FlySafair has issued a cautionary note to customers ahead of Black Friday after the leading low-cost airline was made aware of fake Facebook profiles.
The airline is urging customers to be extra careful and to always verify any sales information, especially during the festive season.
Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer at FlySafair, said the airline aims to offer customers best fares through its “crazy sales”.
“It is unfortunate that our drive to open the skies to more people is being taken advantage of, especially during the festive season,” said Gordon.
“We would like to ask all our consumers to help us stop these scams by reporting them directly to social media platforms when they see them.”
Fraudulent account
The scam sale, which has been posted to Facebook, features various official FlySafair staff holding cards and claiming to offer the holder six months’ worth of free flights for only a few rands.
In the post, customers are encouraged to click a button below that supposedly redirect them to the official site.
The images posted by the fraudulent account may look legit at a glance, but on closer inspection, the poor photoshopping and use of “City of Derry airport” as a location are fairly good giveaways.
“Sadly, our reputation for offering crazy deals might have some customers believing that this one is a possibility and cause them to not look closer at the image.
“We would like to urge all of our customers to please be careful and to verify any deal they might come across before handing over any money or personal information.
“The best way to verify is to check the name of the account that posted the advert. All the FlySafair social media accounts are verified, which means all our accounts have a little blue tick next to their name,” said Gordon.
The airline said if the account does not have a blue tick, it is most likely to be fake, noting that clicking on any of the links on the fake account could expose customers to a scam.
Said Gordon: “FlySafair takes these scams very seriously.
“While we do everything we can from our side to report and remove posts and profiles like these, the more profiles are reported, the quicker the scam will be removed.”
