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Are you planning to hit the road or may the air for an amazing time? Well, you need to be careful about the kind of deals you make, whether they are traveling deals, tour guide deals or even hotel deals because the number of scammers is growing each day.
No business person will offer you with traveling tickets, hotel rooms and a guide around the zoo or whichever place you are visiting for let’s say a quarter of what it usually costs. The say; when the deal is too good, think twice is quite applicable, now that scammers are targeting non-suspecting travelers.
According to the head of digital safety of Barclays, Ross Martin, scamming instances have increased, and just within a short while, around 5000 Euros has been lost to scammers who hijack overseas villa details and use them to deceive customers. Ross Martins further warned that the fraud will continue even more, now that it is winter and people are traveling to warmer places to sunbathe.
Unfortunately, these scammers use high tech to access the customer details and money and getting a trail of them has turned out to be very difficult. However, Ross Martin, in his statement, gave an outline of things that need to be done to evade the fraudsters.
First, he advised that you should be careful of the requests to pay bills or fees via bank transfer. Most facilities, or rather villas encourage payment when at the premise, and unless you are absolutely sure, you should not make any payments via bank transfers.
Secondly, as mentioned above, some deals are just too good to be true. Do not jump to any offer you get without checking its validity; otherwise, you will lose thousands of your money. Also, before you make any payments, you should check the Villas usual rates against those you are being offered. If the range is too broad, then that could be a scam. You should also check the location of the business online.
Another helpful precaution is checking if other websites advertise the same villa but with a different name. Some scammers get too comfortable and use the villa’s photos under different names. This can help you determine whether it is a scam or not.
Last but by all means not least, check if the advertised travel agent and the website are certified. If not, then do not do any transactions there no matter how legit the deal may look.
Ensure you take all necessary precautions before you make any payments because you might end up losing your money and not getting a chance to enjoy yourself as you had planned.
