Airlines passengers are getting scammed left and right by fake Google listings for airlines. People think they’re calling the airline and get called by a travel agency impersonating them, with big fees they shouldn’t be paying, and – unbeknownst them – for tickets that violate airline rules and could get cancelled.
- These scam agencies take out Google ads to look like they’re the airline you’re trying to reach.
- They also take over old, defunct airline numbers because people will still find those listed and call.
- Tell Siri to call an airline? It may dial one of these scam agencies instead.
American Airlines sued the ‘host agency’ for many of these scammers.
They get wholesale rates, and get paid by the airline based on sales volumes, and American says they’re running up their numbers by partnering with sketchy agencies and taking a cut of their fee scams. For instance, one of these agents “charged a flyer $1,500 for what should have been an airfare of around $1,000, and GTT allegedly helped its travel agency partner “hide the additional $500 charge.”
- American says they’re obligated to monitor the activities of sub-agencies, and not only do they fail to do this they refused to share information about them with American despite a contractual obligation to do so.
- And according to American, the agency booked 20 passengers to fly Dallas to Shanghai on American with an onward connection to Hong Kong. 17 of those passengers were on throwaway bookings, where GTT kept the savings by booking the Hong Kong connection and didn’t tell the passengers.
- In another example a customer was billed a “tax fee” of $400 (this does not exist!) on top of a $1,086 ticket. GTT failed to stop it, but had an obligation to do so according to the airline.
- Customers who think they’re reaching American get redirected and then fleeced. American loses money (for instance due to throwaway ticketing and also paying out commissions) and consumers lose money (by getting stuck with scam fees). Customers are apparently even being charged “wheelchair fees” by the agencies.
The agency, GTT, has responded to all of this. And they say it is… racist? Here’s their counterclaim.
- They claim scammers are rife throughout the industry, they’re not the only one!
- American has cited only a handful of specific examples of scams in its filings. Scams are only a small part of their business.
- And the airline singled out “the only minority, woman-owned and operated consolidator in the industry.” GTT wants “a finding of violations of federal racial discrimination statutes.”
Previously a GTT representative told me that American is blaming “the industry’s operational deficiencies on its business partners and others.” But it seems like what it’s doing is trying to clean up those deficiencies!
While “GTT values the company’s decades-long relationship with American and” wants to keep selling American Airlines tickets, maybe the emphasis ought to be on the victims of the travel scams run through their systems, rather than claiming they themselves are the victim?
This is like the defense of “I may have burned down this house, but look at all the ones I didn’t burn down!”
A major point of defense is that scamming is only part of what they do. Good luck with that defensive strategy.
“…..they’re not the only one!” What a defense.
Ok back to reality… I think it’s rich that American calls out hidden city ticketing and then blames them for not passing the savings in to consumers. Is this implicitly acknowledging that if they had passed on the savings it would have been legitimate?
The agency is for sure doing really sketch things, but really is adding on questionable fees and engaging in opaque pricing really any different from airline practices? They just call it “revenue management.”
Is this really a place where we need to air our political views? If so, I’ll be glad to step in to the mess, too. But really, folks! I like to travel to get away from mess like this. Like I say, just let me know if we really need to go into all this, here. I’ll see what unpleasantness of my own I can add.
Pete Morris. Agree. One of the reasons I like being out of the US traveling is the political stupidity doesn’t follow me.
Sadly, some of the practitioners do carry their prejudices with them when they travel. Others see them as the “ugly Americans”.
For everyone else, leave your political views on political discussion boards. PLEASE!
@Arturo S.
I want Russia to win the war too. Anything that hurts the USA aka ulcerated sphincter of asserica. Just like when they got their asses kicked out of Afghanistan. I enjoyed watching that.
Thank you Pete and Doug. There are thousands of political sites where partisans can hurl political invective at each other to their heart’s content. If Gary writes on a political topic, well reasoned discussion is legitimate. Here it’s just annoying and tiresome, and detracts from the blog.
The things being described are simply fraud. Illegal. Go to jail. It isn’t a question of business relationships; it’s a question of crime.
Gary, weren’t you going to crack down on political bickering in the comments of your posts or am I getting my bloggers confused?
I tend to fall heavily on one side of the political spectrum but I didn’t come to this travel blog to debate with bitter and nasty keyboard warriors. I thought you made some big deal about cutting this junk out but maybe I’m getting you mixed up with someone else. Either way I’m disappointed and your blog is worse off for letting people inject their culture wars into what I thought was a blog about travel.
@Jeff – I was in work meetings for several hours and didn’t see it going on in real time
I’m not seeing any overtly political stuff in the comments. Can someone point out what I’m missing?
GTT is using legit lawyers so they’ll put up a fight.
@Christian, once I got online I removed them
@ What if GTT is correct and perhaps they are or not. Let this go to Trial, we have a fair and just system and let the Judge & Jury decide. The halls of justice work really well.
Amazing! (not at all) the double standard of the lefties commenting against the comment section getting political.
The article has EVERYTHING to do with politics! the offender travel agency is using the victim card tactics to cover their scamming, that is 100% taught (and used everyday to manipulate) by one particular party and their media allies.
I’m new around here, but I suppose we’ll let our host decide if we ought to step into politics here. I can’t help noticing that a view of partisan sides is imputed. Once one of us talks politics, others have a hard time staying silent. But “hard time” is not the same thing as Impossible for us: Lefty, Righty, Sentry, I figure we mostly come here to talk about Travel.