A Mexican resort's paltry beach, and other snafus, leave a Denver family sorely disappointed

For a one-week summer family vacation, I researched packages on a number of airline Web sites. Through the Frontier Airlines site, I chose one for a stay at the all-inclusive Club Embarcadero Pacifico Hotel & Villas in Puerto Vallarta. Photos of the property showed huts with chairs right on the beach. What my family and I saw when we got there, however, disappointed us. Our room had a big hole in the wall where the refrigerator was supposed to be. We went down to the beach to find no beach at all at high tide. The beach chairs in the online photo actually belonged to the neighboring resort. In addition, we learned that our meals had to be taken outdoors, in the heat and where the bugs were rampant; to eat in the glass-enclosed Café Marina restaurant, we had to pay extra.

That day, we called the airline's customer service department. When we complained about the lack of beach facilities and the restaurant, an agent told us to move to a different resort. I also e-mailed my complaint to Frontier but received only an impersonal automated response.

Back home, after two months of being shuttled among different Frontier employees and receiving no resolution, I decided to contact Club Embarcadero directly. A manager wrote back, explaining that the hotel had changed management since our stay and that many aspects of its all-inclusive plan were now different (the glass-enclosed restaurant had become part of the all-inclusive package). He asked for further details, so I wrote him a letter recounting the whole story and asking for a complete refund. I have not heard from him. Can you help get my money back?

Maribeth Price
Denver, Colorado

A week at a beachfront resort in Puerto Vallarta sounds appealing to Ombudsman—especially after looking at the photos of Club Embarcadero Pacifico Hotel & Villas on Frontier Airlines' Web site. The resort appears to be a comfortable place with a decent-size beach, but the photos Price sent us tell a different story. While we weren't shocked by shots of a few ants crawling around the Café Marina's juice dispenser—Puerto Vallarta is in the tropics, after all—we were surprised by those of the beach. They showed a stone retaining wall built between the resort and the beach; at low tide, there was a small beach in front of the wall for guests to lie on, but at high tide, the sea came all the way up to the wall.

Since the beach—one of the main reasons Price and her family chose the resort—was a washout, literally, and since a resort manager had promised to look into her complaint but failed to do so, we wrote to him on three occasions to see whether the family had any recourse. A week after our final correspondence, the resort manager wrote to Price directly, copying us, to say that the new management was offering the family a complimentary three-night stay. Ombudsman is pleased with this outcome, and the Prices are willing to give the resort a second chance.