Tips For Tour Guides: Avoiding Scams

At some point in a tour guide's career, someone will try to scam them. We hope that this post will help you avoid these. These type of scams will be emailed to countless tour guides... the scammers will have skimmed email addresses of tour guides from GANYC's site or other source. Here is a recent such email that I received, and I will point out the red flags, so you know what to look out for:
 

Greetings,
         
 How are you doing today, I'm Sgt. David. I want to apologies for  not calling direct than email. I'm in the US Army National Guard,  presently stationed here in Alabama, Redstone Arsenal Military Base  where I'm not able to make calls at the moment. But I  assure you that you can reach me anytime via e-mail or sms text which I  believe is better to communicate as well, I hope you understand my  situation so kindly bare with me.
 
 
 Further more, I like to know if you can guide my 4 children who are  coming to the city in 2 weeks time during their holiday vacation. Their  age are range from 13-24YRS. I want a private tour for 2 hours per  person for 2 days so making a total of 4 hours  each person for the 2 days and I want afternoons and evenings time. So I  want you to calculate and get back to me with your total charges for  your service and let me know your open dates in the next 2 weeks or  perhaps we can work on your dates if suitable.
 
 
 Also I like to know if you do accept all major credit card as a mode of payment.
 
 
 Thank You.
 David

 

There are several red-flags here. Let's go one by one.

  1. The email purports to be from an American, but the use of English and grammar here is not that of a native English speaker.
     
  2. The sender has some convoluted reason that you cannot contact them directly (ie. by phone)... in this case, that he is at a military base, which somehow means he cannot take calls. Most likely, the sender is in a foreign country and/or is not a great English speaker, and a phone call would only make that crystal clear.
     
  3. The key one that is the same across all these type of scams: a too-good-to-be true offer that aims to get you seeing so many dollar signs that your common sense will temporarily escape you. In this particular case, the sender says that he has 4 children and that he wants separate, private tour for each of these children (this by itself is so bizarre, it qualifies as its own red flag). If real, this would mean 16 hours of work, which would be a good payday. If real.
     
  4. No specific dates or types of tours. All generic, because it wants to appeal to all guides.
     
  5. It ends with an inquiry about credit cards, a classic scam email red-flag.

So what is the ultimate goal of this scammer? There are some variations, but in general, this is how it would work: You would quote the sender a specific cost for these services... say, $1200. The sender would then you a payment-- using a bad check or maybe a stolen/hacked card-- for way more, say $2500. The sender would then immediately email you, saying they made an error in payment, and insist that you immediately/quickly send them a money transfer for the difference. So you would then send them money, and then soon find out their payment bounced. In which case, you are now out the money you sent them, but also responsible for the fees for the bounced/cancelled fake payment they sent.

When you receive such an email, we recommend just deleting it. Of course, if you are not certain, you can post the email on a forum or Facebook group for tour guides and ask your colleagues their opinion. Always better to be safe than sorry.

Finally, we are curious. How many of you have received emails such as this? And what have been your favorite variations on the scam?