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Holiday seasonTourist rip -off: Beware of these fraud stitches
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More and more travelers are becoming victims of ticket fraudsters. A lawyer explains how to protect yourself from the fraud stitches.
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More and more travelers are becoming fraud victims when buying tickets for sights.
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This includes overpriced or invalid tickets.
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A lawyer therefore advises to always check the official website of the attraction and to find out more about the sales outlets.
Nowadays it is not uncommon for tickets to be bought for popular sights on the Internet. These include the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and also the Acropolis in Athens.
But caution is advised when buying a ticket: fraudsters sell fake tickets online. This makes more and more traveling victims of fraud stitches if they want to buy their tickets online.
Expensive prices – no access
According to the travel portal Travelbook, the perpetrators work with excessive prices, false promises or non -delivered tickets. Your websites often look deceptively real and, thanks to paid ads in search engines, appear at the top of the results.
In the best case, if you buy tickets there. But it can get worse: depending on the guided tour without access to the attraction – or no performance at all. With a little bad luck, travelers even unintentionally complete a paid subscription.
So you protect yourself from fake tickets
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Always check the official website of the attraction, the lawyer Alexander Wahl advises from the European Consumer Center EVZ. There you can usually find the information where and how the official tickets are sold.
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A warning signal is a missing or incorrect imprint. This could indicate a fake website. Also noticeable typing errors in the web address (URL) speak for fraud.
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Ticket prices should be compared with the official information of the sight. If the prices differ greatly from the information, caution is advised.
Impossible alternative appointments
In another stitch, the fraud victims are informed that no more tickets are available for the selected day. Alternative appointments are offered – however, these are several weeks or months in the future. If you ask for a refund, you often only get a fraction of the money or go completely empty.
The fraudsters argue that there is no right of withdrawal for tickets on fixed appointments. But that is misleading: «If a booked ticket is not delivered, this is not a resignation, but simply breach of the contract. The right of withdrawal has nothing to do with this, »says Alexander Wahl, lawyer at the European Consumer Center EVZ.
In principle, customers would have the right to request the entire purchase price back. However, whether this succeeds depends on the seat of the provider: the law enforcement is difficult for sellers outside of Germany.
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