Shady hotel booking sites, misleading customer service numbers and hacked airline loyalty accounts have snared travelers. Here’s how to avoid getting scammed.
This NYT article caught my eye this morning because there have been some recent posts about scams when clicking the wrong links while trying to book a hotel or talking to someone on the phone who you think is the airline, but it turns out it's a scam company. The article goes into all of it and tells of some ways that you can be careful and not get caught up in these maneuvers.
Ironically, this happened to me four days ago, when I was trying to book a hotel in Minneapolis the night before my upcoming trip. I knew which hotel I wanted, so I just googled it, and was browsing through it when I noticed that the website did not look like a Holiday Inn site. And then I realized that the URL contained the words "Guest Reservations" next to the actual hotel name. I thought that was strange, so I went back to Google and realized that it was a sponsored ad link that I'd clicked on because I wasn't paying attention. I found the correct website and moved on. But when I read the article this morning, Guest Reservations was one of the scam companies that does this by inserting their name in a URL with the hotel name in hopes of tricking you into clicking on their site.
I was also unaware of how points can be stolen, which I don't really think about. That's also something to keep an eye out for. So this is a good article to read with some good information. Article is unlocked.