When you think of phone scams, you typically hear that the elderly are the primary targets. Someone calls and says they owe money; they’re probably going to pay it. When do you ever hear of young people being scammed out of their money, right? But the truth is, scams can happen to anyone, and they can be quite sneaky, too. One woman in Missouri is now speaking out after she was scammed by someone posing as American Airlines. Now, she’s missing a couple of thousand dollars.
What made this scam situation particularly irritating and unfortunate is that it was a case of a mother just trying to get proper accommodations for her autistic child. Scammers are truly awful, as we know from them intentionally targeting the elderly. Mom Haylee (@https_butts on TikTok) shared her story after she booked a flight through American Airlines. However, her plans for a cruise were dashed.
Haylee said both her daughter and niece are on the autism spectrum. So, she called American Airlines to see if they had any special accommodations to make the experience less stressful. She clicked on the first number that came up for AA. But, as she didn’t realize, they rerouted her to a new page. When she spoke with somebody, they told her they pulled up all of her information and even had the last four digits of her credit card.
Haylee then recalled the man on the end of the line told her he could give her $150 off per person. That would equal out to $1,650 in savings. She was excited about this, but there was something she needed to do, according to the caller. He told her he would have to ‘refund’ her order and then recharge her with the new total. At this point, it’s probably clicking for you that she’s about to fall victim to a scam.
However, in all the excitement, and thinking she was talking to a valid AA employee, Haylee went forward with it. She gave him the full credit card number, which didn’t initially work. Then she gave him her husband’s credit card number. When Haylee recalled doing that, she said, “Saying this back now, I’m such an idiot.” But the reality of it is, they’re getting clever with the way that they scam people and it seemed reputable to her at the time.
In an email, Haylee received a confirmation receipt from ‘Flight Trip’ instead of American Airlines. She then logged into her AA account to check on her flight and saw that her entire flight order was still there, but the discount had not been applied. It was at this point that things started to fall into place, and she realized she had been scammed. Haylee called AA immediately and said the woman she spoke to sounded “horrified.” The agent then told her to dispute the charge. Additionally, she locked Haylee’s tickets for her, ensuring they were protected from any interference.
As Haylee has since commented on the matter, “Now we’re waiting to find out if we’re going to be able to get that charge taken off.” Haylee’s advice to anybody to avoid a scam like this is to never “trust Google to give you the correct phone number” and always to make sure that you’re getting a phone number from the actual website. She said that, in total, she lost about $5,250 to this ‘American Airlines’ scam.
