Imitation Flight Centre websites are scamming Canadian consumers, costing some more than $2,000.
Canadian Press and the CBC quote Flight Centre as saying it has had more than 200 fraudulent listings taken down so far. The search results appeared in online searches for "Flight Centre" across Canada.
Flight Centre officials said they’ve been trying to stamp out scores of imposter sites in the past few months.
CP quotes Ihsan Abdul Salam as saying he’s been booking tickets with Flight Centre for nearly 30 years. But when he went to a Vancouver branch of the company to pick up tickets to South America he had booked through a consultant online, he found out his $2,280 booking didn't exist.
Salam had searched Flight Centre on Google to book tickets to Brazil to visit his girlfriend in September. He said he clicked on the first site to pop up, then spoke to one of their "travel consultants" on the phone, who took his booking and payment, Canadian Press reports.
Flight Centre said they have heard from several victims, mainly in B.C. and Ontario, who faced similar scams. However, the company has been made aware of some in the Calgary area more recently, the Sooke News Mirror reports.
Chadd Andre, executive vice president of Flight Centre Canada, said the company noticed fake listings popping up online beginning last summer.
