Travelers beware: An army of fake airline customer service centers is flooding every corner of the internet.
They’re promoted in Google search results. They’re hidden behind AI-created websites. They’re shown in Facebook groups, on Twitter feeds, in Quora and Reddit threads, and more. For every online platform that a traveler visits, you can be sure that representatives of these fraudulent operations are already there, too.
These bad actors have one goal: to trick you into calling their phony customer service centers. When you do, a friendly person pretending to work for the airline will greet you. Soon, this fraudster will inform you of a problem you did not even know you had with your reservation. But no worries, it can easily be fixed, they’ll tell you … for a fee.
In a panic, you hand over your credit card information to correct the error with your airline ticket. After you hang up, and just a moment too late, you realize you might have been duped. Then your problems really begin. These criminals are not just skilled at tricking consumers, but banks as well. So, when you try to file a credit card dispute to reverse the charge, you are likely going to lose.
Each of the airline passengers I’m going to tell you about today lost thousands of dollars after dialing into a scam call center — and they’re not alone.
As a consumer advocate and TPG’s ombudsman, my case files are filled with requests for help from victims of this internet plague.
Here’s one real-life example as well as what my investigations revealed and how you can avoid falling prey to this scam.
A dream trip and a $9,100 charge from fake Turkish Airlines
Last December, Mark Marion and his husband Richard began planning a dream trip to Turkey. They decided to book flights through Expedia. The couple was pleased to snag nonstop business-class flights from San Francisco to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines for around $4,400 per ticket. Their itinerary also included a five-day stopover in Vienna.
After confirming their flights, they spent the following days excitedly planning the rest of the adventure.
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Two weeks later, Marion had a question about their seat assignments, so he decided to call Turkish Airlines directly — and that’s where this traveler’s nightmare began.
“I did a Google Search for Turkish Airlines and dialed the number,” Marion recalled. “The agent asked me for my record locator and pulled up our reservation. He told me I had booked a special stand-by promotion.”
This was a surprise to Marion, who was certain that he had purchased unrestricted business-class tickets. But the agent was convincing and assured his confused “customer” that he could easily fix the problem. According to him, the fare Marion actually wanted cost just $150 more per passenger.
The fraudster explained that he would first process a full $8,800 refund for the original tickets. Then, he could rebook the couple in the correct fare class. Problem solved.
Believing this would ensure that he and Richard would have confirmed seats on their trip, Marion agreed to the plan. The man on the other end of the phone got right to work on “fixing” the tickets.
“I could hear him typing on his computer,” Marion told me. “He sounded determined. At times, he would put me on hold and then come back and thank me for waiting. Finally, after one hour, he had good news: Richard and I were all set and had seat assignments. I was relieved.”
Waiting for a flight and refund confirmation that would never come
The fake Turkish Airlines agent told Marion that he should be receiving the new confirmation at any moment.
However, what Marion actually got was an alert from Bank of America asking for approval of the $9,100 charge. The man, who Marion still believed to be a Turkish Airlines agent, urged him to type “yes.” Only then could he receive the email confirmation of the change.
Marion approved the jumbo charge, but then the fraudster had another excuse for the missing confirmation.
Now he claimed an email glitch was preventing him from sending both the confirmation of the refund and of the fixed flights. He advised Marion to call back in a few hours if he did not receive anything from Turkish Airlines by then.
Marion was beginning to feel uneasy.
Turkish Airlines confirms: “You were talking to a scammer.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Marion continued to check his email, hoping a message from Turkish Airlines would appear. With each passing minute, he became more sure he had been bamboozled.
Marion went back to Google and searched for contact information for Turkish Airlines again. This time, he carefully studied all the results, noticing many different numbers being promoted.
“It was immediately clear to me that I hadn’t been speaking to Turkish Airlines at all,” Marion told me. “I called the number on the TA website. That agent confirmed that Richard and I have had full-fare business class tickets from the beginning.”
The real Turkish Airlines agent assured Marion that the scammer could not alter the tickets as Expedia controlled the record. The bad actor had done nothing to the original reservation.
Marion hung up and breathed a sigh of relief. That is, until he looked at the pending charges on his Bank of America credit card. The fake customer service agent may not have been able to alter the couple’s real airline tickets, but he had still been able to charge them $9,100.
In a flash, Marion was on the phone with Bank of America to report the fraudulent transaction.
Bank of America: “This isn’t a fraudulent charge. You approved it.”
Even before the $9,100 charge went from pending to permanent, Bank of America informed Marion that the charge wasn’t fraudulent.
“The BofA agent said I had approved the $9,100 payment to a travel agency,” Marion said. “If I changed my mind, then she would process the credit card dispute as a billing error. And that’s what she did.”
The Fair Credit Billing Act allows consumers to dispute billing errors and fraudulent charges on their credit cards. Because Marion had explicitly approved the payment, he had no chance of winning a dispute based on a billing error — and he didn’t.
Within just a few weeks, Marion learned that Bank of America had found in favor of the “merchant.” The outsize charge would remain on his account.
Stunned by the outcome, he began searching the internet again. This time, Marion was looking for help to prove his $9,100 had been stolen by a fraudulent call center.
Asking TPG for help retrieving the stolen $9,100
When Marion reached out to me, he had been locked in a battle with Bank of America for two months. His $9,100 was still firmly in the hands of a criminal enterprise. What was intended to be a quick question for a real Turkish Airlines customer service agent had turned into a financial nightmare.
“Can you help me? I found an article you wrote about a fake Air Canada call center,” Marion wrote to me. “That bad actor even tricked Chase — until you got involved. My scammer followed almost the same script, although I’ve had much more money stolen. In my case, Bank of America is being fooled.”
Marion had plenty of evidence to prove that the man who had taken his call that day had fraudulently portrayed himself as a Turkish Airlines employee. He had also lied about the problem with Marion’s reservation to convince him to hand over his credit card.
I checked the couple’s original tickets on Expedia and Turkish Airlines and confirmed that the scammer had been unable to alter the reservation. All he had done during his hour on the phone with Marion was complete a $9,100 heist.
Could Bank of America retrieve the stolen money from “Travelsback”?
The merchant listed on Marion’s credit card statement is Travelsback — a company he had never heard of and certainly had not intended to call on that fateful day.
Scammers often create temporary sites that only exist to phish for victims. This was one of them. The ICANN Lookup (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) shows that the domain had been registered only a few months before Marion accidentally called it.
The Travelsback website has a variety of contact phone numbers listed including “123-456-7890” among others.
Nothing about this merchant tracks as a legitimate travel agency.
Yet, Marion had been unable to prevail in his credit card charge against it. Unfortunately, his experience is all too common. Credit card disputes are not deep investigations. If there is any evidence that a consumer approved the charge, the merchant, not the customer, will prevail.
Marion’s text approval of the charge was all the evidence needed for Bank of America to find in favor of Travelsback. But that wasn’t the whole story.
I hoped to shine a different light on how Bank of America viewed this transaction.
The good news from Bank of America: Here’s your money back
The good news for people who ask me for help is that, as a member of the media, I can reach people who have the power to make decisions “outside the box.” While it is true that Marion gave this scammer his credit card and approved the charge, he did so under a false pretense. The entire “fee” was obtained fraudulently. The fact that Marion had received nothing in return for that $9,100 was the most crucial detail of the case.
After sharing all of my findings about Travelsback, Bank of America had a closer look at this merchant and the transaction. They reopened Marion’s complaint and attempted to reach someone at this call center.
The bank gave this “merchant” ample time to prove what it had done for Marion in exchange for the $9,100. Not surprisingly, no one from this operation was able to provide any evidence of services rendered or products received.
I am happy to report that Marion’s nearly three-month struggle to reclaim his $9,100 came to a successful conclusion. Bank of America clawed back the money from the phony travel agency, and now its customers can truly breathe a sigh of relief. Mark and Richard are now happily looking forward to their trip to Turkey without the dark cloud of a scammer’s theft overhead.
How to avoid fake airline customer service scams
There are a few precautions you can take to avoid falling into a similar situation as Marion and his husband.
Dodge the fake call centers
One of the most prevalent ways most consumers fall prey to these scams is simply dialing the wrong number. But if you know what to look for, fake airline customer service centers aren’t hard to spot.
Many of these call centers will appear in the “sponsored” results on a Google search page. Do not trust those. Instead, go directly to your airline’s website and search for customer service phone numbers directly there.
Skip the Facebook Groups and X posts
Posting airline complaints in public groups is one of the top ways passengers get victimized by bad actors pretending to be official customer service agents.
Scammers create and troll Facebook groups and Twitter for travelers in distress. Some of these online communities use the logos and names of the airlines in an effort to trick troubled passengers into thinking they are interacting with the airline’s official customer service on social media. That’s how they reel you in, and then they get your contact information and offer to “help” with your situation, which often involves paying for extra services that don’t end up materializing.
Do not wire money or use Zelle
One of the surest signs someone is trying to scam you is if they will only accept payment via wire or a service like Zelle rather than via credit card.
Zelle is meant to be used between friends and family. These transactions are never reversible, and no legitimate travel agent or airline representative will ask a passenger to pay or receive a refund with Zelle. If a customer service person asks you to involve Zelle in your transaction, you can be certain you’re speaking to a scammer.
Pay attention to the way the agent answers your call
When you call into an official airline customer service center, there is always a menu of options. You may even need to provide your loyalty number, which will be matched to your phone number for verification before you even speak to someone. When you finally reach an agent, that person will clearly identify the airline.
Typically, there is no such gatekeeping and delay when you call into a fake airline customer service center. That feature is what makes them so appealing to passengers in distress. “No wait time” is often advertised in the search results for these operations. Without fail, an agent will quickly answer the phone with a line like: “Reservations. How can I help?” That’s because these scammers don’t know which airline you’re trying to reach.
If you call customer service and the agent does not clearly identify the airline and instead asks you to share your information, that’s a red flag you should hang up.
Download your airline’s app to your phone
The best way to always have your airline’s official contact information is by downloading its app to your phone. You will never have to guess which Google search result is accurate because you will be in direct contact with the airline on your phone at all times.
Bottom line
These scam operations are becoming more and more sophisticated, not only in how they reach their victims, but in their ability to convince credit card companies of their legitimacy. That means travelers must be more vigilant than ever in avoiding the bad actors altogether.
Unfortunately, once they have extracted cash from you, it may be impossible to get it back.
If you have a problem with an airline, cruise line, hotel or credit card company, send your request for help to ombudsman@thepointsguy.com and I’ll be happy to help you, too, if I can.
Stacie Harris is a local resident and reporter of the Maple Grove area. Stacie reports on medicine and science for the Maple Grove Report.
