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AMERICAN AIRLINES and Delta Air Lines have filed separate lawsuits alleging that direct-mail travel clubs are abusing their trademarks—and swindling customers. The Washington Post's Christopher Elliott explains the scam:
It starts with a postcard saying that you’ve won an airline ticket. To collect your prize, you have to attend a brief presentation. And that’s how they getcha.“I wasn’t really sure it was for real,” says Michelle Morton, a homemaker from Raleigh, N.C., who recently received such a mailing and attended a presentation with her husband, Bill. The pitch was for a $6,000-a-year vacation club, which offered deep discounts on condos and hotels. The Mortons declined to join. As for their ticket, that turned out to be a $1,398 credit for USA Airlines, which doesn’t exist. Morton is glad that she said no, because something about the offer didn’t look quite right. At least two airlines agree that there’s something suspicious about these kinds of clubs. Downright fraudulent, actually.
American and Delta no doubt have an interest in protecting their trademarks. And we can't yet say for sure that the companies the airlines are suing are actually the ones that are abusing travellers. But if these types of scams are as common as the lawsuits suggest, it's mystifying why law enforcement hasn't gotten involved. Fraud, after all, is illegal.
Mr Elliott—who declined when Delta asked him to serve as an expert witness—notes that American has already "received default judgments or reached settlements with all but two of the defendants". Any winnings from these suits are unlikely to be significant to the airlines' bottom lines. What they might do, however, is call public attention to travel scams. They're good publicity for the airlines, and a good reminder to everyone: always check the names of businesses in direct mail offers carefully. And if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulli...y-travel-clubs
It starts with a postcard saying that you’ve won an airline ticket. To collect your prize, you have to attend a brief presentation. And that’s how they getcha.“I wasn’t really sure it was for real,” says Michelle Morton, a homemaker from Raleigh, N.C., who recently received such a mailing and attended a presentation with her husband, Bill. The pitch was for a $6,000-a-year vacation club, which offered deep discounts on condos and hotels. The Mortons declined to join. As for their ticket, that turned out to be a $1,398 credit for USA Airlines, which doesn’t exist. Morton is glad that she said no, because something about the offer didn’t look quite right. At least two airlines agree that there’s something suspicious about these kinds of clubs. Downright fraudulent, actually.
American and Delta no doubt have an interest in protecting their trademarks. And we can't yet say for sure that the companies the airlines are suing are actually the ones that are abusing travellers. But if these types of scams are as common as the lawsuits suggest, it's mystifying why law enforcement hasn't gotten involved. Fraud, after all, is illegal.
Mr Elliott—who declined when Delta asked him to serve as an expert witness—notes that American has already "received default judgments or reached settlements with all but two of the defendants". Any winnings from these suits are unlikely to be significant to the airlines' bottom lines. What they might do, however, is call public attention to travel scams. They're good publicity for the airlines, and a good reminder to everyone: always check the names of businesses in direct mail offers carefully. And if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulli...y-travel-clubs