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If you’re planning a summer getaway, all you’re probably thinking
about right now is relaxing on the beach and dipping your toes in the
water. You may also be thinking about how to
score a travel deal.
While getting a deal is great, don’t let your desire to save a few
bucks lead you straight into the arms of a scammer. Your best bet is to
stick with trusted sites like Expedia, Travelocity, or Priceline. Here
are three scams to watch out for during your bargain hunt.
1. Beware of “free” tickets
Very few things are free anymore, and that includes airline tickets.
If you get a letter in the mail saying that you won free tickets, don’t
fall for it. The Better Business Bureau warned of a scam swirling around
that involved fraudsters using the American Airlines and US Airways
names in order to convince consumers they had been lucky enough to win
free airfare. The BBB says the letters are either mailed or faxed. The
ones that are sent through the mail usually have no return address and a
signature stamp is used instead of a meter mark. In addition, most of
the letters seem to originate from Phoenix, Arizona, and display a logo
saying either American Airlines or US Airlines.
2. Be leery of discount travel vouchers
If you get a discount airfare voucher in the mail, beware. Similar to
the free ticket scam, this one also occurs through the mail. The
Better Business Bureau recently
alerted consumers to a scam where fraudsters would mail fake vouchers
saying “US Airlines Award Notification.” The package would contain
vouchers for discounted round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the
United States. This tactic has been fooling many consumers because the
name is similar to US Airways, so on first glance it looks legitimate.
However, once customers try to redeem the voucher, they will get a
travel sales pitch.
“It appears that the sole purpose of these letters is to get people
to attend meetings to listen to sales pitches for a travel club. There
are simply too many questions to believe at this point that this is a
good deal,” said local Better Business Bureau Vice President Paula
Flemming in a statement.
In another version of this scam, consumers have purchased these
vouchers on Facebook only to discover the voucher was fake, or was it
real but had already been used.
3. Don’t believe the sweepstakes lie
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In yet another scam, fraudsters use Facebook to advertise a fake
vacation sweepstakes. They set up a fake page and tell customers that if
they clicked the “like” button on Virgin Airline’s page and shared a
photo from the page, they would be entered to win free flights for one
year.
“Don’t do it. There are no tickets, there won’t be any winners, and
Virgin Airlines didn’t create that Facebook page – it’s nothing but the
latest attempt at a ‘like-farming’ scam,”
said Consumer Affairs’ Jennifer Abel.
In like-farming, a scammer will set up a page with content in an
attempt to gather as many “likes” or “shares” as they can, in an
abbreviated time period. This is done to increase the page rank.
However, as soon as the page becomes very popular, the scammer will take
down the original content and then replace it with scam products or
even malware. Abel says sometimes the scammer will even sell the page to
another scammer on the black market.
Culled from cheatsheet
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