'I was conned by a fake Virgin Atlantic advert on a search engine'

Excited about her dream trip to San Francisco, Ann Shawley searched online for Virgin Atlantic’s phone number - she needed to get flight details to book a car park near Manchester airport. 

Clicking the top search result connected her to someone claiming to work for the airline. They didn't; it was a con.

Ann, an NHS palliative care worker from Sheffield, had been caught out by a click-to-dial search engine advert. These ads typically appear in search engine results (Google and Bing, for example) when searching on a mobile device. The advert contains a phone number that starts a phone call with one simple click. This convenient feature is often gamed by scammers.

Virgin Atlantic impersonation

‘A really polite man told me my flight was at risk of being cancelled because I hadn’t paid the airport taxes. He said they had been trying to contact me and I could pay it now to reinstate my flights,’ Ann told Which?.

Worried that her flights would be cancelled, she approved a £370 credit card payment via her M&S Bank app, as instructed. 

But her confirmation email came from ‘air-tickets.uk’, which states on its website that it’s the trading name of a Swedish-based business called Travel Guru AB. She called her son-in-law, who said this was likely to be a scam. 

She asked M&S Bank for help. M&S Bank tried to use chargeback (a request for a refund for a disputed transaction), but this was successfully defended by the merchant on the basis that Ann had reserved a seat and approved the payment. She says this is nonsense. ‘I have travelled the world, visiting 50 countries in 16 years since losing my husband. In all those years, never have I paid to reserve seats.’ 

Which? asked M&S Bank to review Ann’s case, and it refunded her as a ‘gesture of goodwill’. 

We think that, from the beginning, it should have processed this case as a Section 75 claim – a legal credit card purchase protection covering goods and services costing more than £100 and up to £30,000. 

M&S Bank said: ‘We would always encourage customers to be vigilant and thoroughly research any provider, and the services being offered, before completing a purchase. While we were unable to claim against the retailer for a refund of fees on this occasion, we have credited the customer’s account.’

Air-tickets.uk didn’t respond to our repeated attempts to contact it about this case. Virgin Atlantic said it works to take down websites impersonating its brand and encourages customers to be vigilant and report cases to Report Fraud (formerly Action Fraud).

Click-to-dial search ad scams

Which? has uncovered many rogue businesses gaming online advertising platforms to trick people who are looking for the contact details of reputable companies. 

We recently found a series of Google advertisers claiming to be Three UK, the mobile network, using its ‘click-to-call’ feature. 

We reported nine of these advertisers to Google, and it then removed the ads we shared and suspended the associated accounts, telling us that it ‘expressly prohibits ads that scam people by misrepresenting information about products or services’. 

We have also previously seen scammers using these adverts to impersonate British Airways. 

How to stay safe from scams

The safest way to avoid these scams is to ignore online adverts and contact businesses using a trusted method. Always check official websites or documents, such as your bank statements and bills, for their contact details – not a search engine.

When it comes to paying for something, try to use a credit card. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act is a helpful consumer protection that everyone should know about. This protection means that if you make a payment on a credit card for something that costs more than £100 and less than £30,000, you should be able to get your money back if something goes wrong. 

Use our free tool to help you make a Section 75 complaint.