A LoyaltyLobby reader sent us a question regarding a company that has started to promote their business aggressively on Facebook lately, called Unsold.com.
Remember to send us your questions and comments by email, and Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. We’ll try to cover them here several times a week.
Here’s the question from the reader:
I have a question on unsold.com as I keep getting their offer to pay for a week holiday without knowing the hotel , cannot judge if this is a good deal , can you post a review or question for fellow trusted travellers can give feedback?
It has been on mu ever increasing to do-list to check out this new OTA that appears to be spending significant amount of cash to push their “deals” on Facebook.
Here are a couple of advertisements from today:
New York
Sydney
Unsold advertises that you could get a 7-night flexible stay for 72% less in New York or 68% off in Sydney.
Unsold claims that they only have 4 to 5-star hotels available as reviewed by TripAdvisor.
Remember that TripAdvisor ratings are more based on the value that the reviewer gets rather than a real 4 or 5 stars hotel.
Unsold.com
The company’s website states that Unsold.com has been in business since 2007:
Unsold.com has been turning the travel industry on its head since 2007.
The Internet Wayback Machine has crawled the site since the early 2000s, and it was first used to park the domain. The current Unsold.com doesn’t appear before 2020.
There is a thread on TripAdvisor about Unsold.com from October this year (access here).
There is no BBB rating for Unsold.com.
Facebook lists the company as Resort Vacations International based in Louisiana. The page was created in March 2020 and renamed in July. Unsold.com has an address in Florida.
When you execute a search for this company, it brings up a BBB page for an Atlanta company that runs another booking service called BookVIP.
That has a website that looks almost exactly like Unsold’s.
They are also hosted at the same location.
There are plenty of BookVIP reviews on Tripadvisor, where most of the criticism appears to be timeshare package related.
Barcelona
The website indicates that the hotel previously sold would have been Pol & Grace
Pol & Grace is available for $308.42. If Unsold’s hotel is Pol & Grace, their price is $4.57 lower than Agoda’s.
Hawaii
Hawaii beachfront for 487 euros for a week?
Conclusion
Based on a cursory look, Unsold.com and BookVip are essentially the same company or run by the same organization, and the websites look almost identical with some modifications.
I would be very hesitant to put down hundreds if not thousands of cash with a promise that you can turn it into a vacation in 24 months, or you will get a full refund if not satisfied.
There is a time limit on chargebacks. It is doubtful that your card issuer will process a refund for services not provided as charged 18 months later if a company ceases to operate.
Remember that none of these companies actually remit the payment to the hotel before the guest checks in.
No company can sell you accommodation at 70% to 80% off unless there is a catch involved. Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
