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Vacation Travel Club is a leader in the online Vacation Travel Services and they know the industry very well. Vacation Travel Club has teamed up with the consumer advocacy movement online and has dedicated their time in helping inform consumers about possible vacation and travel scams online and in general.

Being an internet based company Vacation Travel Club serves thousands of client and members. Vacation Travel Club takes pride in being one the top services of its kind and wants to do its part in helping consumers make the safest decision when choosing to work with an internet based Vacation or Travel service.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid Vacation and Travel industry Scams:

1. Never wire money VIA western union for vacation packages you found online.
2. Most spam email vacation and travel offers are scams or rip offs.
3. Never email your credit card number to anyone online.
4. Check the BBB when dealing with a travel agent.
5. Make sure your travel agent has some references before signing with them.
6. Beware of door to door travel sales people.
7. Never mail cash or money orders. Try to use a credit card for all transactions. If you are ripped off your credit card company will help you recover you money.
8. Add on travel insurance when possible
9. Join a Vacation Travel Club for insider offers and tips.
10. If it sounds too good to be true… It most likely is.
11. If you’re a victim of travel fraud, notify ASTA’s office of consumer affairs.

Lean more about vacation travel club. Visit them online at http://www.vacationtravelclub.biz

Avoiding Vacation and Travel Scams has become a very popular topic this travel season. The team at Vacation Travel Club has compiled a list of common and avoidable travel and vacation related scams that you may encounter while traveling this Vacation season.
Vacation Travel Club is a leader in the online discount vacation industry. Vacation Travel Club offers their members some of the greatest savings and benefits in the industry. The tips to avoid vacation related scams below are provided for information purposes only.
1. Fake car park attendants. Previously prevalent in Italy, this travel scam now pops up in many big European cities, where parking can be notoriously difficult.
The trick can take many forms. You may just drive onto a piece of wasteland where other cars are parked or you may enter a big, official parking lot.
Either way, a “parking attendant” approaches you and hands you an official looking ticket, usually demanding a fairly exorbitant fee. You’re tired, frustrated and there’s a language problem, so you just hand over the cash.
Later, you discover you’re either parked illegally or there’s another fee to pay — this time, the real one.
Action: You put yourself at risk if you don’t know who owns the place where you’re parking or what the real arrangements are for payment. Check them out the best you can. You can ask the attendant to show credentials — but avoid confrontation.
2. Phony travel guides. You may have seen this trick in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
At a famous venue, a local offers to show you around for a fee. This may be a fairly obvious and transparent ruse, where he’s just trying to make a quick buck.
But some scammers pose as agents for official guides, taking your money and telling you to wait at a particular spot. Of course, they never return and there’s no official guide.
Action: Guidebooks and online sites will tell you the arrangements for official, paid tours.
3. Bad cola, bad karma. In the Indian subcontinent, be wary of drinking unknown beverages when you opt for a familiar Pepsi or Coca-Cola labeled bottle at a roadside cafe, known as a “dhaba.”
What you might get is a carbonated drink that looks (and even tastes) quite like the genuine item. But the only genuine things are the bottle and the cap.
The drinks are made by gangs of street-wise youngsters, who collect thousands of used bottles and caps.
The drinks are usually mixed and bottled in unsanitary conditions in derelict buildings. Drinking them is definitely unsafe.
Action: Even though many dhabas sell genuine colas, you may want to play safe by not purchasing from them and buy drinks at your hotel.
4. Rental car repair rip-off. In this world travel scam, most common in Eastern Europe, you return your rental car, but when the attendant tries to move it, it won’t restart.
They make up a story about what’s wrong with it (usually, they’ve just flooded the carburetor) and blame you. The “cost” of putting things right is often the same as any security deposit you might have paid in advance.
If you didn’t pay a deposit, they demand money now and may even try to confiscate your luggage until you hand over the money. They’re banking on you being in a hurry, and become aggressive if you refuse to pay.
Action: Return your car with plenty of time to spare and ask to see the manager or owner if there’s a problem. Ideally, though, rent your car from a reputable-name agency with whom you can dispute the issue when you get back home.
5. Downgrading your hotel. This is an old travel scam that’s suddenly reappeared in the past year.
You check in at your hotel and are dismayed to learn that your room is in another nearby establishment that’s usually nowhere near as nice. The practice is called “walking.”
Most likely, the hotel has overbooked but it’s also possible someone at the hotel is on the take.
Action: Try refusing the sw

itch — hotels nearly always have empty rooms in reserve. Ask to see the manager or contact whoever made your travel arrangements. If you are prepared to accept the alternative, ask for compensation.
6. Free holiday awards. Although a well known travel scam, we can’t miss out mentioning the “you’ve-won-a-free-vacation” scratch card trick because it’s probably the number one scam on many European and Caribbean beaches this year.
There are numerous angles but the scam boils down to two things — you’ll either have to pay a “processing fee” to get your otherwise free vacation, which is really non-existent, or you’ll be asked to attend a tedious presentation where they try to sell you timeshares or expensive vacation add-ons with high pressure sales tactics.
Action: Every one of these cards is a winner — that ought to be enough to tell you what to do, but we’ll say it anyway: Treat these the same way you would an email that says you’ve won a lottery — trash them.

7. Credit card problems. This is our catch-all for numerous tricks you need to be on the lookout for this year. These are the key ones:
- Try not to let your credit card out of your sight when you’re using it in an unfamiliar place. Out of sight, the number and the crucial security code printed on the reverse could be written down.
- Don’t be taken in by a trader in a foreign country who offers to bill your card in dollars, thereby saving you a foreign exchange fee from your card issuer. The trader will almost certainly use an extortionate exchange rate and you’ll end up out of pocket.
- Check how much your credit card issuer charges for foreign transactions. Some charge nothing, others as much as 3% of the value of the transaction.
8. Don’t hit that Cash Send button. This is a new one that’s cropped up in South Africa and may appear in other parts of the African continent.
ATMs are equipped with a button labeled “CashSend” which enables users to transfer money to other people, even those who don’t have a bank account. They can withdraw it from another ATM.
This is a legitimate banking convenience but tricksters apparently can set up a transfer on an ATM before you use it. They then stand behind you and urge you to hit the CashSend button to speed up your withdrawal.
Action: Just don’t hit that button!
9. Paying for paper tickets. When you book a flight online, you usually have the option of just using an “e-ticket” (basically a printout of your booking confirmation that you take to the check-in desk) or having an old-fashioned paper ticket mailed to you for an additional fee.
Usually, this is $10, which is what the International Air Transport Association says it costs.
But some unscrupulous travel agents and organizers are charging up to $40 or $50 for this questionable privilege.
Vacation Travel Club offers a discount vacation and travel membership that saves travelers up to 65% on select Vacation and Travel products and services. You can learn more about Vacation Travel Club online by Visiting: http://www.VacationTravelClub.org

If you’re still thinking in terms of Canada holiday skiing then you’re probably not feeling the financial pinch as much as the rest of us. Put simply, skiing North America is not the European snow lover’s answer this coming winter.

If you still want a snow fix when your credit is crunching… you’ve got to think European ski holidays.

Sure, we all like to travel, but I think we forget just how much of Europe we have never visited, let alone actually skied in. I was talking to an American skier on Flickr yesterday who explained that, while he loves the powder as much as anyone, he doesn’t visit the classic US big powder ski resorts anymore because they’re tracked out within the first hour of fresh snowfall… and the unexpected bonus he gets from going for fresh tracks in the smaller resorts is that he is discovering some beautiful little chocolate box ski resorts where the staff and locals are not too busy or jaded to speak… but actually love giving you advice on where to ski or snowboard… trails and bowls which, in the larger resorts, are refered to as “secret spots” are shared with relish on the smaller mountains.

Its’ much the same in for us in Europe and this winter is the perfect year for us all to discover what that old American ski dog was describing to me - it’s often your own undiscovered back yard where we’ll find the genuinely stunning places for a ski holiday - this is the year to do it because we are more skint or at least more careful than we’ve been in a decade… and a flight across the Atlantic is simply not necessary when we can fly 90 minutes to Geneva and a cheap ski holiday that’s half the price of Canada or US ski holidays.

My friends recently manage to snowboard saint martin belleville and then later take a further les arcs ski weekend including all flights and airport transfers for less than the price of just one Canada holiday skiing or boarding - that’s why this is most definitely the year for european ski holidays.