Sometime back I was at the supermarket where there was a Sales man of a Travel company doing some promotion of his agency. He asked me to fill up some form as a part of a lucky draw promotion. Normally I never fill up these kind of forms, but he was very insistent and then kind of requested me that he needs to achieve his targets. I felt a little soft on him and filled up the form, just giving my name and hubby's telephone number. I never give my phone number to anyone just as a security measure.

Over the weekend I receive a call from the Travel agency mentioning that in the lucky draw from 500 people there are 50 people selected and from that I am one of them. In the lucky draw they mentioned there were some gifts which were 2 nights stay in UAE or Oman, 4 nights stay in Georgia, Armenia or Azerbaijan, 7 nights stay in India and some 10 Rials discount on any flight bookings. But the condition to receive this offer was to go to their office and attend some presentation. When I heard this I instantly knew where this was coming from, as back in India a lot of these type of promotions keep happening of which majority of them are frauds. But there are some 1% good ones also. Hubby when he heard about it he flatly refused to come, but I wanted to check the offer so I convinced him to go.

When we reached there, I got this feeling that this is a scam. The agency had a very temporary set up, there was just 1 desk at the reception, no banners or accreditations of the agency. Just one mobile hoarding was there, which could be moved to any place. Then for the seminar they took us to a room where there were some small tables and chairs arranged. There were other 2 families attending the seminar. Then they started explaining their scheme. They were trying to sell a holiday package program spanned over 10 years. They had all attractive and too good to be true deals to offer in that package. One thing where my hubby caught them was, they mentioned that if we buy the package then any Airline ticket that we would buy we will get 35% discount. Hubby works for Airline and he caught them saying the Airline never gives such discounts so how are they going to offer, then they changed their stance to up to 35% and certain time of the year. Like wise for every offer they made we could find multiple loop holes. The overall package was costing around 1600 Rials which is 4100 USD. We refused them mentioning that we are not interested in buying any package.

The gift voucher that I received from them, read more to know what it is all about.

They had informed us that even if we do not take their package we will still be eligible for the gift voucher. After the seminar they handed us the voucher. On checking the voucher it was again very clear that this was all a very ponzi scheme. The 4 nights International hotel stay and the 7 nights India stay had a condition of paying 120$ tax per night for a 3 star hotel accommodation. In these places a room would cost much less then 120$ a night for a 3 star hotel and they are taking 120$ as a tax per night. Phewwww...........They had many other conditions mentioned in the gift voucher which would be foolish for anyone to use.

Not all of these are applicable, only one of the mentioned offers can be used.

Look at the terms and conditions.

Me and hubby were laughing out that if ever we would take this package, after a week or so we would not even find this office here anymore and all emails and phone numbers would be inactive. The Company is not listed, they do not even have a proper office set up. There were no workspace counters that we saw. The look of the whole travel agency was suspicious. Hubby got annoyed with me, saying, see I told you not to attend these type of forums. I too felt bad after that....hehehehe....just the curiosity took me there.

In India these kind of things happening very commonly, but in Muscat I did not expect, as in my 7 years here I have never come across. Me and hubby have decided that we are also going to inform the Ministry of Manpower inform about this, so that they can do a check from their end and if there is any scam it can be caught and people responsible get penalized.

Likewise in Crypto also there are many ponzi schemes floating in the market. When the market moves up, these kind of schemes all the more comes up. We should not get lured with any offer instantly and do a good research before making any investments. If it is too good to be true, extraordinary high returns, very quick returns then there is a thought to be put.

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