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Please share your good and bad experiences in your Mexico vacations
Very bad experiences. Wallet stolen and all my cards had to be cancelled. My debit card was used to rake up $3000+ US in purchases by a gang of three operating out of a fast food restaurant. One guy talking to me in line at counter, well-dressed woman talking to my husband while another man scratching in my tote which was at my husband's feet. He got my wallet which was at the very bottom of the tote.
Then we attended a presentation at Puerta Bahia Villas, believed a husband and wife team who said they could sell our two tmeshares for some $53,000+ US guaranteed, within six months, which would pay for the villa we purchased and we would have some $23,000 US over for ourselves. The contract had two clauses "no buyer's remorse" and"no deposit returned" in event of a cancellation. We tried to cancel after four days but were told we could not because of the two clauses and we believed the manager , in spite of the fact that Mexican law states that one has five days in which to cancel a timeshare contract. We did not know this. The manager had us sign for a cheaper villa which he backdated to the original purchase and sign a letter that we were happy with the deal. We later found out from a Mexican attorney that we could have cancelled the deal and that we wer conned out of our deposit of $10,000-. We cancelled the latter deal and walked away with nothing. because we are so angry.
So we are not very happy with our experiences in Mexico and will not return there.
We have had our debit card defrauded twice. The first time was last year for $3,600 US after using the card once at an ATM.
So be warned if you go to Puerta Vallarta, that you should tread very carefully if you go to Puerta Vallarta Villas and meet up with the husband and wife team who are very charming and very convincing and don't sign anything unless you are very very sure of what you want to do. You should sleep on it before you decide and go back the next day!
Very bad experiences. Wallet stolen and all my cards had to be cancelled. My debit card was used to rake up $3000+ US in purchases by a gang of three operating out of a fast food restaurant. One guy talking to me in line at counter, well-dressed woman talking to my husband while another man scratching in my tote which was at my husband's feet. He got my wallet which was at the very bottom of the tote.
Then we attended a presentation at Puerta Bahia Villas, believed a husband and wife team who said they could sell our two tmeshares for some $53,000+ US guaranteed, within six months, which would pay for the villa we purchased and we would have some $23,000 US over for ourselves. The contract had two clauses "no buyer's remorse" and"no deposit returned" in event of a cancellation. We tried to cancel after four days but were told we could not because of the two clauses and we believed the manager , in spite of the fact that Mexican law states that one has five days in which to cancel a timeshare contract. We did not know this. The manager had us sign for a cheaper villa which he backdated to the original purchase and sign a letter that we were happy with the deal. We later found out from a Mexican attorney that we could have cancelled the deal and that we wer conned out of our deposit of $10,000-. We cancelled the latter deal and walked away with nothing. because we are so angry.
So we are not very happy with our experiences in Mexico and will not return there.
We have had our debit card defrauded twice. The first time was last year for $3,600 US after using the card once at an ATM.
So be warned if you go to Puerta Vallarta, that you should tread very carefully if you go to Puerta Vallarta Villas and meet up with the husband and wife team who are very charming and very convincing and don't sign anything unless you are very very sure of what you want to do. You should sleep on it before you decide and go back the next day!
People get suckered like this everyday in the U.S. Why not have a lawyer read documents before you sign?
Why didn't your bank cancel your cards? Why didn't you notice someone rifling through a tote at your husband's feet? What happened to you in Mexico happens regularly in the U.S. everyday.
I went on a 25-day trip to Mexico on March 7th to March 31st, 2011. It was done on a budget, and definitely not a vacation, but rather an adventure of sorts. The bad:
- Forgetting my laptop charger at home
- Somebody stealing my Ambien pills before I left home from my room
- The cost of the Ek Balam site nearly doubling, leaving me without enough money for a return taxi (luckily the guy was really nice about it and drove me back to my hostel to get my ATM card, and then to the bank, and didn't expect anything extra!)
- Forgetting my ATM card at the bus terminal in Merida and having to argue with the credit card company to remove the hold on transfers from my bank account
- Massive diarrhea
The good:
- The beautiful scenery
- Cenotes
- The ruins at Uxmal (those at Ek Balam were not as impressive, because I was alone without a guide)
- The waterfalls at Chiflon and Agua Azul
- The two friends' families I stayed with in Tabasco
- Mexican girls - so much sweeter than American girls!
- The cities - so much more alive than their American counterparts
- Prices
- Excellent food
I went on some mission trips to Guadalarja didn't have any trouble other than one of the mission team members left his fanny pack in the pool house bathroom at our hotel, with cash, and never saw it again, and I loved the seeing the old architecture downtown.
On the flip side I went to Cancun, loved the ruins, and all the things to do in the area, but every time I went down the strip I had vendors trying to lure me into their shops telling me they had hookers and weed, and coming home from the club one night about every taxi driver was trying to offer me some kind of drug.
Ihave had about 5 occasions in Mexico in which I had to run my car into a taller mecanico for one repair or another. In every case, the job was done quickly and efficiently with no hassles, for a tiny fraction of what it would have cost in the USA.
One example, my oil pressure light started flashing intermittently. I rolled into the first taller I saw in some little town in Oaxaca, and was pointed down the road about a half mile where there was a mecanico with the sign "electronico". The guy had me drive over his pit, and went down with a flashlight, saw that my gauge sending unit had dragged on a tope, and frayed the wiring, so my warning flasher was to alert me that it was getting no signal. He quickly soldered the wires back together, wrapped them with electrical tape, and sent me on my way for 20 pesos. An American roadside shop would have started out by charging me $100 to hook my car up to an electronic analyzer, and then ordered a new sending unit to replace mine, come back tomorrow.
That was probably the same tope I hit when I first crossed the border, (I always forget about them, at first), which ripped up the baffle shield under my car, which was scraping on the road. I had pulled into the first little corrugated shack mecanico I saw. The guy crawled underneath, and bent and tugged at it until it didn't drag on the road. When I got out money to pay him, he just laughed and waved and said "Bien viaje".
And then there was the brake shop in Acaponeta, Nayarit. My sway bar broke, and fell on the brake line and broke the line. I limped into town with no brakes at 5 pm on a Sunday and the brake shop was open. By the time he bicycled down to the auto parts store and got the needed replacement parts (at 6 pm Sunday), it was dark. The only lights in his shop were his plug-in trouble light. No problem, he still fgot me going, and charged me about $5 for his labor, plus a surprisingly low price for the parts. He didn't bother to replace the sway bar, he just took of the broken parts. He said "You don't need that". He was right, I drove the car for a couple of years, missing a sway bar, and couldn't tell the difference.
You can't beat Mexican mechanics or the Mexican ability to repair almost anything. They can't afford to buy a new car every few years like we do so they keep junkers running in tip top condition. Foreigners here are thrilled with the body work they've had done and the prices even in the price gouging Gringo areas are still a fourth of what they would be North of the Border.
I've had a vacuum repaired for less than $10 USD that NOB I would have thrown it away because it wouldn't have been worth the cost to fix it.
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