Usually through fax, rarely through email. Absurdly cheap vacation packages. More...

Thousands have been taken by these scams, often the elderly. Internet travel deals are common these days and the scam artists ride the wave. "Americans lose more than $12 billion a year on travel-related scams" - AARP. More...

Customers who purchased these packages have experienced various problems from bad vacations to no vacations. More...

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If you believe you have been scammed: Cancel the purchase if possible; get your credit card company to issue a charge-back; Contact the Attorney General in your state and the state where the company is located; File a complaint with the FTC;

If you receive a junk vacation advertisement via fax or email: send it to us at nonregistered@coldrain.net and the FTC
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Vacation Junk

The Internet is full of fantastic deals for airfare, hotels, car rentals and even whole vacations. This has opened the door to fraud and deception. The success of LowestFare, Priceline, Hotwire, Expedia, and Orbitz has generated many other travel services that may or may not be legitimate. There are a few simple rules for picking one of these Internet deals:

• Don't buy travel services from spam or fax junk advertisers
• Read refund/return/cancellation policies carefully. If they don't have one published, don't buy from them!
• If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Internet travel sites can sell at low prices because they buy bulk fares in advance knowing that airlines/hotels can't sell everything on their own and they make money on the margins. It's somewhat of a gamble but everyone wins: you get cheap tickets, the service gets fee profit and the airlines/hotels fill quotas. The "other" travel services are a little different. They often offer absurdly low prices before securing any services and hide fees on the back end you will be responsible for.
• When in doubt, check them out. If they are a legitimate company, there will be reviews and documentation. Check with tripadvisor.com and the Better Business Bureau to see if they are legit and/or have any unresolved customer complaints(every company has complaints, the question is do they fix them? and what are the kind and how many complaints?). If there is no history at all, they may be fake.

• Customers pay for a trip and don't get anything. When they try and get a refund of some kind of service, the company has disappeared.
• The company sends tickets or vouchers but the airline/hotel does not honor them.
• Customers are charged extra(and often large) fees when presenting vouchers.
• One fare is promised but a different one is charged.
• The company agrees to a schedule but the dates are then changed by the company.
• Customers are promised a specific airline/hotel but different services appear on the voucher(s).