Woman signs up for Groupon’s ‘Mystery Getaway.’ Then she accuses them of running a scam.

A recent TikTok trend has people taking “mystery getaways”— and, occasionally, suffering some consequences.

The pitch is as simple as it is inviting. Vacations are expensive. However, for a low price, you can get a ticket to a mystery destination—a ticket that costs substantially less than it otherwise would. Once you're there, your hotel is taken care of, all wrapped into the low mystery vacation cost.

The upside is a unique vacation on a budget. The downside, most people think, is that you could be sent somewhere unpleasant or boring.

However, there's another way that these mystery vacations can go wrong. TikTok user Samar Leilani (@samaraleilani) recently learned that firsthand—and now, she's sharing her experience.

What Went Wrong With This Mystery Vacation?

Leilani's experience started back on August 3rd, when she posted a video booking the mystery vacation. While she was initially excited, things pretty quickly went awry.

This system works by allowing customers to choose three airports from which they could potentially leave in order of priority. Leilani selected Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) as her first choice, the Bay Area airports as her second choice, and San Diego's airport as her third choice.

When she got the call telling her about her “mystery getaway,” she learned that she did not get her priority airport—but that wasn't the only problem.

On the call, which Leilani recorded, the worker informed her that she would be leaving from San Francisco for a trip to Las Vegas.

There are three major problems with this. First, Leilani had just been to Las Vegas. Second, the dates did not work with her schedule. Finally, and most importantly, the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is shorter than the drive to San Francisco for the flight. When Leilani asked about changing the destination, she was told that was possible—but only for an additional cost of $129 per person.

“I think my biggest problem with this—what the [expletive] is the lottery? Genuinely, what is it?” she asks the camera. “And I'm not talking about the tiers. I'm talking about the airport. What do you mean you shuffled, the system picked my airport and would send me to Las Vegas? Baby, I could drive to Las Vegas in three and a half hours. Why would I fly up to San Francisco to fly down to—girl, I don't know.”

Things Get Weirder

Sensing something major was amiss, she decided to cancel the trip and get a refund. This ended up being more complicated than she thought.

In a follow-up video, she documented the experience of trying to get a better destination—or even just some answers about what was going on. By the end of the call, she became convinced that the entire operation was a scam.

“You're lying to me,” she says at one point during her conversation with a different employee.

This employee told her that the other destinations mentioned by the previous employee were not possible. She then referred to her previous phone call, saying, “We know you're lying because of all the information in our 45-minute conversation.”

Eventually, Leilani settled on trying to get a refund. This, too, proved to be fairly complicated.

First, she called the company with which she had just been speaking. They told her that she needed to resolve the issue with Groupon. After talking with a chatbot, then an AI chatbot that claimed to be a human, she decided to go nuclear, emailing the company's CEO, COO, and general counsel.

This did elicit a response, though not in the way Leilani hoped. The company refunded the money to her Groupon account in the form of store credit; Leilani had specifically asked for a refund to her original form of payment.

The Refund Is Processed

Finally, after her videos gained traction, she received a response from the company on social media. They informed her that she would be getting her refund issued to the original payment method as requested.

While this resolved Leilani's problem, she says that, over the course of making these videos, she received messages and comments from people in similar situations who did not get the same care that she did. When she brought this up to the company over direct message, she found their answer unsatisfactory.

“I wish I could come on here & give others a resolution for their Groupon support issues since they resolved mine, but that is unfortunately not the case. Do better @Groupon. Every customer deserves to be treated with the same [level] of care, & it should not take a multi-part social media series to receive proper attention for a case,” she writes in the caption of one of her videos. “I see very big legal issues coming from this if you do not change your ways.”

Others Have Similar Issues

In the comments section, users shared similar issues.

“I bought this Groupon like four or so years ago I never got a trip and lost about $800 because I paid for my daughter and me. I tried to get a refund and had no luck,” recalled a user.

“Yeah was a victim of those too. They changed my destination and dates to ones I couldn't do and would not change it or give another alternative. Lost all the money,” offered another.

“I wanted to fly out of Detroit, which is listed as an airport available to fly out of. They wanted me drive to Cleveland to fly from there because Detroit wasn't actually part of the deal,” added a third. “It took a few days, but I got Groupon to eventually give me a full refund back to my card after I threatened a few times to dispute the charge. It is a scam for sure.”

We've reached out to Groupon via email, Leilani via email and Instagram direct message, and Weekender Breaks via email.

The post Woman signs up for Groupon's ‘Mystery Getaway.' Then she accuses them of running a scam: ‘You did not disclose its a lottery' appeared first on Subplot News.