MSE News: Five holiday booking scams to watch out for as £12 million a year lost to travel fraud

MSE_Petar

If you're booking your next holiday, watch out for fake deals, clone websites and bogus cancellations, as criminals are using a variety of sophisticated methods to trick holidaymakers out of their money.

Read the full story:
'Warning: Five holiday booking scams to watch out for as £12 million a year lost to travel fraud'

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DullGreyGuy

I'm surprised the number is so low but it appears to be Action Fraud's number for cases reported to them and so if someone calls their bank and does a chargeback, gets their money back and so never gets reported elsewhere. It similarly is unclear if AF have filtered that number at all or if someone reports one of these dubious schemes which are maybe underhanded but not illegal if thats been included or excluded. 


Appreciate you are never going to give detailed instruction of how fraud is committed as you aren't planning to train future fraudsters but really not understanding how section 4 is fraud? Or are you thinking they are simply harvesting details to then sell on for ID fraud and/or people on a sucker list for others to then defraud? Other than the single bullet where you talk of paying an admin fee the rest dont directly appear to be fraud. 

If its just to resell details... arguably lots of websites proper to help consumers in various ways but the T&Cs show the price is the data you surrender to generate your free template letter to send etc. 

Voyager2002

And yet there is no mechanism to take down suspicious advertisements...

A travel agent called Airline House advertised on Facebook. In an idle moment I messaged them, since I want something from Turkish Airlines that seems difficult to arrange. They replied quickly, promising me exactly what I want, along with a free hotel stay in transit: basically it is too good to be true.

I then visited their website and found nothing like an ABTA/ATOL number, company registration.... only a street address and landline number. I am concerned, but Facebook does not allow me to make a report.

CKhalvashi

Voyager2002 said:

And yet there is no mechanism to take down suspicious advertisements...

A travel agent called Airline House advertised on Facebook. In an idle moment I messaged them, since I want something from Turkish Airlines that seems difficult to arrange. They replied quickly, promising me exactly what I want, along with a free hotel stay in transit: basically it is too good to be true.

I then visited their website and found nothing like an ABTA/ATOL number, company registration.... only a street address and landline number. I am concerned, but Facebook does not allow me to make a report.

If it involves flights, it MUST be ATOL (or an EU equivalent in some cases in line with the trade agreement) protected.

If there is no protection then it's very suspicious.

The issue comes with hotel/car/excursion only, which in most cases aren't. Many are legitimate, others may not be completely correct. Distinguishing these can be difficult.

Voyager2002

CKhalvashi said:

Voyager2002 said:

And yet there is no mechanism to take down suspicious advertisements...

A travel agent called Airline House advertised on Facebook. In an idle moment I messaged them, since I want something from Turkish Airlines that seems difficult to arrange. They replied quickly, promising me exactly what I want, along with a free hotel stay in transit: basically it is too good to be true.

I then visited their website and found nothing like an ABTA/ATOL number, company registration.... only a street address and landline number. I am concerned, but Facebook does not allow me to make a report.

If it involves flights, it MUST be ATOL (or an EU equivalent in some cases in line with the trade agreement) protected.

If there is no protection then it's very suspicious.

The issue comes with hotel/car/excursion only, which in most cases aren't. Many are legitimate, others may not be completely correct. Distinguishing these can be difficult.

Is a legitimate agency legally obliged to display its ATOL number?

I suppose there might be some reason not to do so, and still operate within the law.

Anyway, another red flag for this agent is that their list of special offers includes flights to an airport that has been closed to passengers for about a decade (Istanbul Attaturk).

And yet they continue to advertise on Facebook...

CKhalvashi

Voyager2002 said:

CKhalvashi said:

Voyager2002 said:

And yet there is no mechanism to take down suspicious advertisements...

A travel agent called Airline House advertised on Facebook. In an idle moment I messaged them, since I want something from Turkish Airlines that seems difficult to arrange. They replied quickly, promising me exactly what I want, along with a free hotel stay in transit: basically it is too good to be true.

I then visited their website and found nothing like an ABTA/ATOL number, company registration.... only a street address and landline number. I am concerned, but Facebook does not allow me to make a report.

If it involves flights, it MUST be ATOL (or an EU equivalent in some cases in line with the trade agreement) protected.

If there is no protection then it's very suspicious.

The issue comes with hotel/car/excursion only, which in most cases aren't. Many are legitimate, others may not be completely correct. Distinguishing these can be difficult.

Is a legitimate agency legally obliged to display its ATOL number?

I suppose there might be some reason not to do so, and still operate within the law.

Anyway, another red flag for this agent is that their list of special offers includes flights to an airport that has been closed to passengers for about a decade (Istanbul Attaturk).

And yet they continue to advertise on Facebook...

I don't believe there is a legal requirement, but can't see a reason for a legitimate business not to display it.

Another complaint I've seen in the real world is over whether packages must be 'ABTA protected'. The answer to that is no, as ABTA is a private membership organisation with no powers. Businesses have been wrongly called out on this matter a number of times.

As has been discussed, a company I have an interest in isn't a member of ABTA, nor does it hold an ATOL (although about 80% of the services supplied through that particular business are to the trade, who package this with flights and therefore turn them into regulated packages), so not being a member of either of these schemes doesn't in itself make it a scam.

Ensuring you can contact the business is important, as even some legitimate providers have issues with this.