About two months ago, you could have received a phone call with a recorded message, claiming to be from Qantas and Virgin. The call would say you has won a “travel prize” or “credit points” – typically $999 – towards your next holiday. If you didn’t hang up but entertained the call by pressing “1” as instructed, you would be scammed without you realizing it.
After you pressed “1”, you would be put directly through to a scammer, who will congratulate you, of course. Then the caller would state that in order to be eligible for the prize, you have to ask a few questions first. The scammer may ask whether you are aged over 30, whether you have a valid credit card, and finally ask for your credit card details so that the prize can be processed.
Here’s how the scammer played with your psychology. If you have recently flown or booked with Qantas, the recorded message may sound like it’s the real deal as the caller thanks you for choosing Qantas and claims that you have been chosen to receive $999 in a “travel prize”, “credit points” or even “frequent flyer points” towards your next trip. So, it’s a number games that the scammer was playing here.
Before you know it, you would have been scammed huge amount of money. Qantas and Virgin had advised customers that their airlines will always call customers directly to discuss their bookings and do not use an automated phone system when contacting customers proactively. Of course, if you were greedy and let your guard down, you couldn’t think straight and became easy meat for such scammers.
Today, Qantas, the flag carrier airline of Australia has once again exposed another scam targeting its airline. Apparently, the scammer used promotional banners invited people to “like” them and share with friends or anybody in order to win a prize – a $1,500 travel voucher. Needless to say, this was untrue and when you clicked on the page link, you would be taken to an imitation Qantas Facebook page.
The scam tried to trick ignorant users into believing that it was a latest promotion to mark Qantas birthday, although amusingly, Qantas’ anniversary is not due till November. The look-alike fake Qantas Facebook page offered a chance to win a seat on the inaugural A380 flight from Sydney to Dallas Fort Worth on September 29. Interestingly, similar Facebook scams had been used on Jetstar airline before.
In early July, a fake Facebook page set up under the name “Jetstar Australia” broadcasted the mouth watering competition – “Great news, we’re giving away 5 tickets each to 40 people for a 2 week trip to Fiji in a 5 star hotel with $4,500 spending money”. Amazingly, within less than 24-hours, the fake page attracted almost 19,000 likes.
It doesn’t matter if the fake page was just set up only “one day” earlier before the Jetstar competition. People also didn’t care to make the logic out of the number of “likes”. The fake page had close to 19,000 likes but the airline’s official Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/JetstarAustralia) was set up in 2010, with a whopping 350,000 “likes”. The fact that people blindly “like” and believe such promotions speak volume about their greed and ignorance.
As for Qantas latest scam, the airline advises that any promotional from Qantas would be from their authenticated Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Qantas) – identified by its authorized “blue tick” or through the official Qantas website. So far, Qantas claims it had already had a number of the scam pages removed. Facebook is said to be in the middle of investigating the scam. But you, as a consumer, should be aware of such scams.
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September 16th, 2014 by financetwitter
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