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He was royally “fleeced.”
A pair of UK passengers were left over $5,000 poorer after malicious scammers canceled their British Airways flight out of spite when they refused to bite on their scheme.
“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Geoff Spink, 63, told the Independent about the unfortunate case of fly-way robbery.
The retired broadcaster and writer who specializes in disability issues had reportedly spent close $7,000 on business class tickets for a round-trip flight from London Heathrow to Atlanta, Georgia on October 27.
He was traveling with his American wife, Dawn, at the time.
After the first leg of the flight, Spink realized that he’d left an important article of clothing aboard — a special fleece that had been customized to accommodate his limb difference.
When he contacted BA over the missing item, they told him to reach out to the lost and found. However, they, in turn, informed him to raise it with the airline — effectively putting the frustrated flyer back at square one.
So the Brit did what many desperate customers do nowadays — he detailed his plight on X with the hopes of retrieving the lost article.
He was subsequently flooded with replies from fake customer service accounts — a growing scourge on social media.
These fraudsters will often ask customers to provide them sensitive personal data — including their phone numbers and flight info — and then redirect them to bogus websites or apps where their credit card details can be pilfered, the BBC reported.
In Spink’s case, the customer service catfishers included “BA Claim Review”, “BA Assistance Help” and “BA Travel Advice,” who asked him for a booking code that allowed them to access and manage his reservation.
Spink initially believed them to be “genuine,” but caught wise to their scheme after the swindlers attempted to persuade him to “download an app” where he could enter his financial details and allegedly “receive compensation for the fleece.”
“I soon realized that this was a scam and I stopped answering the phone and the DMs,” recalled the flustered flyer.
Unfortunately, his ordeal was far from over, even though the con artists’ initial bid to harvest his credit card info had failed. Hoping to teach Spink a lesson for defying them, the spiteful scammers entered his name and booking reference into the British Airways website and cancelled the flight.
At this point, there was no financial benefit as the $800 in taxes and charges were returned to the passenger.
However, Spink didn’t realize he’d been screwed until he went to check in and the BA app informed him that “there was no such booking.”
A call to BA confirmed that he’d been hornswoggled, after which the bedraggled traveler was left with no other recourse but to buy new tickets. Unfortunately, because a one-way flight from Atlanta to London Heathrow – which he’d already paid for — would’ve cost him around $17,500, he settled on premium economy tickets home for around $5,000.
Spink felt particularly flustered as he was very “tech-savvy,” having taken extensive courses on cybercrimes.
He is now issuing a warning to others to prevent them from falling prey to this Trojan Horse, as well as imploring BA to up their cybersecurity measures.
“Why on earth doesn’t BA have some kind of two-factor authentication whereby they send a code to your mobile so that you can confirm that it is in fact you cancelling the flight rather than a criminal?” Spink exclaimed.
Spink is currently working with American Express, the card he used to purchase the tickets, to investigate the con and potentially reimburse him for his financial losses.
The Post has reached out to British Airways for comment.
