Million Miles Travel was my host agency and I have leveraged Tammy's support of group travels, using WeTravel. Tammy is a lawyer so I want to be careful that I do not make any claims that are not completely factual.
Short story:
My clients made their full payment through WeTravel (where it went into an escrow account solely controlled by Tammy), with the expectation that money would be paid to the operator. Instead Tammy took the money out of the account (less $0.20) and did NOT pay the operator.
Tammy has not responded to emails/messages/calls for 6 weeks.
I cannot refund the customers without Tammy returning the money to WeTravel. The operator can't run a trip without being paid, and the customers can't get their money back.
The only way the trip can happen at this point is if I pay for the trip myself for my clients, or my clients pay twice, through no fault of their own or the operator.
Longer version:
- My clients paid in full in February 2025 (for a trip in May 2025) via WeTravel, which means the money was in the WeTravel account owned/controlled by Tammy.
- Tammy was supposed to pay the deposit in early March and communicated with me and the operator about it (but did *not* complete the deposit payment)
- On March 12 she stopped responding to all texts, voicemails, emails, FB messages.
- On March 31, she sent a BCC'd email saying she'd been in an accident but would get to all priority items even though she had limited connectivity
- I continued to message on all channels to get her to pay the operator for the deposit+full amount due for the trip (or allow me access to the funds); no response
- On April 11, I tried to refund the customers via weTravel, but discovered there was only 20 cents in the escrow account... so she had NOT paid the operator, but took all the funds out (less 20 cents)
- I cannot refund the customers. I messaged/called asking her to replace my clients' funds many times. Again, no response.
- Radio silence. It's been another 11 days, with no response.
Tammy has possession of my clients' money, hasn't paid the operator, and I can't refund them (for a trip that was supposed to start in less than one month now).
This has been my worst travel agent's nightmare: If I want my customer's trip to still happen, I have to pay out of my own pocket, while Tammy has my clients' money in her own pocket.
I would not recommend working with Tammy for situations where she is the blocker for getting money to your suppliers. There is no redundancy. If she goes dark, is sick, gets into an accident, etc, there is no backup or way for you to get help. Your money is with Tammy and you have no access to it, which makes it impossible to run a travel agency.
I have also reported this situation to the California Department of Justice (the clients are from California and Million Miles Travel has a SOT license for CA) as well as the Brooklyn District Attorney -- since holding client's money without paying for their trip or without refunding them if it is canceled for lack of operator payment, seems antithetical to good business practices.
If anyone does have open communication lines with Tammy, I would really appreciate it if you could kindly ask her to return my customer's money to weTravel so they can be refunded. I have been advised to "lawyer up" to try to get my client's money back since Tammy isn't responding to me -- but I would very much love love LOVE to avoid that pathway if she could just return the money.