After the Flight Expert scandal, another online travel agency, Dhaka-based Fly Far International, has allegedly disappeared after taking huge amounts of advance payments from customers, as per media reports.
Fly Far International shutdown
Users could no longer check ticket prices or make bookings through the Bangladesh-based travel agency’s website from October 14, taking social media sites by storm, claiming they had been defrauded by the company.
The claim is that Fly Far International lured customers with attractive offers on air tickets, hotel bookings, and travel packages and collected millions of taka in advance.
The company’s office, located on the second floor of Haji Abdul Latif Mansion in the Bashundhara Residential Area in Dhaka, was found to be closed as of October 15.
Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, Fly Far International had run social media advertisements offering “unbelievable discounts” on packages and tickets to destinations across Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Attracted by these offers, a large number of users paid in advance via the site. However, they began contacting the company after they failed to obtain tickets or confirmation paperwork by the specified date.
The firm’s office has now been discovered to be shuttered, and the phone lines and website are unreachable, revealing the purported hoax.
Such incidents are not new
This is not the first time an OTA from Bangladesh has disappeared after defrauding clients. Similar scams were previously alleged against companies such as 24Ticket.com, FlightBooking.com, and several other platforms. The frequency of these occurrences has prompted significant enquiries into the function of regulatory bodies.
“After the Flight Expert incident, we had hoped the government would take effective measures to regulate OTAs. But no visible action has been taken yet,” Afsia Jannat Saleh, former secretary general of the Association of Travel Agents of Bangladesh (ATAB), told the media.
“Such fraudulence will happen again and again if the government does not enact a guideline to regulate OTAs,” she added.
Afsia also said, “From ATAB, we had prepared a guideline on OTA and submitted it to all the government’s respective departments and ministries. But no development was made in this regard.”
Did you ever face a situation like this? What do you think can be done to prevent these frauds? Share your thoughts with us!
