A Vancouver man, who is out more than $2,000, is warning others of a fraudulent online flight scammer.
Sam Abdul Salam has been purchasing his flights and trips through Flight Centre for three decades. He can’t always remember Flight Centre’s number, so he usually Googles it and then books.
Last September, he took his usual steps to buy a ticket to go to Brazil. He spoke with a man on the phone who said he would help him with the purchase of $2,280.
“They say we’re going to send you the ticket later. They sent me a sample of the ticket, but it’s very strange writing, very strange ticket. I’ve never seen this kind of ticket in my life.”
After that, Salam said he was told not to call anybody and to just wait for the official ticket to be sent.
“I wait, wait, wait, wait. No tickets. I call them again, no ticket after that. I call them again and they don’t pick up the phone and I find out it’s something wrong.”
Salam then went to the Kitsilano Flight Centre location to pick up his ticket, and that’s when he found out he’d bought them from a scammer.
He said he went to the police, but he was told there wasn’t much they were able to do.
Flight Centre, where Salam was trying to book through, said they have heard from several victims, mainly in B.C. and Ontario, who faced similar scams. However, the company has been made aware of some in the Calgary area more recently.
Flight Centre Canada’s executive vice-president Chadd Andre said he happened to be in the Kitsilano location discussing what the company could do to bring awareness to the issue of the scams when Salam walked in.
Andre said Flight Centre has been working with its legal department and working with Google to help remove fraudulent listings as they come across them.
“But it does seem like as soon as we have them removed, there’s new ones that continue to pop up.”
They’ve had well over 200 listings removed so far, Andre said.
“From a Google Maps perspective is a good place to see that, where you can see that they’re (the scammers) piggybacking off of the Flight Centre name and … some of the eyeballs, unfortunately, land on the wrong listings.”
In some instances, he said, there isn’t even a website linking to their listing, and it instead directs people to call a phone number.
To help combat the scams, Andre recommends double checking the website has the Canadian spelling of ‘centre.’
Four months later and Salam has still not gotten his money back for the fraudulent ticket.
He said when booking flights in the future, he would suggest going into a brick-and-mortar location.
“You spend time there. You deal with them directly. You’re safe. You don’t have to worry too much.”
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