I tried to book a flight on Condor Airlines. As documented elsewhere, the Condor Airlines website is not great. This past week (early February) I've been looking for flights in April-May in their Premium Coach (PC) class. I've learned that I'm a bit late as the PC flights are sold out on many flights. After a few frustrating hours of checking different travel days, I finally found a round trip flight that would work. I tried to book it. After selecting seats, entering our names, birth dates, and credit card information, the website generated a message saying the booking was 97% complete but could not be booked and to call Condor Airlines Customer Service. The message did not provide a phone number.
I entered "Condor Airlines Customer Service" into a Chrome browser and at the top of the search results Google's Gemini AI tool provided a phone number for calls from the US (number A).
When I called the number, I was only on hold for a short time. When the call was answered, I don't recall hearing "This is Condor Airlines Customer Service," it was more like "how can I help you." The man with an Indian accent was polite, asked for a little information about the flights, put me on a short hold, and came back saying that the flight was oversold for that fare. The man then said that he could book me on the flight for a price that was 1/3 lower than the price of the flight I was unsuccessful in booking. This didn't make any sense to me, but maybe I was getting a great deal, so I said okay. I gave him our names and birth dates. I asked about seat assignments, but didn't get an answer. Before he asked for my credit card information, he explained that he would be booking me in first class and then down grading my reservation to PC. My card would be charged something like $8,000 for two first class tickets and when the the down grade to PC occurred, my card would be credited around $6,000. I've included a fair bit of detail so you can see the red flags that it took me awhile to pick up on.
While I was on the phone, I went to the Condor website and looked up a number for Condor Airlines Customer Service. It showed Number B. I told the man that the number I called was different that the number on the website. He said both numbers are valid. At that point, I told him I didn't want to proceed.
The thing about the AI large language models is they rely on training data. An old saying among programmers is "garbage-in-garbage-out." It appears that the Google Gemini AI model was trained on some website(s) with a phone number for a fake call center.