We arranged round trip transfers with Amstar months in advance. We were staying at a recently opened resort 25+ miles out of Puerto Vallarta, MX. The transfers were $160.00 U.S. dollars.
Upon arrival at the airport, we were approached by a very friendly young lady who we thought was selling tours but in reality was selling timeshares (Vellas Valarta). When we asked if it was a timeshare , she said no, just a hotel, which was of course as we found out later was a lie. She then proceeded to walk with us to our Amstar transfer person and in Spanish told them "she was in charge" and rode with us to our hotel and proceeded to "make an appointment" with us for 2 days later.
The Amstar person SHOULD HAVE told us what was going on as I am quite sure he knew. Needless to say, we had a long horrible day 2 days later.
At this point, we had already given her $50 USD for what we thought was a tour of the "hotel" which upon completion we would receive our choice of tours and return of our $50 "deposit."
We ended up with 2 bottles of cheap Tequila and after being handed off to 8 different sales people, our $50 was returned. PLEASE PEOPLE DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE, SHE IS NOT A TOUR OPERATOR!!!
Our complaint is that the Amstar people KNOW this is going on and should have asked us IN ENGLISH if we wanted her to ride with us, we would have said NO.
The afternoon before we left the hotel, I went into the Amstar office which was at the hotel to make sure they knew about the transfers back to the airport the next day. They had NO record of our transfers but the man wrote it down and assured us that our driver would be there at noon but to be in the lobby at 11:30am because "they often show up early."
The next morning we were in the lobby at 11:30am, waited, waited, waited, no transfers. At noon, we went to the Amstar office at the hotel, no one was there, it was locked. I asked the hotel tour desk person to call them, after 30 minutes, they returned the call. After ONE HOUR AND 20 MINTES waiting, a taxi finally showed up.
There was NO explanation or even a "we're sorry", NOTHING!
The taxi driver wasn't even an Amstar employee and we don't know who paid for the taxi ride as we had already paid dearly for transfers.
Needless to say, because of being so late, we were rushed at the airport which is difficult since it was an international flight and there were several security checks.
When we returned I emailed Amstar and told them what happened. Their response was "give us your credit card number and we will credit your card $40. What? It should have AT LEAST been half of the $160. We don't trust them after our experience and wouldn't think of giving them our credit card number.
If we could give them a MINUS star rating we would. We would NEVER use them again and would NEVER recommend them to anyone in need of transfers. read more