There are several hotel consolidators and discount sites that promise deals, Their offers are frequently limited, sometimes the deals are good and frequently they aren’t, but they all try to distinguish themselves in one way or another.
Back in October, SniqueAway offered me a site credit if I would promote their product by giving away some credit to me readers. I asked them if I could give away the credit they were offering to readers and the credit they were offering to me, so that’s what I did.
Also in October, TripAlertz was offering $10 for every person you got to sign up their email address using your link. I said at the time that was too generous, and it clearly was, they reduced the amount of their offer quickly and then twice in quick succession sped up the period of time you had to use your credits before they expired.
It was this big offer that got my attention, and a bunch of people signed up using my link, but with only 6 months to use the credits (instead of the originally-promised two years) and lots of hotels that didn’t really fit my plans — mostly Caribbean all-inclusives or mid-range hotels in cities I wasn’t visiting or where I had another preferred property — I didn’t plan on using the credits myself. I emailed and Tweeted TripAlertz asking if I could run a giveaway on the blog, it would have promoted their site and would only have provided those credits they had already given me. I got no response.
I think that The Points Guy gave away his credits, I wanted to do the same, but technically the terms and conditions said that the credits had to be used by the person who earned them. I didn’t see how that would be tracked since they only asked for an email address at signup. But I didn’t want to run a giveaway where the prize wasn’t something the recipient could rightfully use. I did use some TripAlertz credit for a quick stay at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf, I needed a place to crash enroute to Asia (I was grabbing Cathay’s San Francisco – Hong Kong flight) but beyond that most of the credits are likely to expire.
Along comes Jetsetter. Many of their hotels are decent deals, and higher end places I really would like to stay. But there’s a lot of noise in this space and I hadn’t paid much attention to them before.
And then they ran an offer for discounted airport car service through GroundLink.com. It was a big deal because when you sign up as a new member, you get a $25 credit. And they had car service starting at $29. A New York-LaGuardia pickup could cost as list as $4 plus fees, a great deal. Plus the person referring the member gets $25 as well.
Normally Jetsetter is happy to give both the referrer and the referred member $25 with first purchase because the margins are pretty good. But on a net $4++ car service (while paying out $25 towards future travel as well!) the economics of Jetsetter’s offer weren’t really very good for them.
So they decided, apparently, not to honor the referral credits they had promised.
Now, I was late to the party. Lots of other blogs and travel sites had written about this deal, and it was abruptly pulled several days before it was originally said to expire. So only a dozen or so folks actually completed their purchase, I didn’t have a lot of referral credits at stake. Possibly because I not only gave my link but I invited readers to post their own links in the comments, some folks likely used others’ links as well. Someone’s link needed to be used, I though, since Jetsetter was giving out referral credits on each completed transaction. But it could have been mine or someone else’s.
Nonetheless, they pulled my credits, something I only discovered weeks later logging back into the site and seeing the funds gone.
It was February 12 when I noticed that my referral credits were gone, oddly they hadn’t pulled my credits in the first couple of weeks after the offer, and I had even written about Jetsetter subsequently when they had an offer at the Peninsula. Seeing my credits mysteriously gone, I sent an email:
I referred a bunch of people to JetSetter. the system shows 153 people signed up. I had hundreds of dollars in referral credits available. Now I log back in and the system shows $25. Please advise.
They said I violated their terms of service somehow:
Thank you for the email. Your credits were expired by our team due to a violation in the Jetsetter Terms of Service we discovered. Referrals are based on completed orders. If you are able to give the email addresses of the people you referred, we would be more than happy to look in to this on your behalf.
If I broke their rules, why didn’t they tell me they were pulling these credits? And what rule exactly did I violate? I replied:
Why was I not contacted?
You can see the email addresses of those that were referred under my account.
All of the referrals signed up using a bona fide referral link, which I found on my JetSetter account, and which I placed on my blog.
I promoted JetSetter signups, and anyone signing up made trasnactions on their own independent of me.
Please tell me —- What rule did I violate?
And they replied, not telling me what I did violated their terms and conditions, but just by copying and pasting their terms and conditions into an email.
By now it’s February 16 and again, I just wanted them to explain to me what I did that supposedly broke their rules:
So what rule did I violate?
I followed JetSetter directions. I took the referral link that JetSetter provided, people signed up through that link and made bona fide purchases at my suggestion.
You provided me credits, which were properly earned, but then took those credits away many weeks later.
And no one has yet to provide an explanation that says what I’ve supposedly done that’s inconsistent with your terms.
Please advise, or simply re-instate the credits (which were all properly earned)
They replied on February 20th by saying I broke the terms and conditions but that they couldn’t say how:
We are only able to refer you to the below list of the Jetsetter Terms of Service provided by our colleague below. It was determined by our team you were in violation of one or more of these terms and therefore the credit was removed from your account.
So now I wanted to know, since they wouldn’t explain even which rule I had broken, were these secret terms and conditions?
So you’re telling me that I broke a rule, but ‘which one’ is a secret?
I maintain, as I explained below, that I followed all of your procedures. I used the referral link provided to me when logged into my account. I posted that link along with multiple offers from JetSetter. People used that link, signed up, many made purchases. I received credit for those purchases and then you took them away ‘because I broke a rule’ but you will not tell me what rule I broke or what I supposedly did wrong?
And if you won’t tell me, how can I avoid doing it again?
Referring me to the terms and conditions is of no help, because after reviewing those it is clear I did not break any rule.
And it appears that you’re simply removing credit from my account arbitrarily, capriciously, because you don’t want to honor the very terms and conditions that you cite.
Their reply is… once again.. that they will do nothing other than refer me to their terms and conditions, but not explain what I did to violate them.
Thank you for the reply. The Director of Member Services has alerted us the only course of action we have at this point is to cite the Jetsetter Terms of Service. Unfortunately, we can no longer further assist you with this issue.
At this point I’m getting frustrated with the stonewalling. They’re clearly not interested in providing an explanation (and of course there is no reasonable explanation — they are acting entirely arbitrarily in my view, and not based on their terms and conditions at all). So I call them out on it:
Please provide me with contact information for the Director of Member Services.
At this point I can only otherwise assume you have engaged in fraud. You cite the terms and conditions but do not describe how my actions have violated those terms. You have removed financial credit which is due to me based on the promises of those same terms and conditions. That’s theft.
Surely this isn’t behavior which you are proud of.
Please either return the credit to my account or provide me with contact information for the Director of Member Services,
So they tell me their Director of Member Services will contact me. Mind you, so far though each email is signed by someone with first name, last initial, all replies come from a generic email address. There hasn’t been any one person to correspond with, and each reply has come from someone else (or is at least signed with some different name).
And guess what? I get an email from the same generic email address, this time just signed “Member Services” (no name) telling me that I broke their terms and conditions by… using the referral link they gave me and asking people to use it. Seriously. Here’s their reply:
Hello Gary,
We hope this email finds you well. We have been looking into your inquiry about why your credits were expired. Please be advised that under our terms and conditions, Jetsetter reserves the right to void credits that were earned in a manner not intended by Jetsetter.
The Terms state that you may not conduct your own promotion in connection with the credit program, and may not engage in any promotional, marketing or other advertising activities on behalf of Jetsetter. This was an example of such a promotion, as you asked people to use your referral link.
If you have further questions, you can refer to our Terms of Service here: http://www.jetsetter.com/terms-of-service.
Warm regards,
Member Services
(Emphasis mine.)
At this point they’ve truly got to be kidding.
My response, I think, speaks for itself. And so far I haven’t heard back.
Dear Member Services,
This response is absurd. Are you seriously claiming that any attempt to “ask people to use your referral link” is a violation of Jetsetter’s rules, when Jetsetter provides me with that very referral link for the purpose of asking people to use it?
Jetsetter even provides a page specifically designed to help members ask others to use their referral link:
http://www.jetsetter.com/account/invite
There’s a pre-written message, provided by Jetsetter, for that very purpose!
Isn’t it time for a vacation? Here’s an invitation to join Jetsetter, where you’ll have access to the world’s greatest travel experiences at members-only prices.
However, if you will review my writings nowhere do I ever actually ask anyone to use my link!
http://viewfromthewing.com/2012/01/24/best-deals-around-the-blogs-for-january-24-2012/
http://viewfromthewing.com/2012/01/13/town-car-airport-transfers-in-major-cities-for-4-14/
So your specific claim is incorrect, in fact I specifically tell people that they do not need to use my link.
As a result, and per your email explanation below then, the credits I earned were exactly following Jetsetter procedures. Jetsetter provided me with a referral link to use, I shared Jetsetter offers on my blog using that link, but based on your explanation I have not violated Jetsetter’s terms and conditions.
Furthermore, if your explanation were correct and covered what I’ve written, then any blog anywhere that posts a referral link, or anyone posting a referral link on Twitter or on their Facebook wall, would similarly be in violation of Jetsetter’s terms and conditions – despite doing exactly what Jetsetter asks its members to do!
That’s the definition of arbitrary and capricious. And exactly why it seems fraudulent to remove my referral credits under these circumstances.
Jetsetter has been stonewalling consistently, would not provide any explanation of its reason for removing credits, and now offers an explanation that is (1) false and (2) utterly illogical.
I would kindly ask you again to re-instant the credits that I earned. Call it a one-time exception if you’d like. But please do so immediately, or provide dedicated and direct contact information for someone empowered to handle this at an appropriately high level.
Do I ‘deserve’ the referral credits? Per their terms and conditions yes, in some metaphysical sense one might argue not.
Should I have given up several emails ago? Probably.
But I was mostly interested in pursuing this to push Jetsetter, see how they’d behave, see how they stand behind their offers. See what kind of customer service response they’d provide. And I certainly found out!
The lesson, to me, is that Jetsetter isn’t going to stand behind their offers when it isn’t financially advantageous to them to do so. I really didn’t expect any problem with this offer, but they decided to renege, and then to stonewall. That’s not a company I trust or especially want to do business with.
If there’s another offer along the lines of Groundlink I will probably post it, along with a caution though I imagine, probably a link to this post, as a reminder of buyer beware with these characters.
Is my experience unique? I know that several other blogs promoted the Jetsetter/Groundlink deal before I did. Any other bloggers out there have their credits taken away? Has Jetsetter treated you in a similar manner?
I do not ask for anyone to feel sorry for me, I’m not bothered being ‘out’ a few hundred bucks in referral credits, referrals that I usually try to find a way to give away to readers in any case. But I did learn a lesson that I no longer trust Jetsetter.
Am I being unreasonable?
Update: It occurs to me that I should add, if they’d just be honest and write “we really didn’t intend to reward low value referrals, and despite our terms and conditions we aren’t going to reward $25 per referral for something we lost money on, we hope you understand” I’d actually let it go. I’d publish it here, to be sure, to give everyone fair warning about how they do or do not stand behind their offers, but I’d at least appreciate the honestly instead of resenting their stonewalling.
You’re welcome to let Jetsetter know that this traveler/reader will no longer use their services, and will also evangelize to nine additional potential customers to ask them to BOYCOTT JETSETTER. Gotta run – got people to talk to!
Even if you didn’t deserve the credits (which it seems you do deserve) the terrible and ridiculous “customer service” Jetsetter provided is enough for me to take my business elsewhere.
Wow. Haven’t dealt with that kind of non-answer customer service in a while. Really curious to see if there will be a footnote to this story once Jetsetter gets wind of the negative publicity.
Posts like this are why I still read blogs. These topics are far more useful than rehashing the same details about various credit cards.
Agreed this sucks. Am not sure what the Terms and Conditions said at the time of the promo but interesting to see they have been updated as at 28 Jan and the section on referrals seems to take up about half of the T&C’s now.
I’ve RT’d, plan to remove myself from their mailing list as well.
Sounds like they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to social marketing, and they’re trying to CYA, poorly.
@Gary
Had a hauntingly similar experience as you, except I had far fewer referral credits, and I had already used them all to buy GroundLink services. My orders were all canceled, and I had almost the exact same conversation with their team, except via increasingly escalated phone calls. Every time I asked them to show me where I violated their terms of service, they couldn’t tell me. They were somehow surprised when I asked them to deactivate my account on the same call.
Long-winded way of saying no, you are not being unreasonable in the least. I’m glad you posted this on your blog, since you have the ability to reach far more savvy travelers than I!
FWIW, the GroundLink service actually kinda sucked (a friend gave me a cert after hearing my sob story about getting all mine canceled). I was hit with all kinds of fees that weren’t included in my initial “quote,” car was in sad shape, driver had no idea where I was going, etc.
There’s only one established way to properly punish Jetsetter for this and get your credits re-instated.
Have Lucky Tweet about it!
Have you tried posing the question on their facebook page? I won’t boycott them until I use up the very large stash of jetsetter credits I bought for 50% on cybermonday. 🙂
I had the same problem where MyPoints mysteriously removed hundreds of points (not quite the same financial scale as hundreds of dollars) from my account.
I emailed their customer service and after several back and forths with generic scripts of “You earned X points! Great!”, I gave up. I think most of these customer service agents are not authorized to deviate from their scripts, which is why they couldn’t actually tell you which condition you violated.
@James – you mean have Lucky tweet about Jetsetter while somehow including a mention of teenagers, milk and cookies, Bieber, Diet Coke with lime and the corniest jokes around. 🙂
Gary, It is a simple matter of principle that you followed through on. I would have likely done the same thing, but given up before you did.
I agree completely with you on this. Don’t provider members a referral link if you don’t want them to actually, you know, refer people.
Thank you for exposing them for not honoring their referral program.
I’m 100% behind you Gary- these jetsetter people sound like a bunch of amateurs. Keep the fight you’re in the right here!
You’re a reasonably well-connected guy and influential in the travel space. If this blog post doesn’t already lead to a quick fix, I’d consider going straight to the top and contacting executives at Gilt Groupe (Jetsetter’s parent) or one of its VC backers, Matrix Partners and General Atlantic.
http://www.gilt.com/company/team
http://www.gilt.com/company/board
Thanks for the information. I will not use Jetsetter in the future.
Sue the bastards. Honestly, Small Claims court is simple, fun, and it will get their attention MUCH more effectively than any email message.
go get him. I am less likely to use them after hearing about the customer service.
I will not deal with them or their assoicated website ever. I will also unsubscribe.
Sounds like they really should fix their terms to give referral bonus for transactions over some value, so this is actually cost-effective for them.
But yes, their treatment of this situation is appalling.
Here is my story with them:
I had 3 people join through my links. Why do I see $0 credit in my account?
J:Your referral credits were deactivated as there was a violation of the Jetsetter Terms of Service detected on your account. To review these terms you may visit the following link: http://www.jetsetter.com/terms-of-service
Me: I don’t understand what did I violate?
J: Thank you for your email. We appreciate hearing from you. It had been determined by our team that referral credits were not being applied to the purchase. You can read the terms of service my colleague Brad provided in the below email for further details about our Terms of Service. Warm Regards, Corey Jetsetter Member Services
Way to go, Gary. Don’t let them get away with this. I won’t be using Jetsetter until they resolve your issue and bring their customer service quality up to normal standards.
I agree with you, and Jetsetter is in the wrong. It is flat out fraud to offer such a credit, post it and then state you earned toooo much we are taking it back.
I say go after them and make a statement.
Without commenting on the merits of this case, I think this is a good example of all-to-often misguided social media marketing, in this instance compensating bloggers for referrals. While Gary is always above board and honest about such compensation, that is not true of all bloggers, whose motives are not so pure. The best way to deal with this is to end the practice altogether, and that includes credit card issuers. That said, I don’t think this one incident – which I see as being more of a misunderstanding, should poison people against Jetsetter, the leadership of which are people of high integrity.
153 Referrals * $25= $3825! I’d be more than a little upset about losing that much credit. Jetsetter deserves all the bad press it can get.
@Stuart Falk – this is my only experience with Jetsetter. They give everyone a referral link to use, I just used mine on my blog. I have no direct experience with their leadership, except that someone more senior than I’m talking to set up the policy that they’re pursuing with me, and wrote the scripts, I understasnd now that the same scripts have been used with others. So I presume this sort of customer service reflects on the leadership. But then I have no countervailing experiences, would love to hear yours. best, Gary
@Ryan about 150+ signed up under my account, but I only ever had about $275 I think in referrals so presumably only 11 actually completed purchases. Or they didn’t report all the purchases. But I don’t think I had nearly that much at stake. And I don’t especially want the credits at this point, I don’t really want to deal with them after this, I’m just sharing my experiences.
Anyone can explain this statement from Jetsetter?
“It had been determined by our team that referral credits were not being applied to the purchase.”
Wow I am so appalled that Jetsetter would do this. It’s fraud!
Same situation happened to me. I had 4 referrals and all credits were taken out of my account. I am actively contacting customer service as well and will keep you up to date with my progress. Hopefully I can speak to a supervisor tomorrow as the evening representatives were anything but helpful.
Jetsetter is dead to me! I will never do anything through them.
Outrageous, hope you get their attention here. Looks to me like they applied some stupid heuristic to filter out what they didn’t like and started revoking credits. Certainly won’t be doing any reservations with them, what if something goes wrong or they feel the need to pull my res?
i am mostly a lurker. i shop at gilt occasionally, so jetsetter struck a note. i know they’re a startup in nyc – and a sketchy acquaintance works there now. i think what they did was shady, and really! you can’t post a referral link in a blog? i hope you get to the bottom of this!
Dear Jetsetter,
If you wish to promote your products and services here and succeed, be honest.
Sincerely,
The Internet
So according to their TOS you cannot promote a referral link on blogs and websites? What is the point of a referral link?? Idiotic business behavior to say the least.
Umm, y’all published a deal that was mispriced on it own, and you’re upset because they’re reneging on the referral bonuses?
The funny thing is that most of the referral credits will expire unused as there’s little that someone with 1-3x referrals who flew under than radar can buy, and the bloggers who got 10-100x are getting cancelled. This is no different than the AA shopping mall. It costs nothing to dangle nice promotions out there, if you can cancel them as soon as some low-revenue customers show up.
@internet – well said
@Ben the Groundlink offer from Jetsetter wasn’t a mistake or mispriced. I’ve actually used Groundlink several times now, and have had good experiences ironically enough on all EXCEPT the time I used the jetsetter coupon. (Story forthcoming as part of a trip report.)
See, the Groundlink deal got my attention, I started checking out Jetsetter, saw that they were different from other sites in discounting places I actually wanted to stay — I would have been a customer, they’re offering deals on places I’d DREAM of staying, like the Peninsula New York.
But this customer service experience has me feeling rpetty burned. I don’t especially want the credits, though I’d love for them to make this right to the folks that have commented on their own similar experiences, since that would suggest to me that they actually see their customer service reaction as wrong and show an intention to change / fix it rather than just pacifying someone causing them a bit of embarassment on the internet (me).
App will be deleted and will remove my address from the mailing list.
I’ve been a long time user of Jetsetter but this kind of behavior is unacceptable. I will never buy anything from Jetsetter ever again.
Thanks for giving the heads up on this mess.
An excellent case study on how to kill your business with poor customer service. RIP Jetsetter….
The funny thing is that Jetsetter is losing its reputation within its target demographic. Any guess on what they would have saved by removing the credit? $3-5miilion? Someone in leadership decided to trade that for their brand reputation/value.
Contact the BBB
Jetsetter is rumored to be in significant financial straits, which is maybe why they’ve reneged on their promise. I’d wish you continue to pursue this, because it’s such a blatant case of fraud.
BTW, here’s who the director is – http://www.jetsetter.com/about/member/id/228
A bit off-topic, but somewhat related, I know two people who have gotten jobs at Gilt Groupe, but promptly left. They said that morale there is horrible, and employees are not treated well at all.
This blog post is currently on page 4 of the Google results of a generic search for “jetsetter.com”
The snowball is starting to roll!
wow, great post, happy I have never used Jetsetter and never will. they keep on sending me these annoying emails with nonsense subject lines, blah
Customer No-Service at the very best JetSetter is OFF My List.
At this point, I am thrilled I did not book the ever so tempting Peninsula deal. What if there had been a glitch? Is this the example of how JetSetter.com responds to all issues? No thank you.
I find all the threats of “I’m never going to use Jetsetter again! Hmpf” from the various posters rather amusing.
None of you ever had any intention of using Jetsetter for anything than this promotion. You’re all waiting to swarm to some other website to take advantage of some other “deal” that’ll let you get something for nothing.
And if Jetsetter comes out in the future with another promo that’s too good to be true, all of you will swarm right on back.
Amazing how some companies don’t realize the harm they do to their business with their FU customer attitude. We have seen it time after time. Gary, you did nothing wrong, and deserve what you were promised.
Thanks for posting this story. One of the most important things we can learn is who stands behind their offers and who does not and who has good customer service or not. I certainly will stay away from Jetsetter. By the way, you deserve the credits. They made the offer, they need to honor it.