It doesn’t take much for crafty computer coders to set up an ecommerce website that looks like an extension of a popular airline or hotel chain, and start billing unwitting consumers for transactions they could have done through a trusted professional travel advisor.
While these sites appear to be booking actual reservations, unlike mainstream aggregators like Expedia and Booking.com, these websites often are tacking on an additional booking fee and offering travelers subpar customer service.
This appears to be what happened when a Michigan family nearly lost $300 recently trying to rebook a flight to Japan on what looked like a Delta Air Lines website,根据底特律自由出版社的故事.
现年33岁的Naomi Poel和她的丈夫亨特·普拉斯基(Hunter Pulaski)计划带他们的2岁女儿拜访日本的家人。出发的早晨,三角洲警告他们,他们的航班将被推迟。担心延迟出发会导致他们错过连接飞行时,他们通过Google搜索了Delta的网站。弹出的第一个结果暗示它已连接到三角洲 - 但事实并非如此。
“It’s very easy for a scammer to impersonate a legitimate business," Laura Blankenship, director of marketing for the Better Business Bureau in Eastern Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press.
The website offered to change their flights for a $300 service fee, but that they would be rebooked on a flight the next day. At the airport, a Delta employee notified them that they had dealt with a website not associated with Delta.
根据这篇文章,Delta与第三方网站合作,为这对夫妇的信用卡收取了300美元的服务费。
Retracing the couple’s Internet steps later, a different Better Business Bureau employee noticed that at the bottom of the mock Delta website, the "About Us" section quoted the lyrics from the TV theme songs for "The Brady Bunch" and "Laverne & Shirley." One section even said: "That's the way we all became the Brady Bunch."
“Any time you deal with a third party website claiming to represent Delta Air Lines, you risk compromising your personal information, as scammers are more frequently attempting to abuse the trust you place in us by impersonating Delta using illegitimate websites and outlets before defrauding you," Delta said in online alert.
国际航空运输协会在其上说:“不幸的是,不幸的是,欺诈行业正在迅速增加,您可能会登陆假航空公司或旅行社网站是真实的。”“Fake Travel Sites” web page.
“欺诈性的在线旅行和飞行预订机构在国际上运作。这些网站看起来很专业,有些甚至显示IATA徽标看起来合法。我们可以尽力阻止欺诈,但是您必须知道,旅行或货物网站或社交媒体页面上的IATA参考并不一定意味着它们是IATA认可的。”
消费者难以确定谁是合法的
Esky.com就是这样一个网站,它在其网页底部使用IATA徽标。
When Travel Market Report Googled “Delta Air Lines,” Esky.com appeared on the second search page. The landing page from the link on the Google search page displayed the Delta logo. Scrolling down, the site listed historical information about the Atlanta-based carrier, including a description about when Delta was founded and where it flies.
“Favorable transport rules, a modern fleet and the possibility of efficient check-in via the Internet or a mobile application are factors that encourage passengers to use cheap flights with Delta Airlines,” the site describes.
Esky.com对Trip Advisor的客户服务有许多投诉。其他顾客写道,他们惊讶地意识到通过公司预订他们的预订费用为30美元。
“请不要与这家公司预订,”英国的Dean H写道。“ 11封电子邮件5个电话,每分钟1.50英镑,但仍然没有回复只是为了尝试预订包。一旦他们为您的预订付款,他们就不想知道,否则您将付费只是为了知道您是否可以得到一些(SIC)来回答或回复您的电子邮件。如果您想保持自由压力并能够管理自己的旅行,那么无论您做什么,都不要靠近Esky。”
来自加拿大多伦多的Trip Advisor论坛成员Odydegenova使用该网站与Allegiant Air预订航班,并担心她没有预订。在研究了她的保留地之后,她写道:“最后,我的“服务”额外支付了30美元。”
来自爱丁堡的Carol G建议另一个陷入困境的Esky.com客户:“ Tracey-如果您可以在EasyJet网站上看到它们,您的航班可能会很好(您的付款可能超过其“服务”的费用)可退款,因此,如果您选择取消,您不太可能收回任何东西,因为我认为管理费可能比可退还的税款还要多。”
Travel Market Report this week researched booking a flight from Newark, New Jersey, to London Heathrow on the Esky.com website, departing on Aug. 13, and returning Aug. 19. The lowest fare the website returned would cost $933, for a 17-hour, 20-minute outbound trip on SAS, from Newark, to Cincinnati, to Stockholm, to Heathrow. The return flight on Lufthansa was 20 hours with a stop in Cincinnati.
阅读票价的详细信息,Esky.com透露,总付款为1,182.30美元,包括机票788.17美元,“机场费用”,358.40美元,服务费为35.73美元。同时,Delta.com在其代码共享合作伙伴Virgin Atlantic Airways上显示了直接飞行的1,900美元(包括税收和费用)。
去年,演员詹姆斯·麦卡沃伊(James McAvoy)几乎被骗了计划在西班牙度假时,在近13,000美元的丽兹卡尔顿酒店预订。在Instagram上,麦卡沃伊(McAvoy)描述了该网站的现实情况,但是当有人试图通过电子邮件从他那里索取银行转移时,他意识到自己正在被欺骗。
In an Instagram video, he showed a picture of the website. “Don’t use them. They nearly took 10 grand off of me, which is a ton of money. Some guy called Joaquin emailing me back and forth, [I] nearly made a bank transfer. Very convincing.”
他补充说:“他们的网站实际上比丽思卡尔顿的网站要好。这是非常令人信服的,充满了电话号码,类似的东西。只是非常非常有说服力。”