Small Business Ideas

Fremont, CA (PRWEB) January 23, 2012

Caveat emptor is the universal warning: Buyer beware. Purchase at your own risk. Theres no direct Latin translation for being on guard for too-good-to-be-true travel scams perpetrated online. Nonetheless, online scams swindle travelers every day. Cheap business class flights specialist Lets Fly Cheaper (LFC) wants to protect its customers, and consumers in general, from the plethora of phony travel websites and ticket offers out there.

To help customers fly smarter as well as cheaper, LFC has compiled some of the most egregious stories their agents have encountered. Theyre also encouraging travelers to share their own online travel scam horror stories by visiting the companys website at http://www.letsflycheaper.com. LFC will publish the best (read: worst) travel scams and award a $ 100 gift certificate to the entrant with the most compelling story. Lets Fly Cheapers Lets Fly Smarter Travel Scams Contest runs through February 29, 2012.

As an online discount travel agent, Lets Fly Cheaper is hypersensitive to the pitfalls inherent in Internet sales. Theres tremendous fraud potential on both sides of the travel transaction, explains Ramon Van Meer, LFC marketing director. Our goal is to help consumers protect themselves. This particular scam happened to a friend of mine. We dont want to see anyone else get duped by this – or any other — scheme.

The Online Classifieds/Southwest Scam

Scammers post an ad on Craigslist or on other online classifieds newspaper or on eBay. Often they will offer Southwest Airlines gift cards, vouchers, rapid rewards or travel funds. Southwest is the most common, because its one of few that allows customers to give away their rapid rewards to someone else.

Thats why youll see Southwest rapid rewards but no other airlines, says Van Meer. Its usually a tremendous (seeming) bargain, like $ 1,000 value offered for $ 500 or less.

Those who take the bait find out when they get to the airport ticket counter that the rewards are bogus or purchased fraudulently. Of course, by then its way too late.

A true example of the Southwest scam

A friend of Van Meers had to go to a funeral in Miami, flying in from Los Angeles. He saw an $ 800 Southwest gift card advertised on Craigslist for only $ 400.

When he got to the airport he was informed his ticket was canceled because the gift card was bought with a stolen credit card. Not only did he have to purchase a brand new ticket on the spot (at a substantially higher price), he had to pay for it with cash. Because he had essentially bought his ticket (via the gift card) with a stolen credit card, he was immediately suspect and his own credit card disallowed. To make matters worse, like many people, he could only withdraw $ 500 per day using his ATM card. He had to go to his bank to withdraw the cash. He ended up missing his flight and had to wait until the next day to fly out for the funeral. So all told, he lost $ 400 on the Craigslist scammer, $ 300+ more to purchase a new ticket, missed his flight, and suffered a lot of unnecessary stress.

The scariest thing is, its so easy for the scammers to pull this off, notes Van Meer. All they have to do is go to southwest.com and use a stolen credit card to buy a gift card. Sometimes they buy a real ticket and cancel the flight to get travel funds instead. When they get the gift card in their email box, it is just a PIN number. They then post an ad on Craigslist advertising a $ 1,000 gift card for $ 500, or some equally enticing offer. When they hook a potential buyer, they eagerly provide the code to prove the gift card is real. Yes, its real, but paid for with a stolen credit card! Most of the time the hapless purchaser only finds out the truth when they go to redeem their actual travel at the Southwest ticket counter. By then, their money is long gone.

The scam involves irregularities around payment, as well. Unusual payment methods should tip people off, but not everyone is clued into these warning signs. And the scammers are very good. To be untraceable, they use anonymizer software to anonymize email and browser trace routes and/or they go to an Internet caf