steve b.

The day before the title happened: I had booked with Extended Stay thru Orbit (also paid in advance) and arrived to find out the place had no vacancy. I returned home and put in for a refund and still needing a room, booked the next night with MyPlace and when I arrived they had no word of my coming. So I happened to have my confirmation page from Orbit right there to show the hotel, so they contacted Orbit to straighten things out. Orbit rather than address the matter then, instead chose to text me a link to their help page on their web site.
My hero. Not.
How much lamer can you be? Well I just told MyPlace to rent me a room (thus now having paid a second time) which they were happy to do. I don't blame MyPlace, and I never put in for a refund for the second rip-off because frankly my time is worth more and i had already wasted plenty of it on Orbits mickey-mouse approach to business.
I would save you, the reader, my frustration.
Was it worth it to save $5? Or $15? Total lost: about $200.
I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, and I am not savvy enough to upload an image but here is what they wrote me:
And all Orbit had to do was look up my history and see I have never put in for any refund for any reason, why would i lie about this one particular situation?

Dear Steve,

I spoke with Extended Stay America Suites Kansas City Overland Park Quivi and they decided to follow the terms and conditions of the booking and not issue a refund. They had stated that you were tagged as No show

Sincerely,

Catherine R
ILOCrosete
Orbitz Customer Support Team

Of course I don't have proof I showed up. Why would I? Until now i have never had a reason to think I would need proof: let alone that my word would not be taken on merit alone. Would be different if I had any sort of history of this.

Then came the next day when my reservation didnt show up at MyPlace but Orbits had the gall to send me an email asking for my review of the hotel.

I'm sorry but my time is worth more than the $100 I got cheated. To chase after something from a company that has as much as called me a liar already... when there is only evidence to the contrary if any at all.
Because at some point you have to say... you had your chance. Orbits had theirs, I'm not wasting more of my time to fix their mistakes but I will warn others what to expect.

You may have seen the commercials about how tophatter is like ebay only everything sells in ninety seconds. It is true both places do sell things but that is where the two part ways.
When I first heard about Tophatter I thought what a a great idea. An ebay that doesn't drag out auctions for days. I imagined what was advertised. A site just like ebay with auctions lasting only ninety seconds. That seemed a little fast but then I thought typical, instead of taking a common sense approach to whittling down the auction time, somebody said well what if we can cash in every ninety seconds? Then I thought well it shouldn't be that bad. I will just have to be diligent about getting my bids in and if others could do it then so could I.
First is there is no search or if there is I couldn't find it. It certainly isn't at the top of every page. To the best of my ability I was only able to conclude that to find what you're looking for you have to visit the categories provided. Then wade through all the ads in hopes of finding what you're wanting.
Second is that the ads shown on the front page don't have much of any kind of description about the product. You can click on the ad and it brings up the item in a page showing more information but the process of the sale happens so fast that there reailly isn't time to be able to find the item, click on the ad, read about the item for sale, and make a decision to bid... before time is up and the sale is completed. You're really screwed (I would imagine) if you have a slow internet connection because you'll never have time to find what you're seeking and make a competent decision whether to bid on it or let it pass.
Third has already been mentioned. The ninety second window is ridiculously too fast and I can almost guaratee that if you use TH on a regular basis that the time will come when you feel cheated because the item you got was cheaply made and that you would not have bid on it if you had time to further investigate before making the bid.
My guess is that Tophatter gets plenty of emails where the subject goes something like "Product was inferior to what I expected and I didn't see that it was cheaply made until after the sale was over because I didn't have time..."
Perhaps that is what Tophatter sought to do, is be a site that is known for having the cheapest version of whatever type product you are seeking and then try to compensate for that fact by not giving the buyer time to do their homework on the item that is for sale. If that is the case then Tophatter is getting the review they deserve.
On the other hand perhaps they just didn't think this through from all aspects. Such as the one where the buyer must have a fast connection in order to be able to participate without being completely frustrated. That ninety seconds may put whatever it is they charge to sell on their site, in their pockets which admittedly probably is a great thing to have going for you, if you're Tophatter, but if you're a buyer it is not so great.
Also the site doesn't have a smidgeon of categories compared to ebay. They really shouldn't have chosen ebay as something to compare themselves with because they quite simply fail in every conceivable comparison except that both sites do sell things.
My suggestion to Tophatter is do what is attractive about the commercials you run which is be like ebay but have auctions with timespans that don't go more than a few hours. Give your buyers time to do their research about the product being sold and that will allow for items of quality to be sold at reasonable prices in time spans which the buyer will not be able to later say they were duped into buying due to the time constraints.

Update: reply to TH

I appreciate what you had to say but you like Ebay, and most every other seller online fail to consider, or perhaps you count on this to happen which may save you the hassle of dealing with one unhappy purchase but in either case what is missed is the fact that my time, much like everyone elses', is worth more than the price of many things i buy on line. Meaning that if I buy something for $5, and I make $10 an hour, and it takes me an hour to repackage and do whatever is required to send back an item, it becomes an exercise in ridiculousness if I choose to pursue that circumstance. Therefore, and I am this way with Ebay and every where else, it is paramount that the seller 1) gets the order right the first time 2) the product be of at minimum a quality that does what it claims it was going to do, because I am not going to waste my time playing the "we'll send you what we send, and see if you want to pay the cost of returning the item" game. That doesn't work with me.

I haven't read the rules for TH returns, The word "generous" was used when describing their return policy. I wonder do they pay the cost of the shipping back to them? I would be impressed but still at the end of the day is it worth my time to have to spend an hour getting the darn thing shipped back? Not to me but that said I do very much appreciate a return policy and I surely would never spend any large sum of money for something bought on line unless it was from some place that I not only knew had a return policy but that also was very customer-friendly about it.

The fastest way to know what kind of site it is your dealing with in my opinion is to go right past the welcoming page and straight to their help section. I do appreciate not having to contact CS by having a quality group of FAQs but often times I seem to be the one that falls through the cracks and though I am diligent about searching FAQs (because I don't have a lot of faith in CS in the first place), there are times when contacting CS is the only option.
This proved to be the case with my experience with Airbnb.com. I can't tell you how the rooms were, although I suspect that would be a place by place circumstance in this case. The reason I can't tell you is because although I have legal state issued drivers license; I was unable to get a photo of it which was good enough to satisfy their ID check system at airbnb.com. Had that been just the case, it would have been simply dropped from my mind as I continued my search to find a place to take a hot date I had been lucky enough to arrange. I am also of limited finances which was the reason I didn't just get a hotel room in the first place but before I left airbnb.com I noticed there was a second option to arrange getting my room, which stated that you didn't need to provide your ID to their system, but the caveat was that you might lose your reservation to someone who had in the meantime went through their process of checking ID successfully. I decided that sounds fair so I went through their process of taking my money and after having done all that I expected to be taken to a page saying when I would be contacted or where I had to go or something with instructions on what I needed to do next. Needless to say I was less than thrilled when it took me to their ID cheeking system page once again and it stated I needed to prove my ID.
Now the site had my money and I didn't have funds to just go on and worry about it later after my date. So I contacted both the owner of the place I was suppose to be renting and airbnb.com, this however only after going round and round on their website trying to find the link I needed to actually contact a human being.

All together I lost about four hours time before I got a message stating that my money was refunded. The owner of the property I was suppose to be renting did finally contact me that day with an oh-so helpful statement saying he couldn't accept my reservation until I had satisfied airbnb.com's identity checking system.

The only reason I didn't give airbnb.com a lower rating is because I didn't want to scare somebody who might need lodging at a somewhat lower rate than most hotels, because the truth is it might have been a wonderful stay had I been able to satisfy their ID check system.

This is fair warning to anyone that can't afford to have their money tied up or that might have any sort of special cause for contacting airbnb.com because I don't think you will get a reply in a timely fashion if at all.

When you fill out their form to join you are taken to a page where it looks like your only choice is to pay their membership fee or back out but just hit the proceed button without entering any information for paying and it will let you into the site.
As soon as you are in the site you will want the 3 minutes of your time back that it took to join. There were roughly 30 women of which only one had a photo and they were from all over the states, none close. It is basically a waste of time. I would have given it one star but at least it doesn't have a ton of scammers bothering you.
If a tumbleweed has scuttled past me I wouldn't have been surprised, it was so dead.

I came in to re-write this review based on what support at SecretBenefits.com had said to me that they were changing things at SB which would make this review out-dated. So rather than write about something I haven't yet experienced I am going to write about their support which I must admit are very responsive and were actually open-minded to what I considered to be an anchor around the neck of an otherwise good site. So if nothing else I can say with confidence that if you are unhappy with SecretBenefits.com that you would be wise to contact their support before giving up on the place because they might surprise you. They did me in that most the time even if you have a valid concern that when you write support IF they respond its some canned response followed by broken English to which by then most of us have had our spirit broken and given up.
That certainly was not my experience with SecretBenefits.com. There is no doubt that support speaks fluent English and are articulate on top of that. I believe they will do what they can to make your experience as best possible. That said, some responsibility falls to the one that purchased the membership in that if you don't make a serious effort then how can you expect a serious result?
I am reminded of a post somebody made about a dating site they claimed was tops! The man had written that he'd only been on the site less than a couple of months and all ready he had conversations with several girls. Well that's all he's ever going to have if he hasn't gotten laid to that point. Some do, some don't, all want to, the difference between the two is effort. You have to make some kind of one beyond chatting back and forth. Oh and being that SecretBenefits.com is a sugar daddy site then if you can't make a serious effort; have some serious rewards to give out and the ladies will do the effort part for you.

Oasis Dating is a free dating site although you have an option to upgrade but I admit I do not know what extra it brought to the table because after just a couple of searches it became very apparent that almost all the results returned in my women from ages 40 to 63 were last online over one month ago. Only two had used the site within that one month period.
I was spammed about 3 times from women who were way out of my driving range so I met them with an opening statement of I won't sign up, follow a link, give my email or my phone number. If that's all you want save us both some time and move on. Of the three likely spammers two didn't ever reply, one said "okay" and chose to not continue our correspondence.
One last thing I found rather annoying is that I couldn't contact anybody unless (I guess) we both liked each other, or perhaps it is set up so that the women have to like the men before the men are given a chance to contact the women because I know I hadn't liked any of the spammers who contacted me.
I gave OasisDating.com a two star rating because I have certainly been to a lot of worse dating sites. If they ever get a membership to boost current numbers I would drastically increase my overall rating.

I wanted everyone to know before they signed up for YoungerWomenLookingForOlderMen.org that it is actually SugarDaddyMeet.com.

I haven't paid for a membership at YoungerWomenLookingForOlderMen.org because right off the bat they prove to be misleading me. The site turns into SugarDaddyMeet.com which is not only a different site, but it is also a different theme if you want to get technical, and if I am not mistaken, that's exactly what someone is doing when they choose YoungerWomenLookingForOlderMen.org, note at no point in the title is a mention of sugar daddy, sugar baby, or any sort of money for companionship exchange. Whether there are young women out there wanting older men regardless of whether they are rich, or not, is not the point. The title suggests there are young women out there wanting older men, No mention of their status financially is ever addressed.
But lets say that we're savvy with how the world works and therefore we made the assumption that this was indeed a sugar daddy site, why would they wait until after I had signed up to let me know the site is mainly known as SugarDaddyMeet.com?

Just too many questionable approaches for me to feel comfortable giving my financial info at this time.

If you go ahead and reward this kind of behavior it will never stop. If everyone was adamant about never supporting spam, it wouldn't exist. But everybody has to make the effort. I'll do mine by not supporting a site that fooled me to thinking it was some place different.
I gave them an ok because not having had a paid membership I didn't feel qualified to give them less.

If my PC could talk, and I didn't get to it and silence it first, it would tell you that we've been to some places that were pretty shady, and some that have never seen the light, but seniorstodate.com was outstanding even among those shady spots. I don't even really know where to begin. It is my experience that when you pay for a membership in a site that brings (or I should say is suppose to bring) real, like-minded people into a place where they can mingle and correspond with what I expect to be somewhat of a safe environment. I mean if you just want to roll the dice why pay when you can go to a craigslist type site and roll the dice for free.

There is no safe environment at seniorstodate.com. It is combined with other sites which are saturated with young people, (in my case women and I suspect its same for women being thrown in with young men) all of which (at least in my case and I suspect most men my age) are trying to scam you one way or another, everything from getting your cell number to giving you an excuse how they are dying to bed you all that's holding up the fun is you haven't yet followed a link to where? IDK, I didn't follow it.
Talking with support was a joke. They "warn" you about the scammers and how they can't control what they do but you are welcome to report them and I said it would be easier to just point out the 3 women that didn't try to scam me and throw the rest out.
If you want to find out if she is a scam, and she tells you she can't message any more but if you give a number / call them... they can text the night away with you. What they won't do is ever talk in person (man on the other end? Hmmm).
If after reading this you decide to join their site, you deserve what you're gonna get. Expect 99+ winks and flirts. Good luck weeding through that mess to find any legitimate women that might be interested in you.