Classic Holidays 

Terrible. The worst experience. As members we contacted Classic when we decided to holiday in Italy. The tour booked was more expensive than available online to anyone. When the operator cancelled, Classic tried desperately to hold on to our money, offering another trip which they said we'd have to pay for before receiving our refund for the first trip. When we decided to go elsewhere and cancel they tried bullying us into signing with them and gave us a 6pm deadline or be left with "no further options". We cancelled and have now been waiting almost 4 weeks for our refund. No-one has returned my calls or emails to date.

After signing up at the airport, we attended one of the Classic Holidays sales sessions in Parramatta. We'd given I think $40 as a deposit to make sure we turned up, and in truth we would cancelled if not for that as we really had no intention of signing up for anything. When we arrived the $40 was immediately refunded so that made things feel better and the young lady who took our details & did the presentation was quite fun really, but the cost was certainly not what we were looking for - in fact we'd attended a holiday/time share presentation with a different company when overseas before and said 'never again' but somehow got roped in - they have a well, tried methodology which kind of pushes you along. Of course, as we had no intention of signing up we hadn't done any research on the business before attending, but the prospect of a 7 day cooling off that was mentioned and included in the PDS we saw seemed to mean we could research after signing without risk. So we did sign up for a lower membership. Of course, after the session, the first thing we checked was the reviews - wow, they are bad! So, on the basis of the reviews alone we decided to cancel and so contacted them and to our relief found they were quite accepting, efficient and even courteous about both accepting the cancellation (actually easier that in the PDS) and refunding the deposit paid without any delay. So, our experience was
a) a high pressure sales pitch
b) a tempting offer
c) good to their PDS at least by honoring the cooling off period without any issues

My wife and I fell for the bait at a shopping centre after she scratched the free holiday of a week in Bali or two other choices. Thought it was harmless to attend the presentation.How wrong we were! We consider ourselves reasonably switched on but we fell for the slick Classic Holidays presentation. At no time was timeshare mentioned. Only inexpensive accommodation in places like New York. We honestly thought that the $10k we handed over would be used to pay for accommodation booked through Classic Holidays. Wrong! That is basically a fee for the organisation to help you manage your holidays. And then you have to pay an annual fee.
The free week in Bali is not free. You have to pay $199. Anyone can go on line and pay $400 for the week. So we saved $200 for our $10k outlay. Not a good investment! We tried to renege on the contract ten days after being misled and after we returned from our holiday and read our documentation. We were very quickly told that there was a 7 day cooling off period and since we were outside that period they would not entertain any amendments to the contract.
Whenever you call the Company you are told that " we don't handle that, you will have to contact our Travel Department!" You contact the Travel Department to organise flights to Bali and needless to say you need to coordinate availability of the accommodation and flight days. The Travel Department advised that I would have to provide consent to allow them to talk with another arm of the organisation about the accommodation. Eventually I purchased tickets for flights at the same rate I could have purchased them through Flight Centre.
I send emails to Classic Holidays and have to wait ages for a response. As a member we would like details of how things work at Classic Holidays ......who do we contact etc. I am awaiting a response.
When you call Classic Holidays, the staff are very friendly, at times almost too much in that it seems false. They obviously read from a script. It is too early for us to say anything positive about the organisation but hopefully that will change.
We acknowledge that we made a mistake by signing up after being subjected to the slick high pressure sales presentation where timeshare was never mentioned. Its a shame that many of us who feel that way cannot initiate a class action against Classic Holidays to allow us to terminate the contract due to being misled and in my case being so firm in not being flexible about the cooling off period.

This company is a scam, high pressure selling for promises not given when the time comes to book a holiday. We are out of pocket $10000.00 and have had to deal with rude aggressive salespeople and administrative staff. Please do not take a membership they just want your money and are not interested to hear your concerns.

Have just completed a rail/cruise holiday booked through Classic Holidays. What we paid for was not what was provided. All requests for a refund of the extra money paid for upgrades that were not forthcoming gave been ignored. These people are crooks and should be deregistered as travel agents. Never book a holiday through this company.

Scam ! Just walk away and you will thank me!

Absolutely a con job from to finish,
Won the “Free “Bali holiday from the scratch ticket paid the $40 yo be able to claim the prize, went to the office
And were confronted with aggressive, coordatonated sale pitch designed to pressure you into buying into the club.

Needless to say there was no free holiday. Keep away from these con artists an absolute disgrace!!!!’

The sales presentation is one on one with a sales person and if you say no they will bring over another sales person to pressure you to buy.
They do not let you leave until they have sold you something.

The people who call you to sell you a holiday or chase your member fees are usually very sympathetic to your case but do not appear to be able to help you at all. I often sense that they feel some remorse or sadness working for this company and having to hear from people who are being held hostage to it.

You cannot cancel your membership even if you fully own it and will be charged fees for the life of the membership .

Don’t listen to the sales people. Read the reviews all over the internet.

Fell for the high pressure sales pitch and handed over $12,000 for a 15 year membership. Shortly afterwards, and before I could take advantage of the holiday offers, my financial circumstances changed - through no fault of mine. As there was no chance of me being able to use Classic Holidays for the foreseeable future I asked for my membership to be cancelled and hopefully, for some form of refund - after all, I had not yet had anything for my $12,000 apart from a 'free' weekend in Auckland.
Correspondence went back and forth for some time - nearly two years in fact - before I received a request for another year's fees. This resulted in further correspondence ending with Classic Holidays stating that they would finally cancel my membership if I paid the year's fees. Failing to do so would result in me being liable for all fees for the full 15 years of my membership.
By now I was thoroughly fed up with the whole affair and paid the annual fee just to be able to move on. I am now awaiting a response from C.H.
This has been a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Classic Holidays may be selling a worth-while product - I wouldn't know as I have not been in a position to take advantage of membership. However great the product may be, I now have no interest in working with a company without a heart.

We "won" a free holiday with a scratchie at a craft show. Had to pay a $40 deposit to ensure we turned up that week for a "90 minute holidays presentation" that week. We arrived and received our $40 back and then sat through a slick high pressure interactive sales spiel on joining a travel club and heavily discounted holidays. The promised savings per holiday were just too good to be true. Then there was the kicker: $26.5k upfront for a 67 year club membership of discounted holidays that can be used by family and can be willed to others, plus $300 in annual charges. Smaller packages for shorter time frames were also offered and with the same annual charges.
NEVER was there any mention of timeshare accommodations or that we were buying into such - we only found out about it within the PDS that they handed to us and in the holiday book.
And when we said no, the tone changed immediately. We were ushered into a side office to process our prize only to face more selling of a "very special" smaller investment as a sampler to which we also said no.
Anyway, we were given our prize certificate only to find that we have to pay a $199 Administration Fee at the time of booking (no longer a prize!). And we will also be charged $500 if we don't go back for another 60 minute presentation afterwards, which was never mentioned but is printed in bold in the back of the holiday booklet given to us as we were leaving.
We won't be booking our holiday "prize", obviously. And we'll be staying well clear of these folks for a very long time.
Probably still legal. Deceptive, coercive and unethical if nothing else.

I bacame member few years back and have no regrats. We travel at least twice a year. Kids love resort environment. It's a good homely and comfortable athmosphere wherever we went. Staff is friendly and welcoming in all resorts that we have been too. Thank you Classic escapes for making our life more rich and colorful!

High pressured sales talk

I was invited to have a chat about my timeshare which turned out to be an annoying sales talk The fees are way to high for us would suit people who are well off though

It was awesome guys! Super holidays, these guys take all the worries from you.

As a timeshare owner we find classic great but recently attended their seminar on their new system while on holiday - very expensive and we felt pressured until we mentioned my husband having a bad heart and he needed tests they walked away - no pressure - I would recommend their timeshare owner title. - you can buy them online quite cheap often with bonus weeks attached- the win here is the bonus weeks you can buy like at moment 255$ for a full week in Victoria. Or nsw - you do pay a yearly fee but if you use their bonus weeks it works out good and you can book for your family and friends - but the seminar wanting 20000$ was a joke

Free trip won - YES!! -and then...
90 min seminar turned into 2.5 hours! We were hooked on the line and they were reeling us in. We were very interested in the extremely slick and suave presentation and fantastic savings on on offer with their 'network partners'. When my wife asked whether it was a Timeshare, we were emphatically told that they were not - but really, they are.
The lovely young lady we were going through the presentation with was shunted aside by the Manager and then the astronomical fees were dropped on us like a bomb. That was it for us - we needed to remove ourselves from this increasingly high pressure sales environment we were now in and realised that the financial commitment was far too high for us moderate income earners.
Repeated declines from us and then after repeated (better) offers 'just for us this one day' were thrown at us to re-kindle our interest in signing there and then.
We declined again and left feeling very relieved that we did not succumb to their well-delivered, finely-honed, fever pitch presentation.
Completely frazzled by the mental accosting we had received, it took several glasses of wine to settle back to normal!!
Once bitten, twice shy.
Could they be of value to some people? - Possibly.
Could they be burdening some people with high cost contracts for life? - Probably
Do I think what they do is morally ethical? - Absolutely not!

Extremely rude and aggressive phone staff. I asked t o speak to another so-called customer service reprentative, who not only rude, but actually aggressive. This was the response for simply making a polite inquiry. Avoid this company at all costs.

Classic holidays are superb and take all the worries from you with special attention to detail to make your travel worry-free - especially good for older people!
You are greeted with a smile at your airport destination, and taken to your hotel by taxi with a courier who makes sure you are settled in. You have a contact number in case of any problem.
For your return journey you are picked up at the hotel and taken to the airport. For our recent holiday in Egypt we were even escorted into the airport on our return journey and given considerable help - the couriers were just wonderful and gave real support making us feel very special. We wish we could remember their names - they deserve congratulations and a bonus!! Yes, we will definitely travel with Classic Holidays again - top marks to everyone involved and special thanks to the couriers. Michael and Jill, from Warwick.

My wife travelled to Coolangatta and always talks about it. The reception and services from Classic holidays are wonderful. I am planning to take the whole family to experience these awesome services.

We attended the mind body soul festival at MEC in June and my partner "won" a holiday from Classic Holdays. We attended their 90min pressure sales meeting in port melbourne where we were supposed to receive a $25 shopping voucher and $50 wine voucher. We did consider spending the $25,000 joining fee, but due to the high interest rate offered on finance (14-15%), unable to verify what they were saying re customer experience, not willing to allow us to do our research and placed huge amount of pressure on us to sign up, we declined to join. One night only offer!!!
Needless to say, we did not receive any vouchers or free holiday as promised. We believe the company is dishonest and relies on heavy pressure selling to avoid people the opportunity to check them out before commitment. BUYER BEWARE!!

We have been doing this for 5 years now and love it. We have been around the world with the family for a really good price. Totally stress free...!