Flight Centre fights imposter websites, bogus booking costs B.C. man $2,280
Global News
Flight Centre is fighting the rise of imposter websites and has had more than 200 taken down since last summer. The booking scam fleeced one Vancouver man for $2,280.
Ihsan Abdul Salam describes himself as a “loyal” customer of Flight Centre, booking tickets with the international travel company since 1995.
But when he went to a Vancouver branch of the firm to pick up tickets to Brazil he had booked through a consultant online, he was in for a shock — the $2,280 booking didn’t exist.
He’d been scammed by an impostor website, one of scores that the firm says it has been has been trying to stamp out since last summer.
Flight Centre says it has had more than 200 fraudulent listings taken down so far, the search results having appeared in online searches for “Flight Centre” across Canada.
Salam had Googled ‘Flight Centre’ to book tickets to Sao Paulo to visit his girlfriend in September. He said he clicked on the first site to pop up, then spoke to one of their “travel consultants” on the phone, who took his booking and payment.
But something seemed odd.
“It was very strange… they told me ‘don’t call anybody, we can send you the original ticket, just give us time,'” Salam said. “I felt something was wrong.”
Salam said from previous experience, Flight Centre would send an email with a ticket as soon as he hung up the phone with a consultant. This time, his ticket never arrived.
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