Don't Buy Tour Packages From Maximum Sports Connection - Page 3 - Dallas Cowboys Forum

Rynie · 12-26-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chocolate Lab

Do you really?

Yep. I flash the tattoo...get a shot in the 'lot. Never fails.

rags747 · 12-26-2012

Ok, so what would a ballpark cost for 3 be to attend a game at Cowboys stadium ? Figure in the Gaylord for the hotel + the tour the day after the game + would probably be open to more I guess. Would be flying in from NY. Is a Thanksgiving game significantly more expensive ? Thx in advance...

Irving Cowboy · 12-26-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by rags747

Ok, so what would a ballpark cost for 3 be to attend a game at Cowboys stadium ? Figure in the Gaylord for the hotel + the tour the day after the game + would probably be open to more I guess. Would be flying in from NY. Is a Thanksgiving game significantly more expensive ? Thx in advance...

go to www.starsportstours.com for the price schedule.

Airfares are up to you and are not provided with the packages.

CowboyDan · 12-26-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by rags747

Ok, so what would a ballpark cost for 3 be to attend a game at Cowboys stadium ? Figure in the Gaylord for the hotel + the tour the day after the game + would probably be open to more I guess. Would be flying in from NY. Is a Thanksgiving game significantly more expensive ? Thx in advance...

Please email or PM me directly for quotes. dan@starsportstours.com
Also, keep in mind that our 2013 packages will be released after we have the hotel and transportation rates for the new year. (mid-February) Right now we're getting ready for the PLAYOFFS!!! And accepting 2013 deposits. You can select your package type when the packages are released and pick your game when the schedule is released in April. This is for the regulars who know that they're going with us no-matter-what next year, so they can lock in the lowest prices of the season for just a $200 deposit per person.

Irving Cowboy · 12-27-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilyin

Should permaban these maximumsports clowns from the board. Doesn't look like they wanna do any damage control, and really, what can they say at this point?

I thought about using them in the past, glad I didn't.

I emailed one of her employees this story (the same one who posts here) and he replied back with "you don't know the whole story, everyone was taken care of, we fed 40 hungry people, blah blah blah". The operation has been a sham for a few years now, hopefully it won't be long before they are out of business, i.e. done ripping off Cowboys fans.

BlueStar3398 · 12-27-2012

Someone posted on her FB page saying how wonderful she is and not to believe the news stories. This is her reply:

Quote:

Wow Gene!!! Thank you for posting this. You beat mke to it and I am going to let this post stay. I actually did speak to the press today as they didnt give me a chance before they ran with it. I took full responsibilty and there is absolutely NO excuse for what happened. I can only make sure it never does again and I have and will be taking drastic measures to ensure this. I have been so lucky to come across MANY awesome fans that are customers and now friends. That is the best part of my job. For 16 years I have been catering to the BEST fan base in football and I dont plan to stop. The people that bash and say crude things do so because of their own issues not mine. Just know we will right our wrong the best way we can and thanks again Gene for putting it out there.

CowboyDan · 12-27-2012

This is nothing new with Maximum. In case any of you missed the previous articles in the Star Telegram over the years.....

Dallas sports travel agency drops ball for fans going to Cowboys-Redskins game
Thursday Dec. 23, 2010
By Barry Shlachter
barry@star-telegram.com

Cowboys fan Alishea Thomas of Richmond, Va., had been making payments for months toward a $1,000 travel package so she could watch her Dallas Cowboys battle the Washington Redskins last Sunday and celebrate her birthday with friends.

Unfortunately, the tour company -- Maximum Sports Connection, the "official Cowboys fan travel partner" -- never replied to her increasingly frantic e-mails asking the flight time.

Each time she called, Thomas was put off by staff members, who said the owner, Ronni Sokol, wasn't in but would e-mail her. "I didn't even get the courtesy of, 'Hey, I'm working on it,'" said Thomas, a supervisor at a federal agency.
Four days before the planned departure, she filed a failure to provide services claim with her credit card company after American Airlines told her no reservation had been made in her name. She recouped only $700 of the $1,002.79, because some payments were more than two billing cycles old.

"And I bought a dress for my birthday that I never got to wear," she said.
More than 100 other Maximum Sports Connection clients did make it to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport -- on a one-stop flight on U.S. Airways, instead of a more convenient nonstop American flight -- only to be told that promised reservations at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center were canceled.

Darron Mayes, co-organizer of a group of 24 Redskins and Cowboys fans from northern Virginia, quoted Sokol as saying that Gaylord had "overbooked," but that she had arranged alternate accommodations at the Marriott DFW hotel in Fort Worth.

"That is not correct," Gaylord spokeswoman Martha Neibling said. "There was no overbooking."
Neibling said Maximum Sports failed to make its payment deadline. And while cancellations in the hotel trade are common, losing a block of about 200 rooms so close to check-in was rare, she added.

Since Mayes and co-organizer Elijah Jenkins had promised a stay at the Gaylord Texan, they took rooms at the property, which offered them Maximum's group rate of $139 instead of the $268 rack rate. Mayes and Jenkins covered all the room charges themselves, but were later told by Sokol that they would be reimbursed.

Dallas-based Maximum Sports has an enviable "A+" rating from the Better Business Bureau, and Cowboys spokesman Brett Daniels, referring to the 11-year-old tour company, said, "We've heard of no problems in the past and no complaints."

"The company just had a hiccup," Sokol told the Star-Telegram. "We couldn't meet the deadline for payment, so it was very last-minute. We've been in business a long time, and we're trying to work with each individual customer to rectify the situation."

Sokol confirmed telling customers that Gaylord had overbooked, but also disclosed that she had failed to pay for the rooms in time because of a cash-flow problem. Then, she reasserted that Gaylord had indeed overbooked because not all of the rooms released after the cancellation were made available.

She blamed the last-minute airline switch on customers who themselves failed to meet a payment deadline.
But Betty McKenzie-Mabry, a Maryland travel agent who led a 31-member group, said an American Airlines group sales official disclosed that Maximum's credit card was declined.

Moreover, Maximum failed to arrange for tickets on U.S. Airways for seven in her group, who stayed home as a result.
"I had to tell them at 11 p.m. Thursday night, and we were supposed to leave the next day," she said in a call from Greenbelt, Md.

Another fan, an Army servicewoman, flew to the Washington area from South Korea to use her prepaid package. The soldier refused to travel with the group because of the flight and hotel changes, McKenzie-Mabry said.
McKenzie-Mabry described an ugly scene at D/FW Airport, when her group was told of yet another hotel change, from the Omni to the Marriott. "They cussed me out in the airport," she said.

Sokol said she is contacting customers with an offer to compensate them for their inconveniences, which could be applied toward discounted 2011 game packages. This year's packages ranged from $399 to $1,075.

Refunds will start at $100 and go up, depending on the cost of the package and problems encountered, she said.
Jenkins confirmed that Maximum contacted them early this week, then again Wednesday, asking for receipts for the Gaylord rooms so he and Mayes can be reimbursed.

Barry Shlachter, 817-390-7718

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/12...#storylink=cpy

CowboyDan · 12-27-2012

Shlachter, Nishimura & Baker
More complaints surface about sportstravel firm

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011
By Barry Shlachter, Scott Nishimura and Sandra Baker
Star-Telegram Staff Writers

Was it a"hiccup"? That's how the "official fan travel partner" of the Dallas Cowboys put it when some East Coast football fans didn't receive game tickets and dozens of others got a different hotel than promised for the mid-December weekend when the Cowboys took on the Redskins.

Ronni Sokol, owner of Maximum Sports Connection, insisted that it was a rare glitch. Sokol told us she would get make good on the lapse and then dispatched a batch of laudatory e-mails from past customers. But the incident seems less isolated today.

Since the Dec. 23 article ran, Jeff Fuller, general manager of Embassy Suites Outdoor World in Grapevine, told us that Maximum still hadn't paid a $31,500 bill for rooms in October.

And a Maryland travel agent, Betty McKenzie-Mabry, said Sokol has made good on refunds for only two of seven hotel and ticket packages costing $449 each that Maximum had failed to deliver, leaving the fans at home. "They are getting ready to sue me and her," McKenzie-Mabry said of her clients. "They said, 'Enough is enough.'"

Then we heard from two Auburn fans this week who said Maximum never came through with packages for the BCS National Championship in Glendale, Ariz., on Monday.

Michelle Robinson, an Auburn fan from Safe Harbor, Fla., said the firm contacted her less than a week before the game, saying there were no 50-yard-line tickets as contracted in a $3,317 hotel-and-ticket package. But if her party of four ponied up $2,495 more apiece, it might be able to scare some up, Robinson quoted Maximum as saying.

The group flew out to Phoenix anyway and dealt with a series of what Robinson called shady scalpers until it finally negotiated four tickets at less than $2,500 each, Robinson said. Meanwhile, she has disputed her charge to Maximum but has yet to hear whether she's been credited.

Atlanta resident Bill Moss, 41, another Auburn fan, said Sokol promised to reimburse airfare for fans who didn't go because she failed to secure tickets, something experienced by many other travel companies as demand outstripped supply.

And she promised to cover the cost of a Phoenix hotel room for Moss if he dropped his complaints to the Better Business Bureau and the Texas attorney general's office. Sokol blamed phone trouble for not paying by checkout time, requiring Moss to pay$455 out of his own pocket. But she promised by e-mail Tuesday evening that she would make good on her commitment, Moss said.Until she does, Moss said he has let his BBB complaint stand.

Sokol did not respond to our phone messages and e-mails in the past week. The Cowboys front office said it had never gotten any complaints about Sokol or her company, and Maximum has an enviable A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.

BlueStar3398 · 12-27-2012

2010, 2011, 2012..... Happens every year. Absolutely no excuse for doing fans this way that pay their money for the Cowboys game experience.

Notice that she says, "I'm going to let this post stay". If you sing her praises, you are allowed to post on her FB wall. Everything else is deleted because, "The people that bash and say crude things do so because of their own issues not mine."

Or maybe it's because they got ripped off?

Zordon · 12-27-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chocolate Lab

Do you really?

Rynie is sort of a "made man" in the tailgating world.

Rynie · 12-27-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zordon

Rynie is sort of a "made man" in the tailgating world.

Haha. This made me laugh. It's sort of true, though. I belong to SCDCFC (southern California DC fan club) and Los Borrachos Tailgating Crew (san antonio area). I live here, in Irving. LOL

theebs · 12-27-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rynie

I don't understand Why people used it in the first place. If you can't get your own ticket and tailgate on your own, maybe you shouldn't even be going.

*of course I am "the arm"..I appear on jumbo Jerry and get free drinks every game.

odd.

I have never seen it.