARS OUT-OF-DATE AND IS NOT A VERY ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITION IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT COMPUTING, THE INTERNET ETC.

IT IS NOT EVEN WORTH THE PRICE OF THE ADMIN, SHIPPING AND INSURANCE CHARGE CONSIDERING YOU DO NOT GET WINDOWS OR ANY OTHER SOFTWARE WITH IT!

THAT WAS THE CLINCHER FOR ME. If they can dash expectations with the "prize", it makes me wonder what the travel service is like!

The list of prizes above all seemed too good to be true. In my case, it was! It really IS a poor "prize" Cybertraveluk!

But at least I didn't part with my £3000.

Please use the "Submit" Link on the left to let me know your experiences with Cybertraveluk or other Holiday Clubs - good or bad.

I want to be fair and objective - I have no evidence to suggest that the service provided to members, or the travel deals on offer are anything but good value for some people. HOWEVER.. I have been contacted by 4 or 5 people now who find the service poor, or where they don't answer phones, produce the "free holidays" etc etc

prize.html 28.04.03