These are the most common holiday scams you need to look out for - and how much money you could LOSE
From being overcharged in taxis to making bookings on websites that aren't legit, travellers overseas are often swindled out of money during their trips.
Research conducted by Compare the Market has identified the top tricks to look out for, and calculated how much money is at risk.
The number one scam that keeps catching holidaymakers is overpriced taxi rides.
Almost a third (32 per cent) of travellers fall victim to being charged too much for a lift abroad.
Nearly £17 is lost per journey, on average, and it is recommended to book in advance, – through a hotel if possible – to avoid paying the top rate.
Another money-draining scam to look out for is street sellers attempting to entice tourists into purchasing fake or inflated products, which places second.
This can involve the trader insinuating the item is 'free' but once the tourist accepts it, demands money.
Another example is selling products that claim to be real leather or silk, and not being legitimate.
Some 20 per cent of holiday-goers surveyed by Compare The Market admitted to falling for the trick, with an average of £17.39 lost each time.
The third most common issue is restaurants overcharging and inflating the final bill for a meal.
A fifth (18 per cent) of Brits surveyed say they have experienced this and 25% of those hit with an overpriced meal contested it and paid less,
However, 54 per cent ended up paying the full amount, and on average lost more £22.58 the last time it happened.
Another problem people have faced is fake booking websites swindling tourists out of cash and pretending to be real companies.
One in 10 (12 per cent) of holidaymakers have fallen victim to this trick, and have lost an average of £113.30.
Phishing scams also cause issues for travellers, ranking fifth, and 11 per cent of those surveyed admitted to clicking on a hoax email before their trip.
It can involve a scammer pretending to be a hotel and requesting money from the recipient.
The common trick has cost tourists £75 on average.
While the sixth most common scam is money exchange tricks, which can happen when a tourist uses an unofficial money exchange service.
They can be hit with poor rates, short-changed from a vendor or have their card skimmed by an ATM.
One in ten of those surveyed admitted to falling victim to this, losing £28 on average.
Travel insurance expert Guy Anker urged holiday-goers to 'remain vigilant' during their travels.
He said: 'With nearly one in three (30 per cent) Brits noting an uptick in the number of potential scams they're coming across when travelling abroad, it's more important than ever that holidaymakers remain vigilant to protect themselves against any potential losses.
'The traditional holiday scams are still coming up time and time again, be that overpaying for a taxi or paying inflated prices to street sellers in tourist hot spots.
'The average amounts lost on these are generally smaller, while the amounts lost to phishing attempts and fake booking websites – though less common – are much larger, with some unlucky travellers claiming to have lost thousands.
'There are ways you can protect yourself against travel-related purchases such as paying on a credit card if you can, as it may offer additional protection if something goes wrong with a purchase.
'Travel insurance won't typically cover online fraud, but it is still highly important as it could cover a multitude of other issues.'
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The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
UK jail escape trial reignites debate over indefinite sentences
The trial of an alleged escapee who spent hours on the roof of a high-security prison in his underpants is set to be the first time the stress caused by indeterminate sentences can be used as a legal defence. Joe Outlaw is due to stand trial on Monday for climbing on to the roof of HMP Frankland in Durham in June 2023 in protest at the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence he and others are serving. The 38-year-old has been in jail for 13 years, much of that in isolation, after receiving an IPP sentence for robbing a takeaway at gunpoint in 2011. He says he does not remember the crime because he was drunk and high on drugs. Two months before his Durham protest, Outlaw staged a 12-hour sit-in on the roof of Strangeways, HMP Manchester, where he wrote 'FREE IPPZ' in paint. He is due to be tried later for 'escape from lawful custody' in allegedly damaging the roof of Strangeways and for starting a fire in his cell as part of a suicide attempt. The case raises once again the issue of IPPs, which 2,544 prisoners were still serving in March despite the sentences being abolished in 2012. The legislation that ended what campaigners describe as a cruel system was not retrospective. A spokesperson for Reform and Rebuild, a prison advocacy group which is set to give evidence in the trial, said it was 'well overdue' for courts to take into account the stress caused by IPPs. 'This sentence has led to a lot of destructive behaviour among prisoners,' the organisation said. Cherrie Nichol, a campaigner whose brother is serving an IPP, said that under the previous Conservative government many prisoners grew 'absolutely desperate' when they were told they would not be able to be resentenced. 'There were a few of the IPP prisoners who then took their lives because they decided that they were never going to get out,' she said. 'Nobody's been resentenced yet, but we are looking at human rights. That's another battle but we will get it. We'll definitely get it because it's cruel and inhumane. I think if we don't keep fighting and jumping up and down, then it'll just be forgotten.' Campaigners have made some progress over the years, for example in shortening the licences of those released from IPPs from 10 years to three years. Nichol said this 'meant some people could go on holiday with their families and have a life again, because 10 years is a long time after you've suffered'. But she added: 'The government won't admit they're wrong. So we have to go around, trample around things delicately.'
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Why leaving a key under a doormat could ruin home insurance
This financial cover can be crucial, but there are some actions taken that could end up invalidating it. Heath Alexander-Bew, Director at the Alan Boswell Group, has shared that an action taken with your house key could lead to trouble. Why leaving a key under a doormat could invalidate your home insurance Heath shared that if you are going away on holiday and leave your key under a doormat or plant pot, it could lead to problems. He explained: "One in ten Brits admit to leaving a key under the doormat whilst away on holiday, which is one of the most common ways homeowners invalidate their home insurance. "In many cases, in the event of a burglary or stolen possessions, there will need to be signs of 'forced entry' to make a valid, successful claim. "By leaving a key to the property under a doormat or plant pot, homeowners make it easy for burglars to enter, potentially resulting in a declined insurance claim." To get around this Heath suggests leaving a key with a trusted friend or family member. Recommended reading: He continues: "Alternatively, invest in security measures such as a wall-mounted key safe which can only be accessed by someone who has the code. "Always ensure your home is completely locked and secured before going on holiday, and do not leave any spare keys around. "Further advice suggests to never reveal on social media that your home will be empty."
