Have you ever heard that old expression, "no good deed goes unpunished?"

 

Well that expression applies perfectly to what happened to My Free Travel.

 

Since 1987, My Free Travel has been providing incentive and loyalty products to businesses all across the United States and Canada. They have seven or more offices across the US and had hundreds of employees.

 

Although they have been in business 22 years, they have only been doing rebate certificates for five years.

 

When things started looking shaky with BBZ, Customer Loyalty International sought out another company to continue the gas and grocery rebate program with. I can only assume that My Free Travel thought this was an exceptional opportunity to grow their rebate business.

 

Unfortunately, the customers that My Free Travel picked up initially were all folks that were trying to redeem their rebate certificates at BBZ when they went bankrupt.  So My Free Travel picked up 40,000 people who wanted to redeem immediately. That swamped their company from the very beginning and they were never able to recover from it.

 

So by a simple act of trying to increase their sales, they actually imploded their company and now apparently they're out of business.

 

The following message is on both of the redemption web sites...

 

"Please be advised that My Free Travel will be unable to honor any rebates redeemed on or after December 1, 2009. This is due to an extremely high response rate to the program. The responses received have far exceeded numbers anticipated by our projections and this has resulted in a shortage of funds to meet required payments. We will continue to attempt payment for any qualified rebates that have been submitted prior to December 1, 2009."
My personal frustration with the situation is over the top. My Free Travel was a well-established, financially secure, reliable company for over 20+ years. In addition to that, they shared with us a certificate of insurance for a $7,500,000 over redemption insurance policy they had purchased to cover any such contingency. I have a copy of that insurance policy on file. If you have any desire to have a copy for yourself, please let me know.
I am personally sorry for the challenges this has caused and am embarrased by this problem.