Travellers hunting for flight deals online are being urged to slow down and look twice before clicking “book.” Quebec’s consumer protection watchdog, the Office de la protection du consommateur (OPC), has issued a fresh warning about a growing wave of fraudulent or unlicensed travel platforms luring buyers in with eye-catching low fares only to pull the rug out from under them days before departure.
The scheme follows a familiar and frustrating pattern. A traveller spots an unusually cheap flight on a third-party booking site, completes the purchase, and breathes easy until a message arrives, sometimes just days before the trip, informing them that the original price can no longer be honoured. At that point, they’re presented with a replacement ticket at a steep markup, or worse, told their original booking is non-refundable and that cancelling will cost them a heavy penalty.
“People will book their trip on a website, like a platform that reserves travel, and they get informed that the plane ticket cannot be honoured,” said Sara Eve Levac, a lawyer and analyst with consumer advocacy group Option consommateurs. “And then they charge them extra or they offer something else, but it’s much more expensive.”
The OPC says the businesses behind these practices are typically operating as travel intermediaries without holding a valid Quebec travel agent permit a licence that would otherwise make them accountable under provincial consumer protection law and eligible for oversight by a compensation fund.
The problem isn’t entirely new, but it’s getting harder to ignore. The OPC pointed to British-based Flights & Holidays UK Ltd. as one example of an operator that ran afoul of Quebec law, receiving a fine of over $6,000 in 2024 for advertising prices it later refused to honour a direct violation of rules that prohibit sellers from charging customers more than the advertised amount.
Levac said Option consommateurs has fielded its own share of complaints on the issue, though she hasn’t observed a particular spike in recent weeks. What does concern her is the nature of these platforms: they’re often based overseas, putting them largely out of reach of Canadian regulators and making it considerably harder for affected travellers to get their money back.
So what can consumers do to protect themselves?
The OPC recommends starting with a simple check verify whether the booking site holds a Quebec travel agent permit. Licensed operators are tied to a compensation fund, which means buyers have a financial safety net if something goes wrong. Travellers who’ve already been burned can dispute the charge through a credit card chargeback, and the OPC says it’s available to help guide people through the process of recovering their money.
Levac adds two more layers of protection worth considering. First, booking directly with the airline bypasses third-party intermediaries entirely and gives passengers the benefit of Canada’s air passenger rights protections. Second and perhaps most simply trust your instincts. If a price looks dramatically lower than everything else on the market, that gap is worth investigating before you hand over your credit card number.
“If something looks too good to be true with the prices, it might be a sign that you should check a bit more information about the merchant,” Levac said.
In an era where comparison shopping across dozens of travel sites has become second nature, the warning is a timely reminder that the cheapest option isn’t always the safest one.
