silvernotch
Contributor
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the issue of trust. But the issue that remains that just because the bookings were paid to the agent in full doesn't mean that they were paid to the operator in full and that is an issue we will clearly never have the truth over. (...or if they were paid in full but were sold by the middleman well below the operator's agreed minimum price or whatever the case may be.)
Depending on how much the operator is (potentially) being shorted however, when you multiply that number by how many people go through this resort in a period of several months, you may easily be talking upwards of half a million dollars. That's not something too many operators can just suck up in the name of trust or wait years for a resolution in court. Employees have to be paid and in a timely manner or else you are going to have a lot of very hungry and unhappy guests when the rooms aren't clean, the foods not on the table, and the boat doesn't leave the dock. And that will put a company out of business far faster issues of trust.
CD: While this has been a rather upleasant experience, would you rather have had it occur up front while you still had time to remedy it or after you arrived where you're stuck. At this point, it appears that TI is dealing with a bad situation rather poorly but still in a better manner than the latter option. Simply eating the cost of what could amout to hundreds of bookings is not likely an option that will allow them to stay in business.
If even that was the case, as an operator of a major resort you wouldn't take that hit to not lose out on business all-together? I mean they not only lost my business and anyone I would have recommend but they lost out on people that have been visiting 3-4 times a year for several years. Why wouldn't you want to keep those people happy and then go after the agent afterwards? The potential long term losses over this could be staggering. I totally agree with others saying that this was a dispute between Rich and FI. We should not have been in the middle of this, let alone put in the middle of it a week before our trip. I work in a customer service business and the last thing you ever do is burn your customers because that'll be the end of it.
and I feel like I have to side with and defend Rich. In all of this Rich has been the only one who seems to care about what happens to us and putting away all the other drama going on, I feel like that's all that matters, that when I arrive to Roatan I have a place to sleep at night and I'm not hopping on the first flight back to Philly.