DON’T BE THE NEXT VICTIM Ms. Rowena a.k.a. Winnie Lin Santiago is no longer connected or affiliated to SmartChoice Travel & Tours. She has been a free lance outside agent since Oct. 2013. She had a written contract which has been terminated. She did not act based on the scope and limitations of selling travel services from a registrant like us. Outside agents are not on our payroll. Acting on her own and without our knowledge, Ms. Santiago misrepresents herself as a co-owner of SmartChoice Travel and encouraged many people to invest and in return will get 10% interest monthly. She was telling her victims that her price for airline tickets was a group /wholesale ticket rate but can only pay cash. Many victims paid her direct since her price was even lower than our price given to her. We have a rate contract with the airline and or airline consolidators to follow. She is giving her victims the cost of airline tickets hundreds of dollars lower than our price given to her. Many people booked with her because of the price difference. They paid her direct instead of paying our business account with the right amount based on our ticket amount given to her. Without their consent or knowledge she recently used the credit cards of her passengers to pay for other passenger’s ticket. Also, she will give hundreds of dollars lower than our price and will charge their credit card with the higher amount which is different from the original amount agreed between her and the passenger but will pay them back or rebate them the difference later. We feel sorry for all of her victims, and even our company is one of her victims for owing us $29,000 worth of airline tickets we paid for customers without tickets excluding the credit card disputes. Many of her victims are calling our office and looking for their airline tickets they have paid for but not received. They were told by Winnie Lin Santiago that they were booked and holding an airline ticket, but it was actually a detailed flight itinerary only. E-ticket or Electronic Ticket Receipt is different from a flight itinerary only. E-ticket will show a 13 digit ticket numbers e.g. 079-4828678901 for PAL, 160-4828678901 for Cathay, 180-4828678901 for Korean Air and 695-4828678901 for Eva Air passengers just to give a few ticket number samples. Her victims only had airline confirmation number but no e-ticket receipt number indicated. Having an itinerary does not mean that you already have a ticket number. Please be aware that after selling the travel service the Outside agent is required to promptly provide the consumer with an invoice from the Registrant Section 38(1) of the Regulation. The details that should be set out in the invoice, are : the customer who purchased the travel services, ; the business name, address, and telephone number of the registrant; the name of the company supplying the travel services; a brief description of the travel services purchased, the amount of payment, any fees, taxes or other charges and whether those amounts are refundable or non-refundable and whether trip cancellation and out-of-province health insurance was accepted or declined. We have already informed TICO about this issue and we initiated a police report which is now under investigation. Please call Financial Crimes Unit at 416 808 7299 refer to report number 178 7786 to report that you are a victim or if you have any information to provide. PLEASE REPORT TO US IF THIS PERSON IS STILL USING OUR BUSINESS NAME AND MISREPRESENTING OUR COMPANY. PLEASE SEND AN E-MAIL TO [email protected] MAY ALL OF HER VICTIMS BE STRONG IN THIS TIME OF STRUGGLE AND ADVERSITY.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 00:43:02 +0000
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