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11 months ago
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Travel Tuesday is here and has brought great hotel and vacation deals with it for fliers looking to go on an affordable trip - but also plenty of scams.
Airlines and hotels are celebrating the annual event with unbeatable prices, including Alaska Airlines' one-way flights starting at $39 and Booking.com's 30% discount for travelers booking a hotel before tomorrow.
Unfortunately, Travel Tuesday is also bringing a good amount of travel scams that could potentially rip customers off.
Travel scams are not only hard to deal with, but they happen often during the holiday season since it's the time of year where consumers make a lot of purchases on credit cards.
Travel Tuesday provides incredible flight and hotel deals for flyers looking to plan short or long-term trips
Scammers have created fake travel agency websites to trick people into making a deposit on a vacation rental that ends up being fake
Travel agencies are used frequently by customers looking to plan out a fun and well-organized trip.
Unfortunately, scammers have frequently created fake online travel companies to trick vacationers booking short term trips.
Fake travel agency websites can include photos of vacation properties that fool travelers into paying a rental deposit on what they think is a great trip destination.
Red flags to help vacationers determine what travel agencies are real or fake include payment requests through a gift card or wire transfer and shoppers being pressured by the 'agent' to book a trip immediately.
Text and email are two popular forms of communication that scammers like to use during travel Tuesday.
Phone or computer users that have received messages about vacations and trips from unknown numbers and email addresses have have in many cases, turned out to be fake.
Text and email scams mainly occur during the Cyber Five period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday - right before several Travel Tuesday promotions begin.
People looking to avoid this scam should check the sender's email address to make sure it is comes from a real travel company and that the phone number is verified.
The Travel Tuesday airline deals are for the most part fantastic, but can also be part of frequent plane ticket scams.
Criminals that create fake travel agency websites can also create fake flight-booking websites to gain fliers credit card information.
Scammers who create these websites can send the link via text or email to any consumer looking for a great deal on a flight.
Fliers hoping book a real flight should do it through a familiar website like Expedia.com or even the site of the airline one is looking to use for their trip.
Travelers can also receive texts and emails from scammers about vacation deals, which mostly occurs during the Cyber Five period
People who use rideshare companies like Lyft and Uber must should be cautious if receiving a text message about cancellation fees for unordered rides
Travelers can also be duped by rideshare scams that suddenly appear on their phone or email.
Rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft are frequently used with travelers who go somewhere without renting a car or staying in a busy city.
Text messages travelers allegedly receive from these companies may actually be from scammers.
These messages can be for things such as made-up fees or alleged cancelation fees on rides the vacationers never ordered.
If this happens, it's important for those receiving the messages to report it immediately to the rideshare company they used most recently for a trip.
English (US)