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Scams

© Diane Goldberg under the original topic name

This is Ms Budget Travel's sad font.

She is sad because she would very much like to believe that we budget travelers can safely use the Internet to make plans to travel without evil gremlins eating out pounds, eurodollars, and dollars . . . Oh yes, she would very much like to believe that we can pour cheap wine into our jelly jars and troll the Internet at 2 AM local time from Australia to Zimbabwe merrily booking flights from Sydney to Los Angles without the least quiver of fear that Something May Go Wrong.

Alas

Ms Budget Travel regrets to inform you, and herself, that the world has many nasty people in it. Some of those nasty people devote themselves to preying on travelers instead of selling cars or entering politics.

Ms. Budget Travel really really needs a soothing drink right now, please be patient, she'll be back in a moment.

Okay children; gather round while Ms Budget Travel tells you the sad saga of travel scams. First of all, if you live in the UK you have governing bodies that assure customer rights, if those bodies do not recognize a travel agent, please, Ms Budget Travel implores you, do not use those agents.

Now, for the rest of us here are some horrible rules, please follow them:

If a travel agent holds forth as being part of a credentialed group --- for example, the International Association of Green Eyed Vegetarian Agents Who Have Been Previously Abducted By Aliens --- do a web search to determine if such a group exists and if others belong to it.

If the travel agent or agency is an agency with an office in the USA please check at http://search.bbb.org/national/search.ht... the website of the Better Business Bureau where you can search and see if there have been complaints in any of the fifty states about the agency.

If the agency is based outside the USA do a search on http://www.google.com or any search engine to see if there have been message board postings about the agency. Many times disgruntled travelers will tell their sad stories on messages boards. Many times you can find out about an agency that does not deal fairly with customers by searching Internet newsgroups via a search engine.

Overall Ms Budget Travel suggests that you deal with agencies that have their originating nation's appropriate credentials and keep some things in mind:

If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is . . .

The copyright of the article Scams in Traveling on a Budget is owned by Diane Goldberg under the original topic name. Permission to republish Scams in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.