Vacation Season Brings Travel Scams

Last Update: August 9th, 2021

CBS 21 News recently put out a travel scam warning that should be repeated.

Airfare, vacations, summer rentals, and vacation rentals are what appear to be the primary focus on this summer’s travel season. Many people will travel to go hunting, if you are looking for the best equipment check out The 8 Best Crossbow Scopes Reviewed & Revealed ( 2018 Hands-on Guide ) here. Scammers frequent online classified ads locations such as forums and craigslist, as well as send out spam emails and junk faxes to advertise the perfect vacation at the perfect price.

The problem is – all too frequently these “perfect” vacations turn out to be complete scams.

There are usually two reasons scammers will advertise these offers – the first being to get people to wire them money – either as a deposit or for full payment on a vacation that does not even exist. Sadly, too many people respond to this and send money to complete strangers on the idea of a deal without having any idea where their money is really going.

The second type of scam that happens with this method is that the people offering the scams are looking for personal information – either credit card numbers and birth dates, or are just trying to confirm if a fax number or email address is actually in use. Many times an unsubscribe number will be used to get information about which fax numbers are valid, and which have actual faxes at them. This information is then packaged and sold to other marketers who use it to send even more information and marketing material.

Whenever booking a vacation, it’s best to make sure you do the research before fully booking the trip. Get to know the person you’re booking the vacation through, and if possible use credit cards as it is perceived that they offer better protection in case your personal information is stolen, or the information is use to purchase a trip that never exists.

For dealing with complaints about trips such as these, information can be registered with the Attorney General at https://www.justice.gov/ag, or through their Bureau of Consumer Protection at 1-800-441-2555.

More on Junk Faxes and dealing with nuisance faxes can be found on our page about Junk Faxes.