Scam: Adetola Ademowore Narrates How He Lost N75k to Airline Booking Agent Wakanow
By People’s Voice Nigeria | News
So, they say experience is the best teacher. This is a story and bad experience of Mr. Ademowore Adetola with Wakanow Limited, an airline booking agent company in Nigeria.
Narrating his ordeal, Mr. Adetola narrated how Wakanow Limited attempted to scam him of his earned money through the default setting of their online booking website, which was cloned to dupe passengers for a service they never rendered to them.
He narrated how Wakanow eventually duped him of N75,000, though, promised to refund but has not been refunded for over three (3) months now.
Ademowore Adetola narrated how he booked a flight ticket on Sunday 9th of June, 2024 (morning) with flight code number: (Aero N2311) 12C_124Y-BYQ Class N for three adults, Lagos to Port Harcourt, and the return flight ticket from Port Harcourt to Lagos (Aero N2314) B737-3002_12C/126Y Class O.
See details of tickets;
* BOOKING ID: 2406090402413
* BOOKING DATE: JUNE 9, 2024
* PNR: 15KRRG
* BOOKING STATUS – N/A
Adetola said the program he went for was a three-day program that was slated to hold between 20th June and 23rd June, 2024.
According to Mr. Ademola, while he was booking the flight on the Wakanow platform, there was some information that was already automatically checked when the page opened, and it makes it look like all information is compulsory information to be added.
Those informations include:
• Call reminder: N2,000
• • Ticket details via SMS and WhatsApp: N3,000
• SMS reminder: N1,500
• Comprehensive travel insurance: N25,000.
Adetola said: “I saw all these; I went back to the previous pages after getting to the last page to book the tickets. I unchecked all the automatic checked information but left the “Comprehensive Travel Insurance” looking at it. It’s important to pay for insurance should there be a hazard,” he said.
Immediately after booking the flight, a call came into my mobile phone from Wakanow confirming the booking of my flight, and the man said, and I quote, “We can see you paid for comprehensive travel insurance of N25,000 per person, and you paid for three adults totaling N75,000.
We are sorry; for now we don’t have insurance for local flights. I will activate a refund of N75,000 mail for you now, he said.”
I asked him, Why will all those things be automatically checked since they are not necessary or important?
He said it was done that way for people who don’t have time to start checking one after the other.
I told him, That is not good at all; all they need to do is type any important information in red ink to attract the attention of their clients and let them know that the information is important.
Immediately after the call, I receive an email titled “TRAVEL INSURANCE REFUND #4453606. The mail came in at exactly 10:50 am on the 9th of June, 2024.
Several emails had been sent to them as a reminder, to the extent that I sent my account details to them through email, but at some point Wakanow stopped replying.
I have called severely too, and till now all they are telling me is that they are working on it.
It’s been over three months now that this happened, and I have not been refunded.
For this to have happened, that means so many people had experienced this, and they had to forget about their hard-earned money to these fraudsters, he said.
He advised Nigerians to be wise and to book their flight by visiting the official website of any airline of their choice and not to patronize any booking agent to guild against any hidden charges that will reap them of their funds.
See attached screenshots of payments and email messages.
