Dodgy Internet Travel Agency: Family Forced to Buy Plane Tickets Twice

Plane tickets paid twice, fees added without explanation, personal data poorly protected… Quebecers who have done business with virtual travel agencies have a lot to say about their experience.

This is the case of a family of five who wanted to go to El Salvador and who had to buy five other plane tickets at a cost of $4,600.

For 23 years, Nidia Elias Rivera dreamed of returning to her native country. When she and her mother saw the price of $5,023 displayed on the Traveljunction.ca website, they didn’t hesitate. It was an Aeromexico airline flight with a stopover that was almost $1,000 cheaper than elsewhere.

But a few weeks before departure with his loved ones, M^me Rivera contacts the airline and learns that the tickets have not yet been paid for. Traveljunction.ca may have made a mistake by registering the wrong credit card.

Disappointed, the family hoped to assert their rights upon their return from El Salvador. Wasted effort. Aeromexico, Mastercard Tangerine and Traveljunction.ca did not want to refund the tickets, and Traveljunction.ca instead issued a credit (which they were unable to take advantage of because they found out too late). Mastercard Tangerine, for its part, refused to reimburse its client because of this credit.

Following a call from JEwhich presents this testimony among others this evening, Mastercard Tangerine finally reimbursed half of the cost of the tickets never received, a sum of $2,500.

$3,000 fine for Click2book.ca

Another traveler, Denis Lachance, purchased two tickets to Florida on the Click2book.ca site. When he checked the transactions recorded on his credit card, he saw that something was wrong.

“I see two amounts of $519 invoiced by Air Transat and an amount of $170 from Click2book.ca,” he recalls.

On the phone, Mr. Lachance received a response that shocked him.

“They told me it was provincial tax fees, federal tax fees, flight taxes, airport taxes. I told them it didn’t make sense.”

Sensing the scam, Mr. Lachance asked Air Transat to cancel the transaction. In an email, Air Transat confirmed the facts to JE: “This does indeed appear to be a case where the agency made the booking with us and then took another charge in service fees without disclosing it, which is in no way fair to consumers.”

The Consumer Protection Office (OPC) has received more than 64 complaints about Click2Book.ca and Traveljunction.ca, which are part of Flights & Holidays UK Limited, a suburban London company.

Two of these complaints led to prosecutions. OPC spokesperson Charles Tanguay explains that following investigations, the parent company of Click2book.ca was ordered to pay a fine of $3,000 at the Joliette courthouse.

In another case, in Montreal, Flights & Horlidays UK Limited had to reimburse more than $3,000 for having charged plane tickets at a price higher than the price advertised on the site.

The OPC reminds that a consumer doing business with a travel agency registered in Quebec can count on the Compensation Fund for Clients of Travel Agents (FICAV), which will compensate them in several situations, which is not not the case for agencies based elsewhere.

Booking.com customers

For several months, customers of the popular reservation website Booking.com have been victims of hackers and had money taken from them.

This is what happened to Pierre Therrien, who had booked a hotel in Italy 10 months in advance.

In July last year, two months before departure, he received a bizarre email resembling those from Booking.com. He took the bait, but rather than panic, the man had the good instinct to contact the hotel.

“Reception confirmed to me that its customer list had been hacked,” he explains.

A year later, his friend, François Lacasse, experienced much the same thing for a reservation in a hotel in Costa Rica. “I was already alerted. I just didn’t do anything,” he says.

By browsing the Internet, it is easy to see that scammers have defrauded hundreds of consumers using the lists of hotel guests who booked on the Booking.com website.

If it is impossible to know the number of victims in Canada, we can refer to the figures of an Australian consumer rights monitoring organization which noted this winter a 580% increase in scams mentioning Booking.com with losses more than $300,000 in 2023.

The reservation site Booking.com has declared that its platform has not been hacked. However, she warns the hotels with which she is a partner. They could be the target of malware allowing hackers to gain access to their customer lists.