I’ve written in the past about the airline phone number scam — the idea is that scammers try to get you to call them up, making you think that they’re actually a representative of the airline. Then they scam you in one of a variety of ways.
Despite me having warned about this many times before, I fell for it myself. Well, I mean, I dialed up the number, but fortunately some alarms went off in my head pretty quickly, and I ended the call.
I spoke to the reservations desk for all major airlines!
So, I’m trying to call up Air Algerie to select seats for an upcoming itinerary. Air Algerie doesn’t fly to the United States, but it does fly to Canada, so I Googled “Air Algerie phone number Canada” (figuring that would be the call center I could call on my cell without incurring charges).
The “AI Overview” showed me a number — admittedly there should’ve immediately been alarm bells in my head, when I saw the “source” being Instagram, though my eyes were drawn to the number under “Contact & Office Details.”
I dialed up the number, and someone answered after one ring, with no sort of other phone prompt. That surprised me. He also had what I believe was an Indian accent, which I also wouldn’t have necessarily expected for the Air Algerie call center (not that it couldn’t be, but it added another layer of skepticism).
“Thank you for calling the airline ticketing desk, how may I help you?” Yeah, I immediately realized something was off, so I asked “which airline do you work with?” He responded “this is the reservations desk for all major airlines.”
Okay, yeah… *click*. Obviously at this point I knew exactly what was going on. After going back to the source of the number, I felt incredibly stupid for even dialing the number in the first place, especially after seeing the Instagram page. But fortunately I realized what was going on before I shared any personal details.
Side note — does anyone know how to actually get in touch with Air Algerie in English? Whenever I call any of their global call centers (from the official website), I only hear the option to speak in Arabic or French. For that matter, why can’t I select seats online, as that would solve all my issues (I booked through Expedia, but maybe I should’ve just booked direct)?
Don’t make the same mistake that I did!
I’ve written in the past about how these scam call centers try to extort customers. For example, I’ve covered how a man thought he was calling United, but ended up being scammed for $17K. In another case, a similar incident happened with British Airways.
So yeah, always make sure you get an airline phone number directly from an airline website, rather than just from Google. And if you do just dial up a number you saw on another site, listen very carefully when the representative answers. They should identify what airline they work for, and if they claim they’re part of a super generic airline reservations desk, that’s total malarkey, and you should hang up.
Bottom line
Always make sure you get your airline phone numbers directly from airlines. And if you don’t, at least be skeptical when you call, make sure there’s a reputable sounding prompt, have the representative identify the airline they’re working for, etc. (which still isn’t foolproof, but at least avoids the most obvious scams).
As much as I’ve warned others of these risks, I sort of fell for it myself, by calling up an Air Algerie phone number I saw online, which routed me to a general “airline reservations desk.” Fortunately I quickly came to my senses, and hung up.
Has anyone else accidentally dialed up a scam airline phone number?
Imagine all the people actual getting scammed thanks to Google AI overview