Be careful if you buy plane tickets on the Internet! Customers of a specialist site had the very unpleasant surprise of seeing their tickets cancelled at the last minute and having to buy them again at full price.
Many people have booked plane tickets this summer to sail to their summer destinations. But organizing your trip is not easy! Indeed, it is difficult to find your way among all the competitive offers from travel agencies and airlines! And scammers have understood this well! More than ever, malicious individuals are using schemes to make you fall for scams. Whether it is using fake booking sites, fake social media accounts, fake customer service numbers, phone calls or offers that are too good to be true, all means are good!
The magazine 60 million consumers is sounding the alarm about the site discountclasseaffaires.com, which presents itself as a travel agency offering numerous destinations: Los Angeles, Bangkok, Bali and even Hong Kong. “Save 30 to 60% on all your Business and First Class flights!”the site baits on its homepage. For example, it is possible to book a Paris-Casablanca round trip in Business class for €1,800 for two people, with Air France, while tickets are billed at a minimum of €2,500 on the company’s official website.
To pay, you have to call the number displayed on the site and give your bank details over the phone to the agency manager, Laurence Moreau. The site is rather well recommended on the Internet – it has a 3.7 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot and 77% of the reviews are 5 stars – which means that you don’t necessarily have to be suspicious.
After payment, customers receive their electronic tickets with file and seat numbers by email. And then it’s Russian roulette: for some, the trip goes smoothly; but once they arrive at the check-in counter, others discover that the ticket references no longer exist. They then have to give up on their trip… or buy new tickets at a high price! And needless to say, when you’re stuck in Bangkok, you don’t have much choice! The damages can amount to more than €7,000, as evidenced by the numerous testimonies of victims on the Internet.
In reality, “Discount classe affaires” has no physical store or PO box. Worse, the company has no registration in the trade register! In reality, the site sells tickets purchased with miles, which therefore never belong to the buyers. As a reminder, this is a loyalty program offered by certain airlines, such as Air France, which allows their customers to earn points while traveling and then use them to pay for a plane ticket (in full or in part).
Problem: if the company realizes that the miles spent were purchased from a third party, it can cancel the ticket, because it is fraud. And on arrival, it is the travelers who are completely unaware of the existence of this traffic who pay the bill.
Also, to avoid being scammed, be vigilant when booking your trip. If the website selling the tickets does not display a trade register number, general conditions of transport, registration number – mandatory for a travel agency – or financial guarantees, run away!