If you let your fingers do the walking, tapping on telephone keys in search of bargain vacations offered via postcards and vague advertisements, you can hear glib patter and get some strange answers.
One day last week, armed with a ”You have been selected . . .” postcard, a five-line classified newspaper ad and a 3-inch travel section ad, I went shopping for ”travel bargains.”
”You have been selected for a seven-day/six-night Florida Caribbean Vacation Package, including all accommodations and a round-trip cruise,” said the postcard from a travel agency in Tampa, not mentioning a price or any other details except an 800 number to call.
After telling the woman on the other end which state I was calling from, and my name, she went into her script: ”Well, it`s not a contest or a lottery,” she said. ”We are a travel agency offering you a discounted vacation package with a 70 percent savings. Have you been to the Bahamas before?”
”Yes,” I replied.
”Did you like it?”
”It was OK.”
The script resumed:
”What I need to do is get the PIN number (personal identification number) on the card we mailed to you to activate your vacation. Then I can give you all the details.
”I do need to ask you some brief survey information. I assume you are between the ages of 21 and 65, Al. And a current customer with Visa or MasterCard. Can I ask if you are married or single, sir? Is your wife there with you now? The reason I ask that, Al, is this is a limited offer. Once we activate that PIN number into the computer, and give you all the details concerning the Florida-Bahamas cruise getaway, you would need to either accept or decline the offer. It is only one phone call per household.”
And, she reminded:
”It`s not a contest or lottery. We`re a travel agency offering you a 70 percent saving,” but she wouldn`t go further unless she activated the PIN number.
To put this call and the others into perspective, I called Eileen Harrington, the Federal Trade Commission`s acting associate director of the marketing practices division. ”Not all travel packages sold by telemarketers are tainted by fraud,” she was quick to point out.
”The PIN number on the postcard could be totally meaningless. It could be part of a high-pressure sales technique they are using. The number could give them information about the mailing list that was used to generate the mailing,” Harrington said.
”The one-card, one-call-per-household is kind of standard `boiler room`
hard sell,” she continued. ”They want you to decide right now.”
Harrington noted that when that kind of sales technique is used, ”we would urge consumers to be very wary. No one who has a legitimate product to offer will refuse to sell it tomorrow, will refuse to give a consumer time to consider and shop around, will refuse to provide appropriate written material for the consumer to examine before making a purchase decision.”
She emphasized that without knowing anything about the agency, ”I can tell you that kind of hard-sell tactic is used by fraudulent telephone boiler rooms. The FTC advises consumers to be wary about making purchases from telemarketers who demand instant decisions. It doesn`t make any sense. There are a lot of legitimate good values in the marketplace.”
It was a caller who tipped me off to a five-line classified ad for a Bahamas cruise that offered a five-day, four night vacation for $249, giving
”overbought corporate rates” to the public.
The voice on the other end answered, ”Good afternoon, and connected me to Hal.
”Oh, are you calling about the Bahama cruise for $529?”
”No, this one was for $249,” I replied.
”$249? Let me check. I`m not familiar with that one,” he laughed.
”That sounds like a great rate. Let`s go, huh? What extension was in that ad? That partly explains it. That`s a corporate extension. They are probably doing something special over there.”
He asked for my name, then put me on hold. He was back on in about 30 seconds.
”OK, Al. You`re right. The cruise package is $249 per couple. See, I don`t normally handle corporate rates. All those people are busy. Normally I sell the exact same cruise to individuals for $529 a couple. What you called in is a special situation because our corporate division handles about 85 percent of our sales. And they sell to people like Chrysler and IBM who buy the trips by the hundreds to use as sales incentives and corporate benefits. And we have an agreement with those people to buy back what they don`t use.
”Now while I had you on hold, Al, I checked the computer. I didn`t see any tickets left so I called down to the shipping department. They`ll be back in touch with me in just a moment and let me know what they have, if any.”
Hal then gave me a rundown on the cruise, telling me the tickets would be good for a year and that I`d have to provide 60 days` notice of my travel dates. The cruise, he said, started in Ft. Lauderdale aboard the Discovery I, which he described as a 1,300-passenger luxury liner. (”The Berlitz Complete Handbook to Cruising” gives the ship two stars out of a maximum of five-plus. The ship has 100 cabins. It carries passengers on 5 1/2-hour cruises to Freeport, Grand Bahama for $119 a person round-trip plus $34 for port taxes. Discovery Cruises offers specials that are even less.)
”Then you stay four nights right in Freeport at the Castaways Resort Hotel. (The Bahamas Tourist Office describes the hotel as economy class and quotes a rate of $72 a night for a room.) Your hotel is included in the $249 per couple corporate rate. Your port taxes and immigration fees are separate. They run $69.50 per person.”
Then Hal asked me to hold on because shipping was calling him back.
”Al,” he asked, ”do you consider yourself a lucky person? Well, the reason I asked that question is because shipping does have two pairs of tickets left at the $249 corporate rate.”
When I asked Hal about air fare, he assured me that a personal travel coordinator would get me ”the lowest possible air fare” and noted that the package included a $25 rebate on air fare.
Could I get this trip for $249 another time?
”Not at $249,” he said. ”Well, it`s good until they`re gone. I only have four tickets left.”
Then Hal explained that he could ship the tickets to me COD via an express delivery service, which ” . . . will accept either a cashier`s check or a money order. They do not take cash or personal checks because of driver safety. And we don`t take credit cards over the phone. Too much problem with that a year or so. People were doing strange things with cards.”
Hal offered some other pricier trips, including air, and volunteered the number of the the local Better Business Bureau to check out the company. I told him I`d get back to him.
At the mention of cashier`s check or money order, the FTC`s Harrington responded:
”Ah, red flag. This doesn`t sound good to me. I need to be general, but there are several red flags raised there.
”First, legitimate travel vendors don`t send messengers out to pick up your payment by money order or cash. That`s not the way business is done. What we have found is that when companies demand that kind of payment, there are reasons.
”No. 1, they (the company) can`t get a merchant account with a bank to enable them to accept credit card payments because the bank is leery that they may not be on the up-and-up. Or they`ve had a merchant account that`s been canceled. That`s when telemarketers usually go to cash or money order only.
”No. 2. Consumers should never make a rushed decision when they are buying a vacation.” She said people ought to shop around, find out about the place they`ll be staying and the ship they`ll be sailing on.
”This business of `Boy, aren`t you lucky, we just have a couple of tickets left,` that is a real warning that it`s a fraud,” Harrington said. It`s a different situtation, she said, if a consumer is dealing directly with an airline to buy a limited availability promotional fare. ”It may well be there`s only one seat left on the flight.”
”But the consumer should only trust that kind of information when they are hearing it directly from an airline sales representative or from a travel agent with whom they`ve dealt on a regular basis.”
Then there was a call spurred by a travel section ad touting a bargain Orlando/Bahamas combo. The trip included round-trip airfare, one week lodging, one week rental car and a cruise to the Bahamas for $349 per person. The good deal, it says, is due to a limited number of ”corporate overboughts.”
When I asked the woman who answered the 800 number about the trip, she replied: ”OK, sir, we no longer have that available. We sold out. Thank you.”
Before I could ask another question, she hung up.
What are ”corporate overboughts”? I asked Harrington.
”Nothing,” she said. ”This is jargon. It`s meaningless. It is intended to mislead the consumer into believing that the seller is like a wholesaler who buys blocks of tickets and then has to get rid of them.”
As Harrington suggested:
Consumers can`t be too wary in dealing with travel telemarketers.
