You must be ever vigilant that when you call an airline you are actually calling that airline. One United passenger learned the hard way.
The sad story is shared on Flyertalk. A passenger needed to change a reservation and googled United’s number. A toll-free telephone number of 855.387.0231 appeared. Turns out that was not United but an unscrupulous travel agency who paid to be well-ranked in search results.
The agent who answered pretended to be a United agent. When the passenger said he wanted to change his return date but wasn’t sure of when, the agent said he could pay the $200 change feen now and then pay no fee later when he firmed up his date. The passenger was not a frequent United flyer and assumed that United just collected the change fee first.
The agent advised him that he would send an email confirmation for the change and that the passenger would need to respond back confirming the change. He did, and the passenger failed to notice that the email was coming from support@flightszoom.us despite UA logos and the appearance of an official email.
Of course when he called back to actually re-schedule his trip there was no record of the change fee he paid and he had to pay it again. Now he has disputed the charge with his credit card company, though he may face an uphill battle: he did agree to the charge in writing.
Sound Familiar?
If this story sounds familiar, it is because I wrote about a similar experience with “British Airways” last year.
> Read More: Scam “British Airways” Agent Defrauds My Client
There, I was able to recoup my client’s money because we acted swiftly. But the story is eerily similar…it would not surprise me if this was the same group of people wearing a different hat. The scammed passenger did some research and the director of Flightzoom.us appears to have several other companies under his belt…
CONCLUSION
It’s easy to pile on the victimized passenger for not catching the red flags. But let’s be careful in assigning blame: imagine if you google a number for an airline, call it, the agent represents himself as an agent of that airline, and proceeds to send you an email confirmation with the airline logo on it. Come on, it’s not at all surprising he fell for it.
I wanted to have some fun and called the 855.387.0231 number repeatedly. Sadly, the line is always busy. But I’ll keep trying…
Would you put all the blame on the passenger for missing the signs?
Funny, when I searched Google for “united airlines phone number”, the correct phone number with United’s website and other information was not only the top-ranked result, but was also prominently displayed in an outlined box with a Wikipedia-style list of relevant info likely the effects from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and from United paying to promote it. Further, the next seven – yes, 7 – results were also all for the “real” United. I think it’s okay to go ahead and blame the victim here. Ignorance of simple facts or common sense should never be an excuse.
I’ll tell you why I don’t. I had to call American Airlines a few weeks back, forgot the number, googled it, and also wound up with a dodgy phone number.
Hrm…I wanna agree with you – and with Aztec below – but like VX_Flier mentions, why not just go to the actual site…? It’s not like the Internet is new and united.com just came onto the scene. I still think this dude deserved to be swindled for lacking common sense, but it has zero impact on me so to each his/her own. I hope he learned his lesson, though.
Searched for United Airlines phone #. Ad comes up says United Airlines, the color blue like United, with a click here to call. They swear they are United Airlines. They charged me $342 to change my name on a ticket I already had, and charged me the current day fair telling me I could never get on the plane without paying them. Then I called the real United. No records of my change or me paying them. Told me they do not charge to make those changes or charge current day prices. Called the fake number numerous times, asked them if they were United Airlines, and they swear they are. Even a manager swore they were United. It’s a scam. My bank charge doesn’t even have a name of the business. The bank is investigating. I’ve filed complaints with BBB, and everything else out there I can. I’m a senior citizen and this really hurt me financially.
I’m sorry you were scammed. Hopefully your credit card company will have your back and honor your dispute. Please let me know if they do not and I will shame them publicly on this blog.
Tamara,, yesterday I was a victim of a similar and very expensive scam thinking I was talking to United. I was simply trying to cancel a flight and get a refund. Because I CALLED THEM FROM A BANNER AD ON GOOGE I assumed it was UAs official website and I was talking with them. Although so many red flags started to pop up, I couldn’t figure out how United was scamming. Since I CALLED THEM. So many warning signs Worst of all, somehow they convinced me to buy gift cards that they could cash immediately. My loss was to the tune of $2,900. Amex couldn’t put a stop on it because with each transaction I made, when they put me on hold, I believed they were processing my claim.
Finally my brain kicked in and I knew they got me. I won’t recoup my money and it will probably take me a while to stop beating myself up for being so stupid. So upon advice from AMEX, we are monitoring the charges, I’ve reported the incident to the police and I’ll report it to the Federal Trade Commission.
Jill, please give me more details. What kind of gift cards did they buy? Was this literally a scam where they stole your money or did they refund your ticket to future credit and charge you a ridiculous processing fee.
Same exact thing happened to me!!
Same thing just happened to my son , I wanted to tell him how stupid that was, but I realized how smart and evil theses thieves really are and he was already feeling it, I didn’t need to say more. The number they used was 858 437 9215. The scammers even passed the phone to a so called woman
acting as supervisor. Makes me wonder how google let this pop up on top , guess it was just his bad luck.
We fell for the same United scam and are still dealing with our credit card company to get our money back. We made reservations with United and immediately after we hung up we were called by someone who said they were from United offering us extra leg room and baggage “discounted fees” up front. We agreed, and they put the charges on two different accounts. I later discovered they opened a guest account through PayPal to process one of them.
We also got an email on United letterhead confirming the purchases, but the real United Airlines does not have any record of the transaction. The credit card company won’t block it because we have not yet taken the flight so they don’t know if the charges are valid until we do. The problem is that we have since paid for baggage and extra leg room through the airline, so I assume the credit card company will consider it a valid transaction.
I called the phone number that scammed us and got a Vaccations [sic] to Go, and then was forwarded to Travel Airfares. The person did not want to discuss the transaction, could not tell me what it was for, and said they would not contest the reversal of charges. I have no assurance that is true.
Keep us updated on how your credit card dispute goes. Sorry this happened to you.
You get different results depending on a number of factors. These can include geography and previous search history. As an example, I just googled it and there were 4 other websites before the proper United site. Frankly, if blame should be pointed anywhere it should be towards Google. But that’s a whole different can of worms,..
Google returns depend greatly on your location. It can vary widely from one spot to another.
Why don’t people simply go to the airline’s website and look up the correct number in the Contact Us section?
You know? Going to the official website? Just because…
sounds obvious but it seems like they often make it intentionally hard/impossible to find so you don’t call. the vast majority of the time, google gets it right.
besides, if you don’t wait 30 minutes to talk to a human, you should know something’s up 😉
A fool and his money…
why would they face an uphill battle with the chargeback? they agreed to pay $200 to change their flight, the flight change was not provided, therefore they did not receive what they paid for and should be entitled to a refund.
Because I don’t think he read the email closely, which had some weasel words about paid consultation rather than an actual change fee.
gotcha
?
I’d still make the case to Chase or AMEX…
My family is also dealing with this. The fraud goes further than a bait and switch. Cheap flights fares actually created a mileage account using my husbands information, which I provided since I thought I was speaking to United. When I later tried to access his mileage account they had already set up security questions and I count get on the account at all….with their OWN email and phone numbers!! Also on my mileage account there was a phone number, two email numbers, and a credit card which were not mine…It was not easy to find these details I had to do some digging and United confirmed….I screen shotted this and am currently dealing with American Express…which the scammers begged me not to do but then said they fired the rough employee responsible.
if those “channel 9” or “i’ll take 6 flights to JFK over 12 flights to EWR cuz my false sense of prestige matters more than my own time” folks can finally come join 2019 when they’re stuck in 2012, they’ll realize UA’s number is ultra easy to remember , but a Continental vestige :
1-866-ELITE-CO
But hey, the passengers with irrational hatred of CO think they’re all so smart, so let them part from their money for once
That is the single most idiotic thing I’ve heard in a while. Who calls an airline to say they want to change the date…………… but doesn’t know to when?
Sounds like the “victim” realized they did something stupid and then tried to make up a backstory for why he could’ve fallen for the scam…
“Hi United, yes I’d like to change my reservation time.” Ok, to when? “I don’t know, but I just wanted to give you a heads up!” Okay, that’ll be $200. “Ah yes that makes sense, please have my money.”
Many people do this. You call to say you can’t make date XXXX, to let them know and to avoid being a no show, but haven’t yet set the new travel date. Usually the airline will put in a changeable date in order to keep the ticket alive. It’s common.
no, they still have you pick a date… see Jamico’s comment below. I’ve probably done this ten times across carriers and they always just throw it out into the future but on a set day.
I was wondering the same thing about callin an airline and wanting to change the date but not knowing which date. Odd.
Regarding disputing the charge: if the company misrepresented itself, claiming their agent was a united agent, advertising it’s phone number as United’s phone number, that is obvious fraud. And fraud should make the contract invalid. Should be an easy case to win, but who knows.
It’s best to memorize the numbers. Some of the numbers I remember are old but all are still in use.
American (use old TWA number 800-221-2000)
United 800-241-6522
Delta (use old Silver Medallion number 800-323-2323) or (old Pan Am number 800-221-1212) or old Northwest 800-225-2525 or Northwest/international 800-241-4141
Also Southwest 800-I-FLY-SWA
Alaska 800-ALASKAAIR or ALASKAA
Sign of mental illness??? Ow!!!
If you care for a story of what just happened with us, please let us Kno. Ours goes much deeper with our passports involved, a money offering, a bogus Texas slime behind all. United’s corporate office helped tremendously.
Please do share. I’m happy to write about it.
I’ll give you an example of changing to an unknown future travel date. I was in LA and was unexpectedly hospitalized. My hospital stay was when I had a return flight home. I didn’t know when I would get out of the hospital or be able to fly. I called United and told them I didn’t know when I could fly. The had me choose a future flight anyway and then said I could change that flight when I had better information. And no change fees due to the situation. They couldn’t have just an open return but needed a placeholder reservation.
ANOTHER INDIAN BASED SCAMMER GAME – UNITED SHOULD BE CHECKING THIS MORE AND SCREW YOU GOOGLE FOR TAKING MONEY AND LISTING SCAMMERS ON THE TOP OF THE PAGE.
847-908-8897, ‘ROGER WILLIAMS'(ENTER HEAVY INDIAN ACCENT) SAID IF I NEED TO CHANGE MY TICKET IT WILL BE $200 PENALTY AND THE REST OF THE TICKET WILL BE CREDIT. I SAID I WILL LET HIM KNOW BY THE END OF THE DAY. DID NOT SEEM SUSPICIOUS UNTIL HE REPEATEDLY SAID TO ASK FOR HIM ONLY!!!
SO, SCREW YOU GOOGLE AND FUCK YOU UNITED. SO “ROGER” I CURSE YOU TO WATCH YOUR WHOLE FAMILY DIE IN FIRE IN A MONTH YOU PIECE OF DUNG!
What I want to know is how the scammers can be stopped. If grandma is not tech savvy should her money be taken? Should we allow others to get their money taken? If we allow that then we may as well allow breaking and entering to occur. It is not about common sense. It is about common decency.
This just happened to me. They Got $342. They even sent me an email that had all my travel information with a confirmation number. Looked like United. Their number is 877-778-8343. I have called them a number of times and they still swear they are United. The real United has no record of this. Reverse phone number gives name of travelcation but cannot find really any information. Hard lesson. I’ve filed a complaints.
Sadly, I have just become another victim of the very same scam. I could not figure out how I was connected to the 3rd party agent that represented as United. I was on break from a busy day at the office and rushing to call United when I realized a change I thought had been made had not. I may have googled Contact United, and there are many ads that pop up with the misleading phone numbers for these shady “consolidators” as they call themselves. However, I also discovered that something as simple as transposing the last two digits in a commonly used customer service phone number will lead you to just such a company. The phone is answered press (1) now to place your reservation or press (2) now to change your reservation. I will never ever fall for anything like this again. I’m in the middle of disputing with my credit card company but these companies do provide a service just not the one you thought you were getting so the dispute process is not as clear cut. They are clever scammers. Thank you for the article and good luck to all those in the dispute process!
Same thing happened to me July 21, 2021—I called the United phone number 18008648331 and I saw the number change on my phone to 18889574016—of course I assumed I was speaking to a United ticket agent but did wonder why I didn’t have to wait in line or receive a callback—- the fake United agent told me it was an additional $150 for a change, took my information including credit card—-(I had tried to change the flight online but had trouble with the website so I called what I thought was United). Name of the “company” is airlinesticketfare.com. I needed to change the return so as to not miss my grandson’s first day of first grade. The flight to be there for my grandson’s surgery.
I also fell into this trap on a return flight where I was asked to call United to change my reservation and ended up calling one of these advertised numbers.
Has anybody been successful in recovering their fees through disputing the charge with their credit company?
You should have no problem disputing this charge – these are fraudulent companies. Please let me know if you do not prevail.
The same thing happened to me yesterday when I googled United’s number to change a code share flight that had yet to be confirmed. I called 1 888 481 2551 I only realized it was fraud once they sent me an email to reply back to, which wasn’t from United but from support@tripconfirmation.com I do feel like a fool for almost falling for it but I didn’t see any red flags until I got the email.
Exactly the same thing happened to me when I googled United Airlines phone number. I called these people at tripconfirmations thinking that I was talking to a United Airlines agent. They charged me $300 to make a change in the name. When I received their email back I realized that I was just been scammed. The transaction in my cc is still pending and the agent from tripconfirmations insisted that I don’t put a claim in my cc that they will refund my money back. To top it off they threatened me with canceling my original flight itinerary. It’s been a nightmare.
Please keep us updated.
This may be an old scam but I was a victim today so it is still out there.
I fell victim to a fake UA representative, who had obviously hacked into an e-mail confirmation of our flight and altered the telephone numbers. I was simply calling to verify seat assignments.
I was hit with a “due to overbooking, one of your party has been taken off this flight (we are a family of 4 traveling); I was shocked, as this just a few days before our overseas flight. The fake UA agent allowed “Do not worry, we have 5 promotional seats available and we can re-book your flight and give those seats together.”
I was caught off-guard and I must confess to a momentary lapse of reason, like I should have then asked, if there were five “promotional seats” available…WHY was the bumped passenger not given one of those automatically?
To do this, I had to cancel the existing reservation, for “UA” to rebook us with these “promotional seats”…Regretfully I did and as the original flights were made using VISA credit points; this had to be a credit card purchase…I was in a real panic about that, for using those credit miles was what made this trip affordable.
The new reservation was made & paid for. I went to UA’s website and saw our reservation – seating scattered all over the plane and a notice “payment pending” – called the number on UA’s website to confirm that “their agent” had taken care of it and got a, “No, Mr. Carter – do you wish to confirm this reservation with a payment?” Told her I thought we had…and realized that I’d been had – badly.
In reporting this, we were asked the fraudulent company’s name and could only say, “they were imposters set up as United Airlines, I only have their e-0mail, names an telephone numbers – all of which are probably not traceable.
I feel so utterly stupid.
We filed a claim with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who replied that there was no company to send our complaint to; I then filed with the Federal Trade Commission who replied that they do not resolve these issues, but keep a file on them.
I doubt that we will be able to recoup that costly error I made; I only wished there was a way to track these people down and punish them severely…for they are quite active – had the gall to continue texting me up to two days later.
Was it this number?
Thank you for the response.
This nightmare started on the afternoon of 17 May 2023 with a Kieth Armstrong, at telephone number 833.383.5874 – the number on my United Airlines confirmation.
I was shocked at what he had told me about one of our party (family) being bumped from the flight and asked if he was a United Airlines rep, he then presented himself as UA employee #2824.
I told him what he was telling was “quite irregular” and asked to speak to a UA supervisor and was connected with an Ed Galaraza, who gave me the number 888.880.3993 – UA employee #2097 – ask for extension #103.
I also have 800.537.7783 in these notes…not sure of which bogus actor gave me that number.
I received a confirming e-mail (printed) at 5:37 PM from: Reservation Desk (support@oradiant.com); this e-mail included a number 888.880.0237.
The text I received at 5:14 PM on the evening of 17 May, requesting that I call them back at 833.383.5874 “to confirm the reservation and initiate a refund of travel points on my Chase/VISA.
Another text I received at 11:19 PM on the evening of 17 May was telling me to “download their app on my phone!” The app given was: booking.com/App-rGU6Hs6AWcORmH4w (this link expires soon)…I did not do this.
I want to know what agency tracks down individuals practicing what is Interstate;Internet; Telephone Fraud.
If the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wouldn’t do anything because they had no record of this company – we told them “they presented themselves as United Airlines…not a company.”
If the Federal Trade Commission won’t do anything except to file it as a report “we do not resolve these issues…”
I called United Airlines to see if they had a legal arm that goes after such characters as I explained to the woman there, “These people are took our money that was supposed to go to United Airlines, seems like ya’ll would have an interest in pursuing this.
If none of these agencies actually goes after these actors…then WHO does? I want these guys tracked down and hung by their thumbs. This really put the hurt on our finances and almost ruined a family trip to Scotland…and they are still out there hurting others…with apparent immunity.
I got pretty much a non-answer.
Chelius H. Carter
Is there any agency that actively pursues these people? I’ve written to CFPB – who wanted a company name; told it was a fraudulent actor, portraying United Airlines; I wrote FTC – on their fraud site…they don’t pursue, just file reports…big whoop.; was led by another post the the FBI’s internet and telephone fraud division – have not received any response as of now.
This really put the hurt on us.
Chelius H. Carter
This just happened to me. I had problem with my reservation I made on United mobile app keep disappearing. I open browser, get on -what appeared to be- United website, click the link “call us” and connected to someone named Austin with heavy Indian accent introduced himself as United Airlines agent. When he tried to sell me ticket $500 higher than what was shown on the app, he tried to convince me that the portion with another arlines was increased in price. Long stiry shirt, he sent me email confirmation of the flights and asked me to confirmed the purchase by signing the document he emailed me. I told him I didn’t receive any email from United. He said the email is from “Reservation Desk.” After asking multiple times why not from United he *finaly* admint that they are a travel consolidator. When I refused to sign, he hung up.
I tried several more time to purchase thru mobile app to no avail. Finally, I tried to book thru Capital One Travel and the booking was confirmed.
This concerned me so much because I have provided my information to that “travel consolidator.” I was just reporting my other credit card for fraud 30 minutes prior to all this! Scary world we live in!
This just happened to me. some scammed me pretending united airlines agent and lost 2000$.
Horrible. Please dispute with credit card.
I changed my United Airlines seat to aisle to take advantage of their new priority boarding. Then realized I had a tight connection and tried to change back but that seat was now only available for big upcharge. Called United help number (?) 855-758-1772 and she said my flight was a standby reservation. WHAT? I had a confirmed email from United and had paid $7000 for this flight to Hong Kong. She put me on hold and came back saying she had reconfirmed my flight and I was no longer on standby. WHEW ! Then she offered an insurance for $125 each and offered her personal contact. I said I would think about and she said she needed a decision right then. I stalled and she hung up. Was 855-758-1772 a scammer ?
Yes, you were scammed. Did they email you a form to sign?
Just had same thing happen to my wife on Delta. Very strange because this was google flights to a very legitimate looking Delta Airlines website and can be navigated back and forth. Credit card would not process and a toll free number popped up, (888) 750-3284 , which is a legitimate Delta number. Indian women answered phone after going thru the Delta auto choices. Charge ended up coming in from from a company called Airline Services, very sneaky. They apparently are taking advantage of non native speakers., wife navigated a Chinese language version of the site. Don’t know if this is a connection. American Express rejected my first charge back. Still fighting with them.