ATLANTA -- The fax machine in the Channel 2 Action News investigative unit has churned out dozens of travel offers over the last few years. We recently bought a package that promised us four nights in Orlando, three nights in the Bahamas (with a short cruise,) two nights in Fort Lauderdale and a trip to Vegas with airfare included!

Could $99 dollars per person be real? No.

The people answering the phone number listed on the fax transferred me four times before a computer voice told me: Besides the one time reservation fee of $58 dollars, no other fees are mandatory.

Several other additional charges, such as shipping and handling of $117 for a package of travel documents, pushed the total price from $99 per person to more than $350.

We learned dream vacations sometimes end in rude awakenings.

We were required to stop at a “welcome center” in Ft. Laudersale, where a woman at the desk said, “All these people that come through here on packages... It's all geared around time shares.”

We had to plunk down a $40 deposit to ensure we'd show up at a 90 minute timeshare presentation we didn't know anything about.

“I had no idea I was going to take a tour today,” said New York traveler Erika Tavares.

“I blame the marketeers who get us down here under false pretenses,” said her husband, Giovanni.

Our sales rep told us the Vacation Village time share resort paid our travel company and several others to recruit prospects. “We're basically chipping in money on your vacation,” said salesman Luke Reischel.

A group from South Wales complained they got stuck taking three timeshare tours. They had to pay that deposit at the same welcome center.

“Give me your forty dollars,” Nigel Williams recalled the demand of a man staffing the center.

“For what?

“Give me your forty dollars, you'll get it back after the tour.”

“Tour, what tour?,” Williams remembered.

A couple from Denmark said they’d been threatened with extra hotel charges if they skipped time share presentations they were not told of.

“It's close to criminal, but it's legal,” said Peter Saager.

Our Bahamas hotel room had doors that wouldn't close and a toilet that wouldn't stop leaking. A manager insisted on changing our room.

Our Orlando hotel, actually on a busy highway in Kissimmee, gave us a no smoking room with cigarette burned carpet. Furniture was falling apart, and the bed sagged four inches in the middle of the mattress.

We had paid our money to a Florida travel business called Wholesale Connection Company.

Debra Graham of Richmond Hill, GA, paid for a similar package, but never even received the documents necessary to book the trip. “I got a charge on my credit card, and I got nothing,” said Graham.

Graham's is one of more than 120 complaints with the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida.

“WCC does have an unsatisfactory record with the BBB, primary due to their selling practices and failure to give refunds when they should be giving refunds,” said BBB President Judy Pepper.

Wholesale Connection Company is connected to a telephone boiler room. On our visit, one manager didn't want us there. Another said she'd been authorized by the owners to speak.

As for our unannounced timeshare tour, Customer Service Manager Carmen Santiago said: “Our sales staff always strive to assist customers and I don't believe that no one would have explained that to you, sir.”

On our cruise, we paid port taxes of $159, when the true port tax is less than $10 bucks. “We don't just invent fees,” she said.

Santiago also explained that a statement over the phone: “We do not promote this on a refundable basis,” doesn’t mean WCC refuses to give refunds. She said it simply means they don’t promote the fact they give refunds.

“Don't you think it's a little misleading?,” I asked.

“No sir, it's not misleading,” she replied.