Scams, Bargains, Rip-Offs--Let Buyers Beware

Most people can’t resist a bargain. That’s only human nature.

But a lot of people also don’t distinguish well between genuine bargains and rip-offs. In their eagerness to take advantage of what’s presented to them as a good deal, they become just plain gullible.

Alas, another aspect of human nature is that there are always people out there who know how to capitalize on that weakness, by foul means or fair. Sometimes, barely fair.

How many times have you been told on the outside of an envelope that you have won either the Taj Mahal or $10 million or a fleet of Maseratis . . . or one of 10,000 consolation prizes, which turn out to be a $3 “uncut gem” or a plastic hairbrush. Some consolation.

Reading the Fine Print

No purchase is necessary to qualify for the draw, according to the fine print. The operators of the program are betting that you won’t read that, or that you’ll feel that your chances of winning the big one are better if you do agree to buy the cookware or subscribe to the magazine or join the record club. In other words, pay for whatever product or service the sender is peddling.

In most cases it’s not illegal, but it certainly depends for its success on the gullibility of the public.

There is in gullibility a strong element of greed. Some people can hardly wait to part with their money, but if they’d just stop and think for a moment, they’d begin to question the proposition that’s been put to them.

Over the years I’ve observed a number of characters and programs in the travel business whose sole reason for being was to cash in on our vulnerability. But I can never remember a period in which the public was taking such a beating as it is right now.

Some of the devices being used are within the law, others clearly outside it. The only thing they have in common is that they look as if they’re offering something extra, when maybe they aren’t.

An Amazing Price

Recently, readers in the Midwest were overjoyed to find, in large-type newspaper ads, that they could fly round trip to Hawaii for the amazing price of $31. It was amazing, all right.

The catch was that the air fare was only good if you bought a package of hotel accommodations costing $800.

OK, you say, so nobody was forced to buy the trip once they realized the hidden costs. True. But do you know how susceptible people are when they’ve talked themselves into believing Hawaii is in their future, how embarrassed some folks are to tell a salesman that they really can’t afford it after all, or how easy it is for a fast-talking salesman to convince a prospective customer that he or she really can’t live without an $800 hotel package?

An awful lot of those Sunday travel section readers in Chicago and other towns ended up with vacations that they never would have dreamed of buying had all of the financial facts been laid out for them at the outset.

The moral? Don’t be talked into anything you can’t afford and didn’t want in the first place until a catchy headline caught your eye, a headline that didn’t tell the full story at that.

The Illinois attorney general got into that act and got the advertiser to cease and desist. But no legal action was taken against the company beyond that.

An Old Scam

Recently there has been an outbreak in Florida and here in California of an old scam that never seems to fail. It’s the one in which somebody calls your home offering you a seemingly value-packed and reasonably priced vacation with a lot of extras thrown in. There are vouchers good for meals at the destination’s best restaurants, maybe a piece of luggage is promised, lots of goodies to sweeten the pot.

It sounds great. But it’s only available if you give the caller a credit card number to which the trip can be charged. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.

Documentation is promised in six to eight weeks. The bill arrives within the month.

Before the “buyer” (read, “sucker”) becomes seriously concerned about the non-appearance of the travel documents, the scam operator has folded his tent and gone on to victimize the next state.

Don’t give out your credit card number over the telephone unless you’re absolutely certain of the stability and integrity of the company you’re dealing with.

I recently met a man who joined a travel club apparently based in the Southeast that promised to save him 40% to 65% on all of his air fares and car rentals, hotels and cruises. All of them!

He happily mailed off a check for $56 as his annual membership fee. Welcome to the club, pal.

Warning Bells

The address to which he, along with presumably several thousand others, sent his payment was a box number, which should have been enough to start the warning bells ringing in his head, but wasn’t.

It turned out that the P.O. box was in a dingy, commercial mail drop office that had been rented for three months and which was no longer in use by the time the police got involved.

Don’t send money to organizations you know nothing about. The least you might do is call the phone company in the city in question and ask for a listing.

If the company is not listed, you might want to put your checkbook away. If it is, call and ask for more information. Or write for details before you send any money.

Another thing about travel “bargains”: Any time an airline offers you two for one, or a hotel promises you a free air ticket for every 10 room nights you book, do some arithmetic.

Expensive Fare

Sometimes the free air ticket is offered only to those who buy a full-fare ticket of their own. And full-fare, as opposed to promotional, or discounted fares, can be expensive.

You might find that you can buy two discount tickets from the airline for less than the price of one full fare plus the freebie.

The hotel rooms, you’ll find, invariably are also at full rate, sometimes $160 to $170 a night for a room that goes for $100 or $110 normally. Just so you can win a “free” ticket to Pittsburgh or somewhere.

Check the numbers. If they don’t add up, don’t go along with the program.

No column about travel scams would be complete without a quick recap of the father and mother of them all, the so-called Third World ticket fraud. It has, by the airlines’ own estimate, cost them $50 million in the last two years.

It has also, obviously, made many millions of dollars for the perpetrators of the fraud.

Laundered Tickets

Essentially, it involves tickets bought in Nigeria, and maybe Zaire, with black market currency. They’re brought into the United States, laundered by some unscrupulous travel agents to make them appear to be legitimate for travel here, and sold to the public at prices below those shown in the fare box.

As a fraud against the airlines, it’s a lulu. Now it’s begun to affect thousands of innocent would-be travelers. The airlines are catching up to the mechanisms of the scheme and they’re refusing to let holders of the phony tickets travel, or making them fly standby, even though they bought in good faith because a smooth-talker offered them “a deal.”

Don’t accept a ticket for which you pay less than the amount shown on the face. Ask the extra question.

Any company that doesn’t have a telephone listing, or won’t give its office address, or can’t answer questions about the origin of its ticket stock or is in any way evasive or reluctant to talk, probably isn’t worth dealing with.